Instead of conceptualize a ‘family sound album’, I decided to do something different. I often have some kind of adventure or weird dreams early in the morning. Some I still remember, some I don’t. For this task, I tried to map out and build a sequence of sound to visualize my dream.

In fact, most people only remember a small fraction of their dream if they make some effort to memorize it. My intention is to tell a story using only sound elements. I imagined some of events to fill the gap of my dream. It’s kind of a fiction story so all of the sound effects are from my sound collection. I recorded the dialogue myself with a voice recorder. It was a good experience. Voice acting is not as easy as it seems to be. I had done over and over again with different tones before I got the right one, not to mention unwanted noises.

At first, the story ended with a big explosion. When asked my friend to listen to it, he was confused. He told me that it did not make any sense. I supposed it was easy for people to understand. I sent it to a few more, they didn’t understand either. Then I realized that I believed the story was easy to get just because I am its creator.

“If your screenplay does not emerge from your inner need to know; to express; to share; and to integrate, it will lack vitality and significance”

(Mehring-1990)

This short story lacks vitality because I don’t actually experience the event. It is possible that my dream is a reflection of what I watched during my day time. I’ve never actually been there, so it is understandable that my work does not have the “reality” and coherence. As far as I am concerned, not all film directors truly experience the every event in their works. At least, they have a chance to talk to the real people who have been there or witnessed. The director then put themselves in their shoes.

In the end, I extended the story with an alarm to indicate that this is just a dream. Of course, It’s doesn’t matter if a dream doesn’t make sense. This is a good experiment in terms of concept and techniques. I played around with reverberation plugins to create the announcement. Importantly, creating a story is not as hard as making people understand and believe in it. I’ll keep practicing for our first coming short film. Ready to blow your mind!

Reference cited:

Mehring, M 1990, ‘Theme’ in Screenplay : a blend of film form and content, Focal Press, Boston, pp. 221-230.