Today I made a story entirely with sound effects. As I’ve mentioned, I am brand new to audio editing. This was a huge challenge but I managed to finish it with the help of my friends. I used Freesound for most of the audio clips and music. My friends assisted with some of the more specific clips – notably the first bear noise, the gasp, the bear’s scream, the running sounds, and the cheer at the end.
This story is about a girl who’s peaceful morning is interrupted by a bear rummaging through her trash. She scares the bear and goes back to her breakfast. Enjoy!
I made a short story about a swordsman who was ambushed by an archer. His horse is hit, causing him to fall. He deflects the archer’s arrows until he finds him and ends him.
My story is of a twenty-year-old man swimming in the pool at his parent’s house. There are some neighborhood dogs barking. Something has caused the police to be in the neighborhood and their sirens are notifying everyone. I did this arrangement in Premiere Pro using 3 soundtracks from https://freesounds.org.
“Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at least five different sounds that you find online. The story can be no longer than 90 seconds.“
I actually did this assignment using the spooky story, but I realized that the spooky story falls in line with another preexisting assignment in the assignment bank, so I repurposed my scary castle story towards that assignment and made a new story! This one is about a dude that goes into a bar and has one too many drinks, ends up driving under the influence and gets into a crash. Afterwards, the ambulance rushes to the man to save his life.
A little grim but honestly the impact sound of the crash didn’t sound too bad so hopefully my guy makes it alive. I used many fade in and fade out effects to mix the 4 different audio clips together, and it turned out pretty good!
I decided to play around with Audacity and use Freesounds to tell a story about navigating the airport and a flight taking off.
I had never used Audacity (or any other audio editor) before, so I found it somewhat challenging figuring out the formatting. I ended up just playing around with it for a while until I got my desired audio story! The story is pretty mundane, but recognizable enough to get the listener to understand what is going on.
“Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at least five different sounds that you find online. The story can be no longer than 90 seconds.“
I used sounds sourced exclusively from Freesound.org to create a story where a man enters a spooky castle and potentially doesn’t make it back alive. There are some supernatural elements to the sounds used, such as weird alien noises that are indescribable in daily life.
The story starts off with a whispering man, then our main character is transported to the haunted castle. He opens the door only to find a void of black and the emergence of an unknown extraterrestrial being. Then his screams can be heard echoing throughout the castle, never to be heard again.
Audacity was surprisingly simple to use for mashing together sound effects clips like this, it made me feel more comfortable with working with the software in bigger projects in the future.
For my story I decided to keep it simple and try and recreate what a morning routine looks like. I tried to mimic to the best of my ability what a realistic morning for me sounds like. I know this isn’t the craziest or most unique story, but I feel like everyone could relate to this. Hope you guys enjoy!
I wanted to do a story of someone running and finding a good camp spot. I used Audacity to just add a ton of nature clips and mash them together. It was hard to think of a concept but I just started listening to different audios and put them in a good order I thought sounded nice. I added footsteps first and really liked it, I wanted it to almost sound like the person was going through different habitats but then I thought it would be fun to make it night time so thats what I did! I wanted it to have a nice bonfire sound with the night sky and have a more relaxing sound. I also added a yawn and a zip as if someone was zipping up a sleeping bag. I think making a story out of audio was a different learning experience, it is such a cool and unique way of telling a story.
As I did research, I found that a story is told by sound in audio storytelling, which combines spoken word, music, sound effects, and background noise to create a well-planned experience for listeners. Audio storytelling, in contrast to typical written narratives, is a potent medium for expressing ideas and emotions because it uses the aural sense to stimulate emotional reactions and vivid mental pictures.
Audio storytelling is a solid and fascinating narrative medium that builds connection, empathy, and creativity in its listeners. As technology advances, the possibilities for creative and captivating audio storytelling experiences are virtually limitless. It was enjoyable for my first time doing audio storytelling!
Here is my sound effect story, where I tried to tell the story of someone painting something in a serene environment, then having to leave, that someone being Sol!
I used rain as background noise to set the scene, along with a quiet piano and the sound of people talking quietly. I layered each of these all ontop of each other in order to make the environment. The environment can be imagined to be a cafe or a restaurant or any sort of quiet place with quiet talking, not alone, but not noticeable. Everyone is doing their own thing, no one is paying attention to anyone.
It’s peaceful.
I wanted to start it off with the opening of the paint and putting it on the paper, then actually painting. I thought this added to it, put in movement and story. They had not started by painting, but they are now, and you can hear that.
I added two different painting audios (this one and this one). There really isn’t a lot to say about this, but this is someone (Sol) painting.
The bell in the rain audio was unintential, but I think it worked out great. I imagined it as a timer for Sol, telling them that that was the end of that painting, and that it would be time to go onto the next. I showed this through the sound of someone packing up a bag after the bell rang.
I like the rushedness of this. They only have time to paint a little before time is up, before the bell is ringing and telling Sol it’s time to go to the next story. As a painter of stories, painting the sky to tell people’s stories, perhaps this story was short, that’s why Sol had to pack up so fast (definitely not because of my time limit). It’s really interesting to think about!!
I was really happy about this! I took my time and I think I did a good job! All of my sounds come from Freesound and I linked each one in the Soundcloud post as well as attached to the words in here, if anyone wants to go listen to them.
An assignment everyone had to do this week was a Sound Effects Story. I wanted the story to tell a lot about the atmosphere which meant that I needed a lot of different sounds. So I decided on creating the story that most people experience during their day, the walk to work.
The process was fairly simple, just searching for sounds on Freesound and compiling them in a semi-organized way on my desktop. Then I uploaded each sound as it would come in on the final piece. This part wasn’t necessarily hard but just slow and annoying when things didn’t sound right together or some tracks were too loud in the scene. The worst though was when I realized I misread the instructions and it had to be under 90 seconds. This was of course when I had finished the original 2-minute and 28-second version that will forever sit on my laptop as just a memory now. But the cutting process was fairly simple just sad and then I exported the version you will all hear. I promise this one is under the time limit.
