How to Build a Transformer

On the second day of the commercial sound design, the task was to build the sound of a row of chairs transforming into a roller coaster (as I said in the previous post, this commercial is a tad outrageous).  Now, I was a fan of the Transformers cartoons as much as any other kid currently between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five years old.  But I didn’t want our transformer to borrow from the synth cheese that was so relished in the eighties.  So we set out to record a bunch of different moving parts, as many as we could think of, so that when put together, our transforming row of chairs/roller coaster would seem “realistic”.

The different velocities of all the machines we recorded had some interesting effects.  Same goes for moving the machines back and forth across the mic.

Below was the highlight of the day.  I have no idea the make or year of this beauty, but a vintage projector gave us a plethora of interesting transforming sounds.

And here is Brandon and his pal the Icon taking all of it in:

Some intense editing needs to happen first, but a transforming row of chairs/roller coaster will soon emerge.