My initial meeting with the team established what type of sound the animators were expecting from me. The film Avatar was one of the biggest benchmarks I needed to be taking influence from, especially when it came to the soundscape of the planet the animators were creating.
Christopher Boyes was the Supervising Sound Editor, Sound Designer and Sound re-recording Mixer and played a massive part in creating the sound of Pandora; the planet where Avatar is set.
‘Pandora was a rainforest 10 times over. I mean you have bioluminescent plants and fireflies and all sorts of life that was just vivid in its colorisation and it just kind of gave you a licence to be very specific with different elements. Whether it would be insects flying by or weird animal like sounds but not like any other animal you’ve heard in the background’
(SoundWorks Collection, 2016)
To start off by looking into what I heard in the rainforest of Avatar, I chose three separate scenes where the sounds of the rainforest would be different. These were:
- The first encounter in the rainforest
- Rainforst at night
- Luminous rainforest at night
I decided to use these three scenes in particular because they all had unique soundscapes and even though it was still in the same rainforest, they each had different personalities. This will come in useful when I decide what personality I want to give to the animators planet.
The first encounter in the rainforest (0:25:30)
Scene description: Exploring the jungle for the first time. Immersive, unique, new and a subtly sense of tension.
Background Sound: Generic rainforest background
Animal like sounds:
- Bird Crying
- Monkey Calling
- Insects flying
- Incests crawling
- Big animal yells
- Ominous calling
- Generic bird song/calling
- Animal type whistling
Rainforest at night (0:33:35)
Scene description: The dark side of the rainforest, scary, isolated and intimidating.
Background Sound: Generic rainforest background
Animal like sounds:
- Menacing monkey howls
- Territorial bird cries
- Taunts
- Growls from wold like creatures
Luminous rainforest at night (1:21:00)
Scene description: Romantic and enchanting 
Background sound: Subtle rainforest background and swamp like sounds
Animal like sounds:
- Frogs
- Crickets
- High pitch flocks of birds
- Bird calling
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