Creating Audio Assets for a Horror Environment

A couple of weeks ago, when at a showcase for animation and gaming students, I discovered a project that one of the animation groups were working on. Their project was to create an environment, and by doing so they had created a dark, horror type environment that had plenty of opportunity for some fun sound design to sell the creepy effects. A classmate of mine, Alice, and I decided we would work together in a group to create the audio assets for the environment.

We created a Facebook group chat with the animation students, where they sent us a list of the sounds they needed. Sound and foley design is still a very plausible career path for me, so I feel like as I have done two pop productions as my major projects, an inclusion of something like this would be nice to add a little bit of variety to my portfolio. Although Alice works primarily on Logic, I suggested we would use Ableton as I could incorporate some of my sound design tricks that I have learnt using Ableton’s plugins.

We then received a list of what we needed to create from the animation students and we then began crafting the sounds, which was a lot of fun. Alice and I met up and recorded all of our sounds on campus using the Zoom H6N recorder, and made the sounds by bringing various objects into the NEVE Live room. I had previously thought the night before about how to record many of the sounds that we were making, so the recording process was fairly quick and straightforward. Using headphones to monitor what the microphone was picking up, I recorded Alice ‘performing’ the sounds that we needed, this gave me the opportunity to listen to what the sounds sounded like more carefully as it could prevent some of the issues i had the first time i recorded a sample library. There were a couple of sounds on the list that we wouldn’t be able to record that we were just going to use a royalty free sample for, such as the water dripping, night animal and insect sounds. Organising these sounds into folders professionally was also something that took some time.

I’ll do a rundown of each of the samples, how they were recorded, and how they were processed or manipulated. We decided to record and process our sounds in the order that they were listed to us, just so we could keep on track of what we were doing

Footsteps on stone walkway: Upon entering the NEVE Live room we noticed in the corner a square / tile of wood in the corner, which was likely used for another post production project from someone else and had just been left there. Although this was wood and not stone, we figured it doesn’t really make a difference in sound, just that there is a distinct difference between a hard and soft surface, hence why we couldn’t recreate the sound on lets say carpet.

We took some steps on the tile, making sure to have a bit of variety in how hard the steps were, so that we’d have more to work with later.

When taking this into Ableton, we cut up a total of 6 steps for the client to have some variety with, 3 for the left foot and 3 for the right. These were then correctively EQ’d, and then we used Ableton’s Auto filter plugin (is essentially a low pass EQ) to remove some of the high end frequencies. This was done to give the footsteps a more realistic effect, I felt you would only be able to hear the higher frequencies if you were listening to them right up close. This also tied into the second effect, which was to apply quite a big reverb to the steps, as the setting takes place in a large alleyway / corridor type environment. We then panned each footstep a little to the left or right to give a realistic stereo field.

Creaking Handheld Lantern:

For this sound we brought an office chair from one of the classrooms into the live room. When you lean back on the chair it makes a creaking metallic noise that sounds similar to how a metal lantern would. A smaller reverb was put onto this sound, and it was correctively EQ’d.

Distant Human Scream:

Alice screamed with her hand over her mouth while I recorded it from a distance. We then used a big reverb to make it sound distant, and did a low pass filter to make it sound as if it were in a room somewhere else.

Distant Spider footsteps:

Using the same wood tile from earlier, we tapped out fingernails on it. After speeding this up in Ableton, the adjustment in both pitch and speed gave it a cool spider like sound.

Spider Jump Sounds:

On the same wood tile, this time instead of tapping, we used our fingernails to scratch on the wood, creating a quick scutter noise. This was also sped up to make it sounds smaller.

We included some bonus spider sounds for this effect, such as some spider screeches. This time I performed the spider screech, which I created with my mouth by biting my bottom lip and sucking in air, creating a squealing sound. This was correctively EQ’d with reverb.

Creaking wood:

For this sound we used another type of chair, being a stool designed for a drummer to sit on (the kind that can also spin). When spinning on this chair, it gave more of a popping sound rather than creaking. We thought this was a more realistic sound for creaking wood as the other office chair sounds more like if someone were slowly stepping on a wood plank rather than walking.

Clothes blowing in the wind:

We decided to use a sheet of paper to wave around in the live room. When applied with reverb we put quite a strong low pass on it as fabric blowing tends to remind me of more of a low end rumbling rather than the high end sounds that paper rustling gives off. As expected, reverb was then placed on these and we decided not to use a de-noise for this as it added to the airy effect.

Body Hitting Floor:

Alice rammed into the door of the live room, the rattle that the door had gave a nice effect of a body hitting the ground. We put some long reverb on this to add a bit more suspense to the sound as it was used as a jumpscare in the animation.

Jumpscare sound:

This time we actually used two kick drum samples from Ableton’s factory samples. They were both pitched down, one to create an impact sound, and the transient from the other creates a sound almost like a cymbal crashing.

Water Drip:

We decided to get this sample from a royalty free website called ZapSplat. We found one that we could work with so we put it into Ableton and shifted the pitch and speed up, making it sound smaller and more distant, along with reverb and filters.

Whistling Wind:

I just whistled really low, and we slowed this down with pitch, then added reverb to make it sound more echoey like wind.

Insect and animal sounds:

We created a number of samples for this by getting royalty free loops. For instance we had a loop of an owl as well as some cricket sounds. It took some time to find these sounds but with some processing it fit well.

While we still haven’t received the final product. I can show a clip which has some of our samples being used, as well as a link to the sample pack itself.

LINK TO SAMPLE PACK :https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O-MY_-2_DNW5Rz534sZMTRg996L3cRsg/view?usp=sharing