Video + Sound Week 2: Soundwalk (and Cupcakes!)

Link to soundwalk: https://soundcloud.com/mr_pashmak/the-mission

Link to soundwalk (without a copyright soundtrack):
https://soundcloud.com/mr_pashmak/the-mission-v2

Okay so I was putting off this blog post until I had pictures of the finished cupcakes, but here we are, 3 hours before class and the second batch of cupcakes aren’t even out of the oven :0

I’ll try to summarize our project’s process as best I can with my coffee-addled brain and lemon zest coated fingers:

We went through a lot of great ideas at the beginning. In our second meeting, we came up with an idea we were all really excited for — having someone hack into the soundwalk files and instead get you to help him on a secret mission uncovering a conspiracy at Tisch, going up the stairwell to do reconnaissance, culminating in a tense high-speed chase climax down the stairs to safety. Unfortunately, after the second week’s class, we stuck around to do a test run of how long it would take to go up and down the stairs while breaking for like twenty seconds at each even floor, and it was a massive amount of time. So back to the drawing board.

We decided to simplify the concept, but keep the physical action. While testing the first idea, we all got to the 12th floor exhausted and wondering if we were recording a sound walk or an exercise routine. Then it hit us, we could do both! We could trick people into following a guy up the stairs on a secret mission (like the first idea), but really it was just a peek into his mind as he burned enough calories to eat a cupcake. When going on the Passing Strangers soundwalk myself, I remarked that sound walks would be a great way to get people to accidentally exercise, so here was that concept, taken to the next level (ba dum skish). The cupcakes were a joke at first, thrown into the script last minute, but then I realized we might want to reward participants after making them do a workout, or else they would destroy us in critique haha.

I ended up doing the narration, and after reworking the basic script Emily and I came up with as a group to better match my natural speech patterns, I headed home to record in the solitude of my apartment. We had originally not recorded in the stairwell (the scene of the crime) because we often couldn’t get a full take without someone opening a door somewhere or stomping past us. It might have been cool to have as background noise, but after we discussed in class recording a sound by not recording the exact sound, we figured I could record at home and then we could add in the background sound later. Only problem was, I forgot that my ground-floor apartment is on the same block as a subway line, and our window looks out onto Metropolitan Ave, a super busy street with huge trucks blaring by at all hours… So I had to improvise:

Welcome to my luxurious sound booth. I had to turn off the A/C, squeeze in between all my coats, and hyperventilate for 40 minutes. It was fun.

Getting the right levels of the mic and placement of the mic for recording something with heavy breathing was tricky. In the end I think Qice just saved me in the edits, since I don’t think I ever fully got it to the best recording settings. I also realized halfway through recording that our script was waaaay too long. Qice also swooped in to save the day there, and he Frankenstein-ed my recordings into something usable. Oh and I had the broken Zoom Lillian mentioned in class, so I couldn’t even hear myself speak, had to download the audio every-time I wanted to test levels. Should have led with that, easy target for blame.

After the rough draft was finished, we all met up to test it out, and our main discussion point was “are we giving them enough information to follow this guy?”. It was a really tricky balancing act, because we needed to be clear with our instructions, or else no one would know what to do, but we A) didn’t want to make it seem forced, since you were supposed to be listening in on a guy’s thoughts, and B) didn’t want to give too much away, since we wanted it to be a surprise that you were supposed to walk all the way to the 12th floor. In the end we added a little sentence at the beginning, and decided we would hear in feedback whether or not it was enough. In retrospect, I wish we had gotten people to playtest it blind — not sure why we forgot to do that. I think we were treating this very much as a workshop piece, in no way a final, polished product haha.

And back to the cupcakes. T-minus two hours until class. The second batch is out of the oven, and now I’m just waiting for them to cool so I can frost them. I’ve got two kinds (hopefully) to bring to class and leave as treats at the top of the stairwell:

A lemon yellowcake cupcake with matcha frosting

An espresso chocolate cupcake with mexican-chocolate frosting

Both Vegan!

We’ll see how it turns out. This is my first time baking in my new apartment, and it was tough starting over in a new spot. As I started this morning, I realized my roommates and I didn’t even have measuring spoons, so I had to eyeball the chocolate recipe while my lovely partner went out to grab me some. Fingers crossed.

Presentation Outline and Questions for Feedback:

Sound walk Presentation - Outline

1. Introductions and Roles:

   1. August - narration, script writing, cupcake making!,

   2. Qice - compiling sounds on audition; creation of main 1st draft

   3. Emily - helping with script + editing audio

2. Concept

   1. Original Idea -- secret mission and a chase

      1. But then we actually timed how long it took to walk the stairs

   2. Core ideas

      1. Changed around a bit

      2. All in the stairwells

      3. Twist at end

      4. Narrator’s mind vs Narrator’s directions

      5. Soundwalk as tricking people into exercising

      6. Arc

         1. Physical map matching arc? Or inverse? Lower and lower emotionally until top plateau

3. Making Of

   1. Walking the stairs a lot

   2. Brainstorming the story/script

   3. Recording

      1. Narration

         1. August’s room debacle w/ the closet and broken zoom

         2. Obvs couldn’t record reliably in the stairwell, but maybe should have tried? Currently sounds more like we can hear his thoughts, which is probably better.

      2. Other Sounds

   4. Editing

      1. Script too long

      2. Counting the steps in each section

      3. Shining music

   5. Hard to know how to break up the labor

1. Questions

   1. Were you keeping up with the narrator and how did that make you feel?

   2. Did you make it to the top before/after/same time as narrator and how did that affect your emotional experience of the ending?

   3. Did you have enough information to go on or were you confused? Did the mystery of what the narrator was doing intrigue you and make you want to find out or was it too vague to even follow?

   4. How are your legs? Are you glad you’ll be sore tomorrow or do you hate us?

   5. Did you want to eat a cupcake or were you afraid you’d throw it up?