Ben Simons submitted a level 3 portfolio containing 4 projects with sound design elements. For the "Pride of the Motherland, Freedom" theatrical performance, he created chain and thunder sounds using layered bike chain recordings and Logic's thunder loops combined with rain. For the "Charcoal on Paper" animation, he sourced and implemented birdsong and other sound effects. As the voiceover editor for "8: Magical Thinking", he recorded voiceovers using a Zoom H4N after the studio equipment failed and edited them in Pro Tools. The portfolio demonstrates his sound recording and editing skills across different projects.

1. Ben Simons 95563310 Level 3 Portfolio
Contents:
Introduction.........................................................................................2
Pride of the Motherland, Freedom......................................................3
Charcoal on Paper..............................................................................6
8: Magical Thinking.............................................................................7
Bibliography........................................................................................8

2. Introduction
Over the last term, I have been working on my portfolio for the final unit for Ravensbourne,
some problems that I initially had is waiting for people to get back to me (and even now
some of the submissions are WIPs due to people not sending me things I need to be able
to create a finished product such as scripts/detailed breakdown of sounds needed for
production).
Link to Portfolio: http://bensimonssd.wordpress.com/portfolio-links/

3. Pride of the Motherland, Freedom
This piece was designed for a live theatrical fashion performance based in West London,
the date of the actual show is the 7th
July (also the deadline for this piece) which is later
than my portfolio piece, however as I have not received a script yet I have been unable to
finish the piece, when I had a meeting with the director he mentioned he wanted some
chain sounds and thunderous sounds, so I have created those sounds for this part of my
portfolio.
For the chains I used a bike chain to record and overlayered that three times, as according
to Walter Murch, who invented the “law of two-and-a-half”, that should be enough to reflect
the amount of footsteps (as there will also be music being played over the top of this), as
the chains represent footsteps, “Somehow, it seems that our minds can keep track of one
person’s footsteps, or even
the footsteps of two people, but with three or more people our minds just give up – there
are too many steps happening too quickly.” (Sound design vs Perception II: The law of
two-and-a-half, 2012)

4. For the thunderstorm, I used Logic's inbuilt loops and combined different thunder claps
with a rain track to complete the sound of a boat at sea during a thunderstorm

5. I decided to use Logic for this piece as I thought it was the best tool for the job and easy to
use for this particular production, due to the many thunder loops it had for the storm.
This is only a WIP being submitted, however I have been in constant contact with the
director for the script sending many messages on facebook for contacts

6. Charcoal On Paper
This is an animation designed by a student from Outside of Ravensbourne as one of their
projects, after completion of the main production, they asked me to create some sound
effects for it, and co-ordinate getting the sounds into the production. I worked with the
animator James Du Val with this project to get the best possible sound effects that would
benefit his piece. I needed birdsound, which I sourced from a recording I did in the first
year in a forest, and some other sounds that I sourced from various places (things like
door creaks, white noise for the TV, and clicks for the remote control). I decided not to use
the music for Country file (which is animated into the production), because of copyright
laws.

7. 8: Magical Thinking
8 Magical thinking is a psychological black comedy based around an 8-ball that someone
relies on to live their life. I was the Voiceover editor for this piece. On the first day of
recording, the first problem we had was with the studio not working so I used a Zoom H4N
to record all the voiceovers for this session and dubbed them in afterwards.
I used Pro-tools for this and imported the video for this project, though I didn't do the final
mix, this shows my voice-over recording skills in this particular project.

8. Bibliography
Sound design vs Perception II: The law of two-and-a-half (2012) Sound Design vs.
Perception II: Law of Two-and-a-half. [online] Available at:
http://thesounddesignprocess.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/sound-design-vs-perception-ii-
law-of-two-and-a-half/ [Accessed: 3 Jun 2013]