My sound design has a comedic nature mixed with dark undertones to build tension, foreshadowing the end of the film. To do this, I made the sound design dense and rich, almost making it feel slightly chaotic in fast-paced sections of the film. However, when the pace slows, I raise the atmos volume and use minimal sounds, creating a sparse/quiet atmosphere, to make the audience feel like something is going to happen. Upon reflection, I could have utilised the atmos more by automating the cut-off of the filter gradually, to build tension and make the listener more uneasy throughout the robot’s interactions.

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After reading an interview detailing the process of Ben Burtt creating the sound design for “Wall-E” I drew inspiration from his creativeness when envisioning sounds for something that isn’t ‘obvious’ (e.g., a robot moving). Whilst there weren’t specific idea’s of Burtt’s I could practically replicate (as he used a WW2 generator for the robotic movement), I gained further insight after watching Chase Steele record various day-to-day sounds and layer them within protools to create the sound design for a big robot (A Sound Effect, 2020). After watching this I gathered electronics from home and brought them into the studio to create a sound bank that I could begin building upon.

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I felt it was important to differentiate the robots through their sounds, given that the larger robot appears old-fashioned compared to the smaller robot. I achieved this through using higher frequency electronics for the small robot (e.g. rotating hair curlers/ wind-up torch/ digital cameras), making it sound high-tech, and using a car engine and power drill mixed with ‘creaks’ and clunking for the big robot, making him sound ‘heavy-duty’. This allows the two robots to have characteristics that stand them apart. Upon reflection, I could’ve used lower frequency sounds for the big robot rotating around, as the sounds I use stand out harshly amongst the other sound design for this robot and do not blend as well as they could.

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Adding inflections to the small robot’s sound achieves the expression of emotion, displaying confusion, fear, and excitement, giving the robot more character beyond monotone mechanic sounds. I achieved this by automating the bypass of a pitch shift plugin upwards or downwards in pitch depending on the emotion being portrayed, and further manipulated the digital camera sounds by extending the samples using the flex tool, resulting in a convincing scared and confused sound.

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I was inspired to experiment with this idea of emotion after watching the short film ‘Planet Unknown’ (Wang, 2018) as the robots in this film have a distinct robotic ‘voice’ in which they can express different emotions without saying any words, allowing the viewer to empathise with them more and gain a deeper understanding of how they feel.