written BY Peter Kay
SOUND EFFECTS EDITOR, BOOM BOX POST
Recently, Peter was tasked with creating the sound build for a time machine as it creates and travels through a time portal. Peter explains his process and how he managed to achieve the desired effect while putting his own personal style into the sound.
What was your brainstorming process?
When building the time machine, I wanted to incorporate some magical and organic elements along with synthesized sounds. I thought adding some chimes and wine glass rubbing sounds would help achieve this.
Could you give me the step by step process of what you added first and second, etc?
I decided that there were four different parts of the build: initial turn on of the time machine, power up, whoosh into the portal, and then the final portal close. I wanted to include a little bit of magical element to the build.
For the turn on, I added an electric zap and an electric buzz steady element with a synth drone hum to give it a magical element. I edited in a layer of wine glass rubbing sounds as well.
For the power up, I used a plugin called sound shifter to create a sense of building up on normal beeps. I pitched it and sped it up over time. Additionally, I used the signal generator plugin to generate a simple sine wave and then ran that through Sound Shifter as well. These were then layered with a few other power up sounds.
For whooshing into the portal, I added a phased sweeper so it sounds like the machine was sucked into the portal. I also edited in some laser zaps and metal whooshes to give it a sense of fast movement.
For the portal closing, I decided to use a simple laser zap and put it through Doppler to give it a sense of fast motion, instantly disappearing. Then I added an explosion to give a bit of low end to help give it some weight. I again added some bell chimes to give it an organic texture as well.
How did you make this build your own?
I tried to add some magical elements to the build by adding some chimes and wine glass rubbing noises. These combined with the sci-fi elements helped create a unique and interesting build that was different.
What would you suggest to new editors on how to go about design work like this?
I would suggest first thinking of the different parts of the sequence, that way you can organize and start planning out what sounds you would need. Also, make sure the sounds you create are unique and different as this was a major plot point in the story.
Any plugins that you used that you would recommend?
I used Doppler and Sound Shifter for this build to manipulate pitch and time. This helped give a sense of the time machine turning on and powering up.
