Jack-in-the-Mug: An interface to assist in the production of Foley sound effects
Sousa, Francisco Azevedo Gomes de Almeida e
MSc Thesis · 2020 · University of Coimbra
Supervisors: Fernando Amílcar Bandeira Cardoso, Tiago José dos Santos Martins da Cruz
Abstract
During the observation of a movie or other audiovisual media, the image stands out more than the sound, but the sound contains details that cannot be transmitted by the image. Sound gives relevant information on off-screen actions and has the capability to immerse the audience in the scene’s atmosphere. The necessity of having a good sound quality is respected and appreciated by the film industry, being sound professionals recognized through various awards. The sounds recorded while a movie scene is being filmed are rarely present in the final montage. Instead, the sounds present in a movie, such as the characters sounds and the environment sounds, are created and composed by professionals through various techniques. One of the most predominant techniques is called Foley, homonym to one of the first practitioners - Jack Foley. The method consists on the recreation and synchronization of sounds with visual assistance of the scene by specialized artists in an audio production studio. The artists use a broad collection of props to recreate the intended sound. Jack-in-the-Mug is an interactive physical interface to support the recreation and synchronization of sound effects in a scene of a movie, an animation in a video game or other purposes in the audiovisual media context. The interface’s objective is to facilitate the production of Foley sound effects by allowing the user to generate different sounds with a single object and by emulating the conventional method with the different props. The present dissertation reports the conceptualization, implementation and experimentation of this interface for Foley sound production.