Princess Mononoke Soundtrack Evaluation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWTbZZB3Jc8

       When planning how we were going to record the foley sounds for Princess Mononoke, we thought that we'd be able to easily produce most of the sounds ourselves. However, this proved to be more difficult than we first thought, as certain sounds we recorded (specifically the horse whinnies) sounded unrealistic and so we decided to use sound fx from online sources such as sounddogs.com. The only sound fx we downloaded were the horse whinnies and some arrow/ bow sounds (we couldn't find an appropriate prop to make a similar noise). Originally, we had a few more sounds that we planned to make (such as armour clinking and ambient birds), but when it came to assembling the video with the sounds, we decided that less is more. We ended up using near enough 20 different sounds, combining certain sounds together (there were 3 or 4 hooves sound fx that are all overlapping).
       When recording the sounds, it was sometimes hard to find a quiet place and so some sounds were unusable due to background noise. However, in some circumstances this couldn't be helped. For example, we needed some hoof noises in the dirt outside. Obviously, we couldn't bring dirt inside to a quiet room, so we just had to hope that no one was outside at the time and that the wind wasn't too strong. Luckily, we succeeded in getting these sounds. Most sounds were pretty simple to record. We mostly used the back stair well to record these as everyone uses the atrium stairs as opposed to the back stairs. We used props such as rings and keys for the clink of the bridle and the swipe of the sword.
       The editing process was the longest, as it took a while to establish what sounds needed to be where and what sounded realistic. We started from the hooves and gradually built the main and ambient sounds, adding things like the screams and the weaponry noises last.
        Overall, I'd say that the quality of our final piece is rather high, considering that we had to use what we had on us at the time as props. We managed to record most of the sounds needed for our piece and any we downloaded were from royalty free sources (sounddogs, pond5 and thesoundbible). We probably could've added more sounds, such as when the pot is knocked over and the man is knocked down, there could've been a louder  thud sound and some yells could've been added in. The quality of some of the downloaded arrow sound fx was poor, but we couldn't find any other fx that were royalty free and suitable for the clip. If we were to do it again, we would try to create all of the sounds ourselves, by bringing in props from home that may be suitable.