WRITTEN BY LALO RAMIREZ
SOUND EFFECTS EDITOR, BOOM BOX POST
It isn’t close to Halloween yet, but it’s never a bad time for something SCARY! This blog has some very exciting sound design by one of our sound editor’s, Lalo. We hope you enjoy its creepiness as much as we do. Check out this scary balloon nightmare below!
What was your brainstorming process?
Well the notes from the clients were to make this scene sound twisted, scary and weird. I needed to make the balloons sound alive somehow because we were in a dream-world. So with all that in mind, my first thought was - how am I supposed to make this sound creepy and alive when it’s just 3 red balloons floating around? Without music and by just the visuals alone, there isn’t really anything you can pinpoint as the “the thing” that will need the creepy sounds. There are no real “jump scare” moments or any of the traditional “horror” moments. The clients did say I could mess around with balloon sounds but it felt weird for me to try to incorporate any type of creaking, rubbing or air hissing when the balloons weren’t really coming in contact with anything… they were just floating.
So then my thought was that I’ll just have to make it eerie by sweetening any kind of moments I could find, even if they weren’t super obvious. I thought that maybe sweetening the “video shot cuts” would create a type of “jump scare.” As I was looking for good stings for accentuating the video cuts, I found a file of balloon explosions that sounded really good as “boom sounds.” Once I added these into the scene, I found that it was working really well so I decided to take what the clients had in mind and incorporate balloon sounds even if they were just floating.
I figured that regular balloon sounds would not fit the scene but I knew that if I pitched the sounds down, they could potentially have an eerie effect and maybe bring the balloons to life in a weird and creepy way. I imagined that pitched down balloons hissing could sound like eerie whooshes and that rubber creaking could sound like traditional horror sounds. I decided to just go full speed ahead on the “hyper-realism.”
Could you give us a step by step process of what you added first, second, etc?
1. First, I wanted to lay down a solid base creepiness throughout the entire sequence. I found two very nice creepy drone files that sounded well together.
2. Next, I needed balloon explosion sounds as sting-type effects to all of the video cuts. This created nice jump scare-like stings and added tension to the scene that could eventually ramp up.
3. I added balloon air release sounds pitched down. These sounded like good long whooshes that accentuated the floating of the balloons.
4. I needed balloon creaking as the balloons move around. I decided to leave these unprocessed because I needed that high end creaking to cut through all the lower pitched sounds. The creakiness made the balloons have a bit more personality and feel like they were alive.
5. I found a file of a balloon rubbing on a bongo drum that sounded really cool. I pitched it down to sound like creepy moaning, as if the balloons were moaning like ghosts!
6. Next, I wanted something for the really deep low end, so I pitched down some balloon rubbing by about 2 octaves. This created a really low sub sound that gave the balloons a frightening weight to them.
7. I felt like I still needed something for the high end and wanted to create a sort of shrieking sound, so I added some balloon squeaking sounds. These were also left unpitched because they were for the high range.
8. Next I accentuated any strong moments with really scary stings and booms. If there were any other moments that I thought could be sweetened, I used different stings and booms to ratchet up the scariness.
9. I sprinkled weird waterphone sounds to keep the creepy going where appropriate. These sounds always make things feel trippy and weird, like things are off-kilter.
10. Then, I added eerie low and slow whooshes wherever I felt that something stronger was needed for certain movements of the balloons or the camera.
11. I added a crazy laughing clown per the client’s request.
12. Finally, I added stronger and bigger whooshes to get us in and out of the dream. It’s always good to add some type of sound signaling that we are entering or leavings some “other world.” This is usually done for dream sequences or flashbacks.
Did you run into any issues while designing this?
The only problem I ran into was just making sure not to have too many things in the same frequency range. I was pitching a lot of things down and when I felt like things were starting to sound too muddy, I made sure to pitch appropriately so that things would be balanced. It ended up making sense not to pitch down some of the squeaking and creaking and keeping those in the high range. Also, some of the rubbing had to be pitched way down to fall into the very low range. The air whooshing and moaning fell into the mid range.
It became a little tricky trying to figure out exactly where to place all of these sounds because the balloons were just constantly floating with no real discernible movements. I decided to definitely accentuate balloons when they were close to the camera. After that, I just wanted to make sure that the sounds were evenly distributed to keep the movement of the balloons going without sounding too fast or too infrequent.
What would you suggest to new editors regarding how to go about this design work and making balloons sound scary?
I have found that sometimes looking at a scene very literally, for example balloons, and then using that as a jumping-off point can lead you to cool ideas. In this case, processing balloon sounds gave me the exact eeriness that I was looking for. Sometimes it can lead to very funny scenes. For example, in another episode, the kids are going crazy on an iPad and they are toggling through apps and pages. So, I just cut very literal sounds that matched what I was seeing in the visuals… a food website called Pork Portal gets a pig oink, a newspaper website gets a news flash alert, a stock market website gets a stock bell sound. This kind of literal take on what to edit can create some very amusing moments. Another example from another cartoon was to create laser sounds for a Frog Guy. I thought about the sounds that frogs made and then used ribbits to create laser sounds or long croaking laser beams. I’m not saying “cut what you see.” I’m saying cut sounds based on the subject matter or use the subject matter as a jumping off point for extrapolating cool or new sounds!
Did you use any plugins that you recommend?
I mostly used the regular Pro Tools pitch plugin. I like using that for basic pitching without time correcting. I wanted to make the sounds lower and longer so I really had no need for Pitch n Time. I didn’t want it to sound sci-fi or synthy so I avoided other “crazier” plugins. I wanted to make everything sound weird and scary, but still organic.
If you enjoyed this blog, check out some other SPOOKY blogs we have:
CREATING SPOOKY VOCAL SOUND EFFECTS FOR HALLOWEEN
INSIDE SOUND DESIGN: CREATING HAUNTED VEHICLE SOUND EFFECTS
BUILDING AN EVIL CREATURE!