Sound
Video: Dave talks about our inital audio designs.
Audio experienced by the Director:
Each eye-tracking subject (director) hears the same audio. In Mike Figgis’ “Timecode” the viewer’s attention is drawn to a particular narrative by, at any one time, only playing back dialogue from one of a possible four.
In contrast we feel it is important not to influence gaze with the audio, which is easier as there is no dialogue. The audio is limited to more generic sounds where it doesn’t really affect the way the person looks. A combination of on location recordings and post edited sounds are used.
Voiceovers for the output film:
Voiceovers were written to express the thoughts and feelings of the four main characters within the film.
Individual phrases were recorded in the studio, which can then be triggered by the Max/MSP patch depending on the viewer’s gaze.
Each phrase has a given time window in which it can be triggered, if the eye gazes at the correct region within this time it will be heard, otherwise it is lost. Since each viewing experience is different, this makes the output audio unique to each director.
The original sound that was presented to the eye-tracked directors is also included in the output film.
Audio effects:
| Eye-Track Data | Audio Manipulation |
| Blink Data | Triggers a 300ms delay effect (with feedback) giving an echo effect. |
| Pupil Dilation | Controls the amount of feedback in the delay line where large pupil dilation results in more echoes heard. Also controls a high pass filter with a dynamic cut-off frequency. When pupil dilation is minimum there is little or no filtering, which compares with the maximum depth of field in photography for small apertures. |
Frying Pan (Chicken and Onion).wav Walter_Odington
Bar atmosphere - Busy.wav fogma
carEngineStartStop.wav oniwe
buttering toast.flac Corsica_S
One sound effect was sourced from the infrar.ed digital media database.
dnt_bowlliquid_04.wav Dave Thomas
For more about the Max/MSP audio design patch click on any of the links below and hit the back button to return to this site alternatively, download the full technical paper [.pdf]