Process Piece - The BYU Experience

http://soundcloud.com/123sendmestuff/the-byu-experience/s-T9mau

This was one of the funnest projects I've ever worked on.  I have always loved the story telling aspect of sound.  In fact, it was that very thing that got me interested in Film.  I was in TMA 102, Intro to Film, and our teacher showed us a clip from a movie but didn't turn on the projector.  We were only able to listen to the scene.  I realized how powerful sound can be in developing a story.  My mind was creating all sorts of images just from the sounds I heard.  Afterwards, he showed us the scene including video, and I was blown away.  Sometimes I got the sounds dead right, other times I was totally wrong.  I decided I wanted to learn how to do something like that.  And this assignment sort of did that for me.  I tried to tell the process using as little dialog a possible, mostly focusing on sounds that identify BYU to me and others I spoke with.  I was very pleased with the outcome.  It flows from a beginning of the year devotional all the way through graduation.  It was a bit different from what we initially thought of when writing out our ideas for this project. I think it accomplishes what it needs to.
One thing I screwed up on was the use of a particular sound while editing.  We captured the sound of a little boy trying to sound like a cougar, but when I put it in the mix with the sounds of the bookstore, it just got confused and sounds like a mistake.  I think it adds to the cacophonic experience of being in the bookstore with a lot of people who you only catch snippits of conversation from, but I can see why someone would be confused by it.
The sounds used are a combination of sounds Tanner and I collected together, and sounds that I had recorded from past devotionals and convocations that I had access to due to my job as an audio technician for BYU.  I was grateful for this access as the vision we had in the beginning wouldn't have come to light without them.