The final piece of four 5 minute sound design pieces created for my final university professional practice portfolio. I received 1st Class Honours for my work across all four sound design pieces.

The Incredibles is a 3D animated film about Mr Incredible (Bob) attempting to relive past days as a superhero, before they were outlawed; it’s set in the 1960s. The clip involves Bob breaking into Syndrome’s secret facility and discovering his plan, which involved a mass killing of heroes Bob knew.

Unlike previous pieces, the original score was used; I decided no external music or score would better suit the atmosphere of the scene.

In approaching this piece, I considered how the film’s art direction is based off of mid-century modernism in order to help establish the sonic direction that stylised objects should be taken in. The hovering vehicle’s (1:53) tremolating, low synthetic sound takes inspiration from 1960s science-fiction films, to represent the setting’s time period.

Throughout the piece, I took care in characterising the weight of sounds; Bob’s footsteps (1:07) are presented as light despite his bulky build, displaying his care to stay stealthy. Strong whooshes and low rumbles convey the weight of the statue as Bob manoeuvres it (2:18), emphasising his superhuman strength.

I also presented the environments with an appropriate sense of scale; the lava wall is presented with an overwhelming, bassy prominence that resounds within the room (2:10). When the wall finishes opening, a huge impact can be hear off-screen (2:39) to convey the weight of the mechanism that opens the wall; as it begins closing (2:46) a giant synth note fills the soundscape to convey the mechanism’s activation and danger to the viewers. In the interface’s room (2:55), echo and reverb were added to sounds to convey the emptiness of the setting

I approached the UI’s sounds (3:12) through considering the scene’s emotional weight. The shrill noise that plays when ‘TERMINATED’ displays (3:50) sounds cold and almost unimportant as a contrast to the intense emotional weight within the scene. I sought to sonically convey Stalin’s quote “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic” to contrast Bob’s turmoil. The room’s final light turning on (2:59) was made to sound harsh, alike thunder, to convey a dangerous aura.

Many UI sounds embody skeuomorphic ideas such as the skittering sound that plays after Bob searches 'Elastigirl’ (4:29) that presents the idea of the machine ‘searching’. All UI sounds were also made to fit the aesthetic of mid-century modernism; they are smooth or alike retro technology’s sounds, such as early cellphones.