For this module I wanted to use as many Foley sounds as possible for the different aspects of the weapon's audio design.
In this post I will be discussing a couple of the Foley sounds recorded.
I came up with different ways of recording the necessary sounds and managed to choose some that worked well.
For the bolt action mechanism of the Enfield, I decided on using a latch lock on a door. It provides a very similar sound to the actual bolt action mechanism and with some light tweaking, can sound entirely different.
It also made it easier to get a variety of bolt action sounds. This is useful as this sound will be repeated at the most 10 times when firing the weapon.
I took several raw recordings of me operating the latch lock until eventually I found the correct rhythm. Once found, I continued to use this rhythm and record as much as I could. In the editing process I then picked the best sounding attempts and began editing.
I was mainly focussing on the pitch of the sound. Due to the bolt action mechanism being made entirely of metal clashing together, the pitch had to be increased slightly in order to get the correct sound.
I also applied a low pass filter to try cut out any unwanted noise from me shuffling the lock around.
In the end I feel I created a sound that once in practise will give the illusion of a bolt action.
Another challenging Foley sound recorded was the sound of gun fire. As this sound has a lot to it, I needed a strong foundation that once edited will give a satisfying sound to the player and match the feel of the Enfield.
For a basis, I used a metal cooking tray in order to get the initial loud bang of gun fire. This was recorded similarly to the latch lock, in that I created a longer recording to gather as many attempts as possible.
This raw audio file was then taken into my editing software Reaper where I used a variety of plugins in order to get the correct sound.
First plugin used was a bass booster. This allowed me to add some punch to the weapon when the initial fire noise played.
Next I adjusted the pitch of the sound. Due to the tray being thin the noise generated was lighter in tone. I reduced certain aspects of the pitch in order to give this sound a deeper tone.
I then added a low pass filter to cut off any unwanted noise from the tray rattling.
Finally I added a very light reverb just to further affect the tone. I plan on doing all reverb via Unreal Engine 5's so it was not necessary to match the reverb to the scene.
The end result now pairs up well with the bolt action effect to give the illusion of an Enfield firing.