Callum Spinks: Reflection

A brief look back on the production and outcome of our soundscape.

For our soundscape, we wanted to create something a bit different than, for example, a wild life or countryside soundtrack. As a group, we came to the decision that we wanted to make a horror themed soundscape, what we call the “Scarescape.” We conducted research on horror themed soundscapes and noticed there was actually quite a lot more than we initially thought. However, we decided not to abandon the horror idea but to expand on it. So we set out to create a soundscape that would give the listener the illusion that they were being kidnapped and held hostage in a dark room.

Production proved to be slightly difficult at times when we were trying to record sounds around Lincoln. This was mainly due to background noise caused by traffic, the public, and near enough everything about the sounds of nature and a city no one can prevent. To get around this, we opted to record any sounds we needed from outdoors during the evening/nighttime as there was far less people around and much less noise interference from nature itself. One of my personal favourite sounds we recorded in one of these evenings was the sound of footsteps in the archways of Lincoln Cathedral. The natural reverb that the archways created was excellent for use in our soundscape as we wanted to create the impression that someone was walking round the listener in a dark, empty room. In total, across all the times we went out recording, we had captured approximately 55 different sounds.

The editing process was where our soundscape really started to adopt the horror sound to it. We relied heavily on the use of panning on the majority of our clips. This was because of our initial plan, to make the listener feel as though they have been kidnapped and that someone is mysteriously walking around them. One of the sounds that worked well in my opinion was the sharpening of the knives. It slowly gets louder in the left channel and then pauses briefly, coming back in with a loud slice panning from the left to right channel. We had also recorded the vibrating of my mobile phone, which when the pitch was lowered created a really low, harrowing rumble which plays underneath our soundscape towards the end of our piece. The sound at the end of the piece was a heavily edited door slam. We added pitch shift to lower the sound, as well as a lot of reverb to the sound, and added another door slamming over the top of it to create a sudden, harsh ending, simulating the listeners death.

Overall, I’m pleased with the way our soundscape turned out. Although we had a few minor hiccups along the way, such as loss of files and background noise, the soundscape played out just how we expected it to. Listening back to it myself with my eyes closed, it really did give me the feeling that I was being held hostage with someone else in the room. I feel that’s important. If it can scare us as producers into this fake belief, we can only imagine what it would be like for everyone else.