Sonic Design - Project 3: Audio Storytelling

11.11.2025 - 30.11.2025 (Week 8 - Week 10)
Vanessa Kei Kurniadi / 0360525
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Sonic Design - Project 3: Audio Storytelling

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PROJECT 3 - Audio Storytelling

In this project, we were tasked with creating a voiceover for a story, whether a book or a movie, and adding the necessary sound effects to support it. We don't have to constantly put the sounds. Just enough to make the story more immersive. Some musics are allowed but not used throughout the whole audio, and to make sure that the music doesn't overpower the rest of the important sounds.

1. CHOOSING A STORY

For this project, I decided to take the first pages of the story "The Ugly Duckling" from archive.org (a free site, but a login is required). The reason for choosing it is that I can imagine that the amount of sounds I can add based on the story narrative would be balanced enough, not too much, and not too quiet.

Fig. 1.1 The Ugly Duckling story from archive.org

BOOK LINK:
https://archive.org/details/uglyducklingreto00ande/page/10/mode/2up

2. MAKING VOICE OVER

It took me several tries to get the voice-over correctly. I was paying attention to the details, such as the consistency of the volume that I'm making, whether or not the words are spoken clearly, and whether my intonation fits the overall feel of the specific scenes of the story. To put it simply, I was trying my best attempt at making a professional voice-over for an audiobook.

My first version:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x4kiT8Se_MvXqIDMQnGVymxKKudCT5AK/view?usp=drive_link

This version was used as my practice file when Mr Razif was explaining how to produce a nice recording using phone and pillow fort, as well as the post-production phase, where we can clean out the sound in Adobe Audition.

Mr Razif noted that for the dialogues, I can just make the voices come from different sides to create a stronger feeling of someone talking and not the narrative. He also noted that the recording I made still sounded a bit muddy, which I assume was the result of over-filtering it in Audition. As for me, I still feel like I could do better with the voice-over, so I proceed with another attempt.

My second version (After multiple edits and retakes):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SB1SyZZB2F6ZMIMb_ehX_G9pDZn8SBxn/view?usp=drive_link

When I am finally satisfied with the voice-over, I head over to Adobe Audition to refine the audio. I increased the dB until it was loud enough, cleaned up the white noise using Capture noise print and Noise reduction, cleaned out voicewave spikes and other leftover small noises using Autogate and Compressor, and used DeEsser to reduce the "s" noise (although I genuinely don't really hear much difference).

As a result, the final soundwave looks more even and clean. The overall noise is also kept as clear as possible.

Fig. 2.1 Refining the voice-over soundwave

3. ADDING SOUND EFFECTS
When the base voice-over is done, I can finally start to look for suitable sound effects to go along with the voice-overs. I managed to find the suitable ones from either freesound.org or YouTube. I set up the sounds where necessary and modified the volumes.

I also used the pitch shifter on the dialogues to make it seem more like different characters talking. For this purpose, I created a track for each character and put a different pitch shift level on each of them. I also made sure that I changed the voice direction (blue line on the track) to make it feel more like hearing someone speaking.

Fig. 3.1 My mix tracks

  

Fig. 3.2 Different pitch shifts for different characters' dialogues

I showed my progress to Sir Razif in week 10, and he said that the overall voice is clearer, and the sounds are already good enough. I just need to add music for some parts of the soundtrack to give a better feeling and ambience to the story.

So for this, I got some copyright-free music from YouTube and added it to the track where I deemed suitable.

Fig. 3.3 Added music to the audio mix

I asked Mr Razif to check once again, and he said that overall it should already be good to go. So I decided to use this as the final version.

MUSIC LIST:

Happy calm music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGEVdHZvf9c&list=PL7pkSK1xbGD7VAapOtthyOYYLCC1VI0Oe&index=2

Weird situation music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2bctIhJ1j4&list=PL3d8jn6c109ysy0yj69tyhpBYKgnoVdVg

First swim music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoPfCriKrcY&list=PL3d8jn6c109ysy0yj69tyhpBYKgnoVdVg&index=9

Tension music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWfvYW9Qlzk&list=PLyuakwzSUr6AJyvaPsd3iiI-mxjCPnXHV&index=1

nature sound
https://freesound.org/people/Garuda1982/sounds/759738/

egg cracking noise
https://freesound.org/people/krb21/sounds/118608/

duckling noise
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ttPe7fjTBi0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq5vW43cl98

sighing sound
https://freesound.org/people/ForTheHorde68/sounds/407360/

river sound
https://freesound.org/people/dibko/sounds/702250/

Lake sound
https://freesound.org/people/mcmikai/sounds/532179/

Water Splash
https://freesound.org/people/Garuda1982/sounds/540886/

Ducks noise
https://freesound.org/people/Tomlija/sounds/109490/

4. CREATING THE AUDIOBOOK

Now that the audio is ready to go, I proceeded to take a screen recording of me flipping the book briefly (not with proper timing, I just want to get the book flipping part) for the visual. I imported the video to Premiere Pro, where I cropped all the unnecessary parts of the screen, and cut and stretched the parts of the recording so the book will flip on time along with the audio.

But while I was adding the video, I noticed that I should add the flipping page noise as well, in which I took a sound effect from YouTube and just added it in Premiere Pro, because I don't think I need to edit too much of the audio anyway.

Lastly, I added "To be Continued..." text and also mini credits to make it seem like a proper audiobook video.

Fig. 4.1 Making the audiobook video on Premiere Pro

Flipping page noise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9lky-djA7w

Final Result

Fig. 6.1 The Ugly Duckling Audiobook Final Result

FEEDBACK

Week 9

- Select white noise, Effect > Noise Reduction > Capture Noise Print

- Select all noise, Effect > Noise Reduction > Noise Reduction (Process)

- Use Effect > Amplitude > Dynamic, use Autogate and Compressor to remove spikes and breathing noise

- Use Parametric Equaliser to refine further

- Use Deesser to slightly suppress the "S" noise

- Lastly, use Hard Limiter to make sure there is no clipping

- The audio effect can be used in the effect rack. If used directly in the audio wave, it will be applied immediately.

- The voiceover sounds a bit muddy.

Week 10

- The voiceover is already done nicely

- It's still too quiet, the range should be -9 to -12 dB

- Can add some music to the background. Doesn't have to be loud; can make it bare minimum, but at least it's there.

- Overall, the progress is already good.