For this mini project, I used a snippet of Disney Pixar’s “Partly Cloudy.” The video follows the story of clouds, who make the kittens, puppies, babies, etc for each species, and the birds who deliver those babies to their parents. The crispy animations and color palette of the short film drew me in the most. My goal for this soundtrack was to capture the light, airy, and bubbly sensation that I felt when first viewing the short. I also made sure not to listen to the original audio of the video so that I could approach the scoring with exclusively original ideas.

At the very beginning, I knew that having the perfect background song would help to capture the airy feel I wanted to achieve. I settled on a sample of Tyler, the Creator's “Where This Flower Blooms” because of how light the stringed orchestra sounds in its introduction while still maintaining a feel of forward motion. I downloaded the instrumental version of the song from Youtube and created a loop of the piano section.

After finishing the music, I began work on the delivery birds’ sounds. Most of the sounds consist of the singing and flapping wings of birds. There is also some panning on the introduction of the video when the birds are flying across the screen. After completing the sounds of the birds flying and landing on the ground, I added the sound that is made when the packages are dropped at the parents’ doorsteps. After this, I began constructing the different animal sounds. I made sure to get several different variations for each animal, which I then cut and glued together. This was done to avoid having too many repeated sounds in the video.

Although some of the sounds were sourced from freesound.org, I also wanted to include my own custom sounds in the piece. I created all of the wind and cloud sounds by cupping my hands around my microphone and gently blowing across them. I also voiced all of the clouds and a few of the animals in the short.

Overall, this project was highly enjoyable because I have always been fascinated by the scores of films and how sound effects work to add to the story of what viewers see and hear on screen.