Every year, the webssite A Sound Effect organizes an international sound design competition. You have to illustrate a silent video with only one constraint: Everything you hear must be “homemade”, sound libraries forbidden.
Offering original sounds specially made for each project is precisely my “signature”. So I decided to participate, competing with more than 150 sound designers from all over the world.
Here is the result, for which I got third place, after making a video to prove I had only used my own sounds !
Behind the Scenes
To create the sound for this video, I used several unusual objects and synthesizers.
Background ambiance
I tried to create a fairly simple and quiet atmosphere to leave as much room as possible for the real subject of the clip: the whale. The ambience is made up of layers of fake wind made with the mouth. For the crickets I used a synth with a 2.5KHz sine tremolo processed with Sound Particles.
The light
The movement of the light is a mix of a bicycle bell with a huge time stretch, Christmas chimes, a crackling candle and a vocal sound. Each track is processed with several LFOs.
The whale
The vocalization of the whale has several layers.
A vibrator traveling on a drumskin plays the bass part. The grunt is a drawer in my kitchen without any treatment! There’s also some vocals from my 1 year old daughter recorded with a Sanken 100K. The high-pitched whistle-like sound is made with Logic’s Sculpture synth.
The explosion
It’s a mix of Massive synth, a punch in my chest with delay and fireworks. I added a powerful blast into a snorkel filled with water, to give the explosion an aquatic feel.