Richard Holzhauer Culmination Presentation v3

Richard Holzhauer Culmination Poster

https://youtu.be/gzJh7-3QQIY

After a semester of work, I finally completed my culmination project. This includes the stereo sound design for the walk through video of Disney’s Haunted Mansion live attraction, which was made for the poster session. My culmination project also includes a QLab session consisting of functional cues for Disney’s Haunted Mansion which can be played in surround sound. I calculated a theoretical budget for the project of just below $20,000. There is no definite budget, because there are endless possibilities for which equipment to use, and how much you can pay for it. Any equipment that I did not own, I borrowed from the school. The last deliverable for the project is a schedule I documented on a weekly basis over the course of the semester.

Working on this project, I challenged myself by working with surround sound on much larger scale than I ever had. The video footage was about eight minutes long, and my sound design consisted of around 200 sounds. This experience taught me to take problems and delays into account when scheduling a project. Aside from time management, this project expanded my horizons to utilizing surround sound in live production and in post-production. Though I am still relatively new at sound design for video, this project has enough content to validate my resume. This project will be great for my resume and will benefit my future.

I am just about done with the surround sound portion of the project. Though i worked in the Lab for 3 days, my presentation is not until May 15. I will go to room V318 at least one more time to over look the QLab session. Working in QLab, I came across some problems. Making the stereo video portion of the project in Ableton Live was much easier than the surround sound QLab portion of the project – In terms of matching the audio to the video at the right time. This has to do with the layout and flexibility of the programs. Also, QLab is a cue launching software, so when you trigger a cue, it is played milliseconds after. These milliseconds of delay add up, and the audio gets more and more offset from the video over time. I had to figure out a way to match up the audio to the video in QLab while taking the delays into account. This is why my project is a hybrid between sound for a live attraction and sound for a movie, because the movie was acting as the people triggering the cues for a live attraction.

This journal is about my experience in room V318. After getting permission for the right equipment it was time to set it up. It took me about four hours to get the equipment in the room, set it up, and get all the patching in the dm1000 set correctly. If i were redo this whole process, it would take me a fraction of the time. This whole process was a great review for working with live systems. I did 3 lab days so far. The first lab day i worked for  6 hours which includes the set up time. The second day worked for 6 hours. The third lab day i worked for 2 and a half hours. I had to take the exported sounds from my Ableton Live Session and put them into QLab. I then panned the sounds to each different speaker practically and creatively.

This journal is about the next part of my project, mixing the sound design in surround sound. At the second meeting with my advisor, we went over the equipment needed to do the surround sound mix. I then had to to request the lab time for room V318 and permission for the equipment. After I got the approval for room V318 it was time to gather the equipment for the project. On the day it was time for me to gather the equipment I came across a small problem. Me and my advisor knew the equipment that was needed for the project, but we accidentally wrote down the wrong models. I then had to get the right models of equipment and request permission for the correct equipment. This pushed the start of my lab time back a few days but I quickly got back on track.

Richard Holzhuaer Culmination Schedule

Richard Holzhauer Culmination Budget

Sound has always been an interest of mine. Being apart of the Entertainment Technology Department of New York City College of Technology, I got to learn about all aspects of live entertainment.  Finishing up my sound section of the Entertainment Techonology curriculum i had became deeply  interested in sound design. I like to use sound as a tool to take audience members from their seat and to a new place, experiencing the sound from all around them. With Video being another great interest of mine, i planned to combine both sound and video into my culmination  project, which is taking Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction walk through video and totally redesigning the practical and creative sounds. Because it is video footage of a live attraction, the project is a hybrid between sound for film, and sound for live entertainment.

The sound design process consists of me taking royalty free sounds from Freesound.org, and layering and manipulating them in Ableton Live. After the design process is concluded i will insert the sounds into Cue Lab, and which they will be launched according to the walk through attraction in the video. The sounds will also be mixed in surround sound to expand on the creativity and experience of the project.