MMS 172 Assignment 3: Project Output

When I first found out about the project assignment, I knew that I really wanted to do an audio drama. But not the typical audio drama with multiple actors, but a POV audio drama—an immersive storytelling where the listener is a character in the story to whom the sole speaker in the drama is talking to. The inspiration came from my interest in watching anime of the English subbed variety, particularly the voice acting aspect. I started watching, or rather listening, to POV audio dramas on YouTube that highlights this aspect. And before long, I wanted to create one of my own. So for this project, I did just that.

What I planned to make was a POV audio drama that takes place in a fantasy setting, specifically the hero and the demon lord setting which is a popular genre in anime and manga. I always was a sucker for the fantastical and the supernatural, so choosing the genre for my drama was an easy decision. Although, deciding the mood and the drama's direction was something that I had placed more thought into. From the start, I knew that I wanted it to be an encounter of the hero and the demon lord. And what encounter between these two forces of good and evil has the most tension and drama? Their final battle of course. And so, I decided that the story would feature the scene of the hero and demon lord's most significant battle with the victor being the last one standing.

With the idea and direction for the story formulated, I quickly began writing the script—the backbone for this project where the sound design and SFX will be based on. At this point, I knew how I wanted the drama to end, but I have no concrete plan on how it would get there. But I just kept writing and let the words flow as I type until a story is formed and I filled in the gaps between the beginning and end, and somehow, it turned out quite interesting. 

While I was writing the script, I also added notes about what sound effects I want for that particular moment or dialogue. This is incredibly helpful because I was able to see and imagine the entirety of my project and how the final output would sound like. It also helped me to figure out what effects I can record on my own—foley sound—and what effects would be impossible to and require me to import from a royalty-free source. Below, with the exception of vocals,  you can see a list of all the audio I used in the project:

Recording Foley sounds was a process that I had the most fun doing. I once watched a video about Foley. Back then, I had no idea what it was and even more so that it even exists. Like, are you telling me that the sounds I hear in movies are not actually the sounds that was in the movie itself? The creepy zombie noises are actually just lettuce and a hand slapping mayonnaise? My mind was boggled, I was impressed. So having the chance to make Foley my self got me really excited, though it has its own set of challenges.

Initially my plan was to record on my laptop, directly in Audacity—a digital audio workstation of my choice—with iFKOO RK MM1 microphone that I borrowed from a friend. While this was the only microphone I had available, it being a cardioid microphone with it's polar pattern worked well with the type of output I'm going for since it minimizes background noise and was good for isolating the main sound.

The problem I had was with the microphone's connection to my laptop. When I started recording, the audio sounded off, like I was recording underwater. At first, I couldn't figure out why. I thought maybe it was a mistake on my part because that was the first time I'm using Audacity. After trying it again and again, watching tutorials and whatnot and getting frustrated with myself, I finally figured out why. It was plugged into my laptop but the audio was recording not on the cardioid external mic, but on my laptop's built-in mic. After figuring that out, I searched why this was happening and found out that it was an issue of compatibility. Simply put, my laptop was recognizing the mic as an output device instead of an input, and I needed to have an adapter to solve it—something that I did not have nor can afford. And so, with a change in plans, I ended up using my phone with the mic instead and it worked wonderfully. The audio sounded clear and I was able to finish getting most of my Foley sounds that day. My hurdles didn't end there but that would be for later.

The first thing I recorded was the door opening. For this, I used that one specific door in my friend's house that is both heavy and creaky and gives that satisfyingly eerie door opening sound—like entering a haunted house, or in this case, the castle of the evil lord. I was a bit worried with this one because I can't actually apply acoustic treatment around a door that is between a balcony and the indoors, but I figured it wouldn't matter anyway since the scene that door sound is for is when the hero pushes open the entrance of the castle—a transition from an open space to a closed one. The effect would fit just right for that moment.

The next thing I went to record are the footsteps for both the hero and demon lord. I wanted to create a clear distinction for these so that the listeners would be able to tell who the one walking is, although I'm not sure if I was successful in doing that in the end. Since the hero is supposed to be wearing heavy armor, I used heavy shoes for the footsteps. I wanted to produce that walking in stone floor effect so I wore the shoes and walked in them on hard tiles. My recording space was a small four-walled bedroom, that and the choice to utilize the tiled floor for stone effect really affected how echoey the audio was. Although I did plan to use reverberations in my drama, inside the castle where the main interaction is held, these footsteps are for the outside scene and hearing echoes in a supposedly open space would just sound off. So for this, In a very silly image, I surrounded my walking—stepping in place—space in blanket to lessen the reflection. In imitating the armor sounds, I used a pair of tongs and a steel spatula, simultaneously recording it along with the heavy footsteps. This resulted, in my opinion, a very close-sounding maybe realistic person walking in heavy armor. 

Next in queue was the dirt sound effect. Why is there dirt you ask? Well that is because even though the floor is stone, there should be dirt here and there since it is outside. You know, weathering. Anyways, for that I used the closest material I have in the house to make dirt sounds. And it is not dirt, it's uncooked rice. I used the same blanket setup from before and just started softly punching? kneading? the rice in time with the footsteps recording. I'm planning to overlay these two in the audio mixing phase.

The next one I worked on was the demon lord footsteps. I used a heeled shoe for this and applied the same process as with the hero's footsteps. Although I expressed my motive of having a clear distinction between the characters' walking, the shoe having a heel thicker than I would like probably made this objective a bit difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, I was able to acquire a satisfactory sound. The last Foley sound I recorded was the sword sounds. I used two knives for this to create various sword effects of different actions and length.

The next set of audio I recorded after the Foley were the voice dialogue for both the hero and the demon lord. Back in the previous assignments, I expressed my interest in voice acting and my desire to voice act. So this was another process that I had the most fun in, probably even more than doing Foley. Initially, I had planned to let a friend voice the hero's track. It's a character with no lines and only has vocal expressions, like gasping and breathing, so it should not be a complicated task. However, I did end up the one voicing it as well instead because said friend got shy. 

Remembering how I looked while recording for both these characters still crack me up. I'm pretty sure my friend still has a video of me, which I will not be sharing, under a blanket and doing obnoxious anime noises for vocal expressions. Yes, I recorded these under a blanket. And yes there is probably a more effective way for me to record them but I didn't have the brain juice nor the energy to make a proper setup at the time. It still has the same effect, no? The playback sounded fine and I can just fix it later in Audacity if ever (foreshadowing).

After moving on from the hero, I recorded the demon lord's lines in the same way. Recording the dialogue for the supposed antagonist was incredibly fun for me. The kind of image that I have for this character is a charismatic queen, and since my voice is quite high-pitched, I had to lower it just a tad bit during recording so I sound less like a child and more of a young woman. I also worried that since my voice would be the main track in the audio it could wear out the listeners, so I made an effort to speak in a clear and interesting way—if I was even able to do just that. 

Now here's where another challenge came up. I recorded everything I needed to record and all is fine and dandy... Until I dropped them in Audacity and listened to them again. The voice tracks all have mouth clicks, very distracting saliva popping noises. I was still calm then, thinking that I could just use Audacity's de-clicker and it'll all be gone. Boy was I too optimistic. The de-clicker didn't do anything and I could still hear the noises every other word. I searched the internet for another way and I did find one. But it was the worst. I had to expand the waveform and look for every single click manually and use the repair tool. It still didn't work, but I kept doing it for another few hours or so hoping that if I do it enough I'll be able to successfully clean the audio. And again—boy was I too optimistic. I spent a lot of time for zero progress. I was about to just let it be because I was on the verge of pulling all my hair out, but after listening to it again, I decided to keep looking for a solution. Hearing saliva noises all throughout my project will not be a pleasant experience.

After a few more searches and screaming into the air, I did find something exactly for the problem I was having. iZotope RX 11 audio editor plugin was my savior. Specifically the mouth de-click effect. The kit was not free but there is a 10-day free trial which was enough time for me to finish everything. I quickly installed it in Audacity and set the effect for all vocal tracks, and voila! Just like magic the clicks disappeared and the the audio sounded as smooth as butter. I learned the hard way that prevention is indeed better than post-production because not every flaw can be solved with a few clicks, and it could save time and a lot of headaches as well. With that problem gone, now its only just a matter of following the script I made for all the audio tracks I have.

You might notice that I haven't mentioned anything about the imported audios yet, that is because I selected and acquired them while I was mixing. I did it this way rather than firstly importing the audios because I knew I'd be going back and forth choosing the SFX anyway. I sourced the audios in a website called Pixabay—an online platform offering a vast collection of high-quality, royalty-free digital content. This is a very useful website as I could find pretty much anything I needed there.

During the mixing phase, I spent a lot of time imagining different scenes in mind and reflecting it into my project so that the listeners can visualize the story itself. It was a straining process but regardless, it was an enjoyable experience for me. After fixing my problem with the vocal tracks, I did  not encounter anymore issues and the mixing progressed smoothly. Two instances of the mixing that I was particularly excited in doing was the scene where the demon lord is walking towards the hero/listener, as well as the teleportation scene where the listener could hear the demon lord near their left then right side—like the character is speaking directly on their ear right beside them. 

To do the first one, I had to make the volume of the footsteps and voice gradually increase and the echo gradually decrease to simulate that the distance between characters were slowly becoming closer. First thing I did was to split the voice clip into two: the transition clip where you can hear the gradual difference in distance, and the second clip where it already sounds close to the listener. Between the two, the clip I worked on was the former. 

After splitting the main clip, I also split the transition clip into three segments, each one louder than the last until it matches the volume of the second clip. However, this method would sound off as you can hear obvious the jump in volume. For this reason, I opted to use the fade in effect for a smoother transition and the amplify effect for adjustments. The three segments would prove more useful in the gradual decrease of echo. The first segment is the same amount of echo I've applied for the past voice tracks to show the expanse of the castle, the second segment would have less echo, with the last segment having even less but still noticeable. For the footsteps,  I did the exact same process and overlayed it on top of the voice clip. Now for the teleportation scene, I selected the clip that I wanted and in Audacity, panned it to the left or right. It's a simple thing that made listening to the audio more fun and interesting, not to mention immersive. 

After that, Its was all just a matter of cleaning the voice tracks and doing overall adjustments and finalization of the whole audio. For the next few days, I kept coming back and reviewing my project, doing things that I might have missed before and generally just making sure that I've done everything I can and there is to do to produce a POV audio drama that I like and can proudly show to someone. To the last possible moment, I keep listening to the audio, judging my work and really just admiring what I've produced with the limited skills and equipment that I have. 

All in all, through this project, I was able to do something that I've only just thought about doing. I was able to try voice acting and even found out and learned about the other aspects of it, like how it is produced and the thought that goes into everything involved in audio production. I had so much fun with this that I might make another audio drama soon if I get inspired. And this time, I'll know to drink water first before recording so that I can avoid the gross popping noises. I would probably still use Audacity and for a while since I am just starting to familiarize myself with it, but I will not limit myself to one DAW and explore others available to me. Who knows, I might be able to finish a whole series in the future. However for now, please take a listen to my first binaural POV audio drama I titled "The Sky as Witness".

13 Sep 2025