Cinematography, Camera, Video Editing: Maurice Goldmann [https://mauricegoldmann.de]
Location Sound, Field Recording, Sound Design: Sebastian Hage [https://sebastianhage.de]
Music: Maurice Goldmann & Sebastian Hage
The sensors are a pair of Lite2Sound PX v1.5, built from DIY kits. These are available from rarewaves.net.
We asked Sebastian Hage to describe the audio production techniques used in the Nightwalk soundtrack:
“The recording and filming session took place in Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany on one evening in July 2024. We recorded with a Zoom F3 field recorder at 192 kHz sample rate, because the sensors often pick up something above 20 kHz that sounds interesting when pitch shifted down.
For composing the music, we used Lite2Sound recordings inside a spectral and granular synthesizer (Padshop) within Cubase Pro. We also layered many tonal Lite2Sound recordings from the recording session as a sort of musical fundament.
We used Spectralayers and iZotope RX for separating different textures and elements of a single Lite2Sound recording.
The sounds of the different lights and objects prominently featured in this short film (displays, led-boards, car lights, etc.) were slightly pitch shifted up or down, to match the key of the music, but otherwise stayed authentic.
The bigger sound objects were created by layering multiple recordings from the same location: The Ferris wheel for example is a mix of many different single light source recordings captured from the location in the scene.
The distances between the sources and sensors varies. At locations with lots of light sources (tall fairground ride or carousel) we got good results from a distance of 5-10 meters for the general ambience and after that getting closer to around 1-2 m for recording specific light sources. At the LED pillar (2:05), the sensors were at a distance of 10-30 cm to isolate this specific sound and to get a bit more stereo spread through a greater recording angle. The Ferris wheel in the end was only possible by recording and layering different single light sources at this location with a distance of around 50 cm to 3m.
One limitation we encountered was in locations with a lot of different light sources or stray light: You have to figure out how to only record the light source of interest and separate it from the other sounds picked up by the sensors, as it is not always possible to get as close as possible to a dedicated light source.
I’ve always wanted to try out if I could focus the light directly from the front with a lens and somewhat suppress the light-spill from the sides.”
For DIY instructions to build a simple field recording case for Lite2Sound PX stereo pair, visit the maker’s blog: https://sebastianhage.de/lite2sound-case/