Category: Research

During the first few weeks of having my Roland, binaural microphones I have had a chance to experiment with them and experience what they are good at and also experience the problems that can come with recording binaurally.

One of the immediate problems that I encountered is wind noise is very noticeable even with the pop-shields placed over the headphones. I think this is mainly due to the fact that the microphones have to be placed in the ears so they are always quite high in the air (around 6ft).

The microphones are surprisingly sensitive which is both good and bad, on one hand it allows you to get the most from a recording as it can give you a real experience of that place, however it will pick up sounds that are quite far away or the sound of birds, which I don’t really want when trying to create a gloomy atmosphere.

As I am using in ear microphones as opposed to a static, fake head with mounted microphones, recording narration/voice-over can prove difficult/awkward as I either have to jerry-rig a fake head to simulate the spacing of a head or I have to ask a friend to wear the microphones whilst I do the speaking to them. I attempted to record voice-over with the microphones in my ears but the result was not good and you could hear every movement of my head and mouth.

I think the main goal to try and get the best binaural recording is to wait for the weather to be fairly mild and the wind to be low and also try and find the quietest times of the day to do the recording. And when it comes to recording the voice-over, I will likely stick to recording in either mono or stereo.

To begin with, the radio drama is not scary at all, it is full of exposition to explain to you who the characters are. However, once they begin doing the experiments to find ghosts, it begins to get rather uncomfortable, the low hertz frequencies and the recordings they do, really do start having an effect. The way that the story is told is similar to what you would see from a drama on TV, it cuts between different scenes and it is fairly obvious when it does so. The speech is recorded binaurally and gives it a real space and at times brings you incredibly close to an actors dialogue, which only adds to the tension.

Some notable points of the show:

At around the 35 minute mark, they have the female actor speaking very close to the microphones which is then cut off by a horrifying scream which is terrifying and incredibly affective at scaring you.

Multiple times throughout the piece, when they perform experiments, the way that they use oscillating frequencies is unnerving and has quite a visceral effect.

Around the 50 Minute mark, the scream that you are used to hearing is no longer heard when you expect it and what it is replaced by isn’t necessarily scary but the sudden subverting of your expectations is what scares you.

Fright Night – The Stone Tape, 00:00 30/10/2016, BBC Radio 4 Extra, 60 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/0B0512FC

As initial research for my horror story based in Lincoln, I searched the internet for the ghost stories and myths associated with the area around the cathedral/castle in lincoln. I ended up finding a blog made by some previous students of the university going through some of the major ghost stories based in lincoln and gathered information from each of their articles. *1

I got the basic information from around 8 different ghost stories, the majority of which are situated right between the castle and cathedral. I did this research mainly to get an idea of what sort of things I could put in the story that I am writing for this piece as well as what sounds I am going to have to recreate to accompany the piece, for example, there is a story about a horseman charging towards the castle, So it is likely I will need to recreate the sound of horse hooves in this piece. It is also likely that the sound of ghosts will be present in the piece fairly often, due to them coming up in every story and all around that area of Lincoln that I will be recording.

*1 https://hauntedhistoryoflincolnshire.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/about/

There are many things that can make horror work well. As I am focussing on audio only and have no visual accompaniment, I can’t show the listener a scary image, so I must focus on making the story scary as well as adding scary sound effects and music. But there are many things I can take from horror movies and other mediums and apply to my piece.

One of the key concepts that I can take away from horror is the idea of tension and suspense.*1 Although I am creating short pieces (1.5 minutes), It is still possible to create tension within a short space of time through the narration and with background music slowly changing or gaining in volume. Also as a full set, I can change the pacing of the pieces to slowly add to the tension, culminating in the final piece.

There are common themes within horror movies that revolve around the speech/narration that I can take away and work into my story writing/telling. *2 These themes tend to involve the supernatural or a death in some way, which is something that will already be part of the stories as it is involved in the source material I took inspiration from. Plus, for the people that go to each of the areas and listen to the pieces, it adds a layer of creepiness, especially if experienced during the night.

In some horror media (usually lower quality movies) there are a few tropes that appear to scare people, the main one that I am tempted to put in one of my pieces is jumpscares. The basic way that I could do this is to just add a loud sharp noise that the listener wouldn’t expect. However, it may be a little too cliche and cheesy.

*1 http://www.fictionfactor.com/guests/scary.html

*2 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201410/the-top-ten-things-make-horror-movies-scary