Video game music presentations 2 (2/5/2013)

For this session we watched the remaining presentations from out group.

Below are a number of tracks I heard that I want to listen to again.

• The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - Mysterious Woods.
• Mirror's Edge - Still Alive.
• Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation - Main Theme.
• Spyro: Year of the Dragon - Main Theme.
• Resident Evil: Outbreak - Main Theme. 
• Alan Wake - A Writer's Dream.
• Columns - Main Theme.
• Jet Set Radio - Oldies But Happies and Funky Dealer.  
• Viva Pinata - Night Theme.

They were also a number of tracks I had forgotten existed and therefore want to listen to again.

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Courage.
• Bioshock 2 - Eleanor's Lullaby. 
• Halo 3: ODST - Overture.

I also found out that a 'Ghost in the Shell' video game existed based on the important anime cult film which I will look up at some point in the future. 

We then watched a presentation called 'The Power of Sound'.

• Obviously sound can influence people greatly, especially when it uses people's imaginations to power it/bring it to life e.g. the 'War of the Worlds' radio drama which caused a huge panic in America. We even listened to the drama recording itself to hear how it sounded and how it used certain techniques to make it more grounded in reality e.g. asking a witness to get closer to the mike.
• Foley was first created by Jack Foley in 1927.
• Radio dramas need to add sounds in the background during narratives as, without them they would lack the reality of everyday sound e.g. cutlery being used when talking in a kitchen etc. 

We were then given sticky notelets and were told to close our eyes and wait for a minute, listening to the environment around us before writing down what we heard.
My list was:-

• Air conditioning. 
• Shuffling. 
• Creaking of chairs. 

We then had to put the sounds in order according to dominance and then stick them on the wall with everyone else's choices. My list above is in order of dominance.   

Once we all shared our opinions a lot of people agreed that chair creaking was the least dominant with the second being a mix between shuffling and breathing, finally the most dominant sound seemed to be the air conditioning and is important as it tells others that the scene is taking place inside a room that needs extractor fans/conditioning.

Whilst talking about our choices however, we realised that if we wanted to recreate the room in a video game then it would be wiser to focus on the sounds computers would make and students talking since the room is based in a technology college and the player would not necessarily want to hear constant fans at work.

New task for our research:
Our latest task, which will need to be completed before the end of term will consist of us creating a 200 word description for a cut scene that would be featured in the game we made a demo for. Whether it be a script, regular description or monologue is up to us. Once completed we then have to add a storyboard for it which explains the sound scape and foley used in the cut scene.