underwater atmos - any suggestions??

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i am going to be recording a foley session and also applying effects to dialogue that is supposed to be underwater. Its animation so reality is not an issue, but we would like to treat the sounds in some way to differentiate them from our everyday programme sounds.

Any one have any suggestions or techniques that might help to create an underwater illusion?

thanks

adam

[georgia]

rent lost in translation... there is a great scene where our protaganist is swimming and the camera and sound travel up and out of the water and back down into the water and back up...etc etc.
well done.. ( btw, we watched it over the weekend with a number of people at our studio..the opinion of all: Movie truly sucked... sound was great. )

take a tuning fork and a large bowl of water. hit the tuning fork and slowly lower it into the water. the pitch of the tuning fork will drop as it enters the water. ( fun sound.. it might give you some ideas )

cheers
georgia

[jimlongo]

gated bubbling sfx keyed by the voice - filter on the voice

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spooky one Georgia, since i posted the question a colleague has brought in his copy of that film for me to borrow!
I'm also going to analyse Finding Nemo - i was too blown away with the film first time round to worry about analysing it then.

I'll try the bubbles gating trick, although we are trying to steer clear of the obvious bubbles and words in a fish tank fx.

any more suggestions, please?

[dr sound]

Adam,
I wil probably get banished from the Hollywood mix community for telling you this, but what the hell. Run it throgh DINR or Sonic Solutions and over process it. It will make it sound underwater. I can't tell you how many times someone has run dialog through one of those in attemt to clean up some noisy tracks and that is the end result.

[JKD99]

Well, they'll probably banish me then too, because I agree with Marti:)
Georgia, ya gotta be kidding me.... "Lost In Translation" was fantastic!

[Craig Henighan]

Check out SpongeBob SquarePants. It's an animated show that takes place underwater. The mix is subtle with the use of "underwater" sfx, but it may give you some ideas.
The gated bubbles keyed off a dialogue track that Jim suggested works great.
There are some presets in Pitchblender and Soundblender (SoundToys, formerly known as Wave Mechanics) that work pretty well, and if you have a old envelope filter guitar pedal, I'd run some dialogue/sfx through it too, and control the filter real time.


good luck




Craig Henighan

Sound Dogs

[Noiz2]

I agree on both points. Though I have to admit I had never thought of the creative use of DINR artifacts before.

Well, they'll probably banish me then too, because I agree with Marti:)
Georgia, ya gotta be kidding me.... "Lost In Translation" was fantastic!

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great suggestions everyone - thanks.

I'll certainly be trying the DINR idea - as i find it really difficult to get a usable noise reduction but there are certainly some weird sounds that do come from it. This way i should be able to get a chunk of moneys worth out of the thing!!

[AUDIOSFX]

LIT sucked...Ouch...Georgia your killing me... Well since I was the foley sup I won't take it personally. We did a good amount of water foley...but hydrophone recordings are my favorite submersed atmosphere sound. Vocodors work great for voice processing ...and by the way Dr. Sound..throw cedar in the mix also, nothing like dx from the bottom of a swimming pool...my favorite yummy yummy...

-ws