Portfolio-Tree Hollow&On Green Dolphin Street

Tree Hollow 4min37s
Tree Hollow is an animated short film.It described a puppet man sitting in the telephone booth，listening to the complaints of the passerby and experiencing their lives.I am responsible for the sound design of it.
When I designed the sound, I tried to divide the space of the story in to two parts by the picture of animation, the outside of the booth, which is realistic, and the inner of it, describing the world and emotions of puppet, which is more exaggerated and abstract.
I covered the film with 2 to 3 tracks of ambiance, edited and mixed them as to create a sense of reality. In order to tell the difference of the indoor and outdoor, I used EQ and some room reverberation. The sound effect of footsteps, doors, telephones and cloth-moving，as well as the special ambiance such as the bicycle bell and the laugh of pedestrian are been edited and mixed carefully, helping it sounds more realistic.
As for the exaggerated picture inside the booth, I used lots of SFX and special ambiance to increase the tension of the picture and enhance the feelings of helpless and loneliness of the puppet, who had witnessed too much misfortune of others, from daily anxiety to the dilemma of life and even the pain of death, making him need the salvation from others desperately. I used a lot of special ambiance to visualize the complaints of the passers-by, and designed the puppet as a drowning man vomiting bubbles，implying that he is losing oxygen, and the process of accepting other people's emotions is also the one that consumes himself. Afterward, he was pushed by the waves under and above water with the change of light and dark in the picture, and finally fall into a coma. I used a lot of EQ, reverberation, delay, synthesizer and compressor to create the subjective perspective of puppet.
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On Green Dolphin Street 7min43s
On Green Dolphin Street is a trio of the piano, the trumpet and the bass. This work is a group project that was completed by me and my classmates. It was in a jazz bar, and we had to record and reinforce at the same time. I was responsible for selecting the right set of recording equipment，designing the microphone position and manners, building sound reinforcement system and the recording system, and finally, editing and mixing it.
I found plenty of albums of a similar style for listening to and looking for inspiration, then I referred to many videos on RUclips to learn about laying out different models of microphones on multiple occasions. Spending lots of time reading the instruction manual and studying the characteristics of various models and their respective sound features, I identified a list of the most suitable microphone models for the project. Then I tried to position the microphones in different manners at different places in the bar. After trials, I formulated a full plan specifying the models and number of microphones we would use and the details of recording method and procedures, with a draft picture of the layout of all the equipment attached to the plan.
As for the bass, which is the most difficult part in our work, I planed to record one track of the signal directly from the DI box, then use the SM57 microphone pointing to the amp to record the sound processed by the amp, and a DPA4099 microphone pointing to the bass player’s fingers. Finally, I mix the three tracks for a clear original bass sound.
I use EQ for damping the high frequency of piano because it was too sharp and bright. It also works when I found the DI signal of bass is too electric for jazz. I also use some reverberation to make them sound like they're in the same room.