Sound work - Location

The chosen locations for my project.
Thinking of locations was very important as we really needed to highlight these sounds as a main component to the characters paranoia.

As my idea focuses on paranoia and trying to overcome the issues within that I thought of locations that have a lot of people noise so we could get the feeling of the character feeling as if everyones talking about/laughing at them. I wanted to contrast this with a quiet safe place where the character is comfortable and how the sounds juxtapose. This will show that even though the character is uncomfortable almost everywhere, they still have a sense of place and somewhere they feel at home. Using real locations to create the sense of place will make the theme realistic.

For the paranoid state I wanted a lot of regular hustle and bustle but with some of the sounds distorted for example - people laughing would seem louder as the character thinks they're being laughed at. Because this character is rather uncomfortable I thought of locations this person would go to. I didn't think places such as nightclubs would work with this characters paranoia as they'd feel too nervous to go there anyway. I thought a good location to get the sounds I want would be a coffee shop. I went to a local coffee shop in Sheffield and thought about the sounds I could hear:
- chatting
- laughing
- people ordering drinks
- machines
- tills
-chairs moving on the floor
I thought these sounds in particular would sound good enhanced with softer background noise to emphasise the paranoia. These sounds stood out to me and made me more aware of my surroundings as usually those sounds don't have any effect on me. I tried to channel how they would make the character feel and started to think about internal monologues as the character must have a lot of feelings running through their mind. I started to feel like the laughter was aimed at me. Another location for this I thought would work was a park.
The character could be walking through the park nervously and the sounds that stand out here are:
- children laughing
- dogs barking
- fountains
- parents/people chatting
-animals.

We also went into a cathedral as it's a really peaceful and safe place to be which might make the character comfortable and find a sense of place. When we went in there, people were praying and whispering behind us which we thought was very atmospheric. Overall, these 3 locations gave us enough range of sound to use and edit to sound correct.