My goal with this assignment was to gain some familiarity with Audacity. Up to this point, any work I’ve done with audio has been done inside of Adobe Premiere Pro. While I think I still prefer Premiere for my purposes, if I were to have a project where I needed a large number of layers going at the same time, Audacity would be a good option. It’s also important to note that Audacity is free whereas Premiere is not.

I’ve also done no work in the past with adding in sound effects to my work so this was a good opportunity to play with timing and levels of those sounds to make sure that they fit in well with the main audio and didn’t overpower it. The only “sound effect” I’ve used has been “bleeps” over the occasional swear word.

Most of the work I have done up to this point has been simply syncing multiple audio tracks to the same video and finding which has the best sound at different points to be sure that the viewer has the best opportunity to hear the specific things that I want them to.

My biggest regret with this project was that I was unable to find an appropriate place to insert a Wilhelm Scream. The Wilhelm Scream seems to be a staple for any audio engineer or Foley artist. It is estimated to appear in at least 225 movies and tv shows.

I don’t necessarily plan on being in a situation where I have to use Audacity again in the future however should I find myself in that scenario, I will feel much better prepared for it.

by: Ryan Miller