stop, children, what's that sound?

Sadly, I have not posted much in recent days (weeks), and I apologize to my avid reader.  Tybe, I am sorry.  So, I would like to announce that Citibank has stolen my idea and made a commercial about a man being collected by a garbage truck while he is desperately looking for something in a garbage can.  It was not an old man, nor a saint, I do not believe, but I cannot be sure, for the television was muted at the time.  Suffice it to say, one will have to take my word for it that I did not take the idea from them, because those people at Citibank have pooped my party.  Boo-hoo.

Here is an overview of the sounds I have recorded thus far (many more to come):

Dialogue of a couple of guys from my media theory class discussing anonymity and lack thereof on the internet.

“Narration” of Saint Ted of White Plains as voiced by Ted himself – mumbles to himself, coughs of varying degrees of phlegm, and a brief description of his state of affairs leading up to the day in question.

Some space defining sounds that I have recorded include the clang of the dumpster and the squeals, beeps, whirrs and mechanical announcer of the train.

Time-defining sounds are the sounds of the garbage truck collecting, compacting, driving around, the sound that awakens me many a morning.

I think that the predictive sound that I would like to use (which I have recorded ad nauseum) is the sound of the truck kicking into gear and grinding loudly away.  I have heard that sound many many times over the last days and weeks, and I think that it will provide a nice transition with a taste for inevitability.

In terms of music, I wanted the hollowness of subway music.  I recorded a pan-pipe flutist playing My heart will go under, and other hollow hits in the subway, the sound getting closer and farther away and hidden beneath the arrival of a train.

For energy, I tried to record a super intense frenetic hip-hop type drummer in the subway, but when I hit record the microphone was off without my knowing it.  So I had to settle for a face-paced, but comparatively much more tame subway drummer to try and convey hectic, manic energy of a sick and desperate man.

In terms Figure/Ground, I have recorded the mumbling narration of Ted in part on the scene, and I have him walking near a dumpster coughing and wondering who the man is who is using the dumpster that he is trying to scout out.

Sound perspective is represented by the garbage truck, which I recorded close up and from far away.