EDITING: Soundtrack Pro

I started by first creating the atmos for the basement of the scene by finding a basement tone atmos off of the network and setting it as my basis. The soundclip itself was a little too heavy but it was the only one on the network that I felt gave the sense that it was recorded in a echoing cellar so I lowered the volume of the clip right down so it was just there in the background. 

At the beginning of the scene when the alien probe comes through the hole in the roof, there are raindrop dripping through the roof. I got two rain dripping sounds off of the network, one with continuously heavy dripping, like the drips pictured on screen and the other just single drips falling and echoing onto the floor, making it seem like they are falling in a cellar. I put them both playing continuously through the scene, the heaving dripping very loud at first to signify the water dripping from the hole but when the camera moves away from that, I set them very low in the mix so they only be faintly heard. The single drips I played at a medium level all the way through because I thought they were a little flair that helped you to believe that they were in a trashed cellar. I also made one of the drips quite loud for when the alien turns his head at 0:50 as an almost trigger for the alien turning its head as well as the man and the girls shuffling. 

The volume gently lowers as we get further away from the dripping hole in the roof.

The drips get louder as the alien goes back through the hole to create a sense of space.

I then began with editing the footsteps and putting them into the mix. Although I had been watching the video while recording the footsteps, it was hard to record them exactly in time with the video so I had to heavily edit the footsteps so they sounded realistic. I matched every step they took to an step I had recorded and also used other footsteps for the other man who is hiding with them in the basement. 
I used a small scuff of the foot I had recorded on the concrete for the scene at 0:50 where the man and the girl have to duck so that the alien won't see them. I thought that putting a small noise in the mix would be the reason that triggers the alien's cause for turning its head and investigating where they are stood. 
I put reverb on all of the footsteps, upping the wet of the soundtracks giving them an echoing effect so it sounded like they were running around in a basement. 

This shows the amount of chopping I had to do to the footsteps, the volume I used to lower the sound as they walks away from camera and the EQ to make it sound like she is is in cellar.

For the people running around the basement, I realised that when I recorded the footsteps, I hadn't thought about their clothes making a sound around when they moved. Luckily, I had recorded cloth in the protools studio when I worked on the Lost in Translation clip so I edited in the material sound, quite low in the mix, so that when they moved, so did their clothes. Although it was a small factor in the mix, it did make a difference and made the sound more realistic. 

This screenshot shows how low I had to have the material in the mix as it wasn't overly obviously and as the recording had been originally quite loud, I decreased the gain on Compressor so it wasn't overbearing.

For the breathing, as I had took many takes, I didn't really have to edit or cut out the breaths at all. However, as the girl is a very little girl, I felt that my breaths weren't pitched high enough to sound realistic so I used the pitch effect and used Pitch Shifter II and upped the semi-tones for a higher pitched version of the sound so it then sounded like a little girl breathing. I added in the breath for the man very low in the mix for the scene when they are hiding behind the mirror because I felt that if the volume was too high, it wouldn't be realistic as they are trying to be quiet to hide from the alien. 

This shot shows the Pitch Shifter II and how I used it to increase the pitch so she sounded younger and how I increased and decreased the volume when she came in and out of shot.

For the rat scurrying across the floor, I used the rat feet foley I had recorded at a very low volume with some distortion added to it. I decided that I wanted to have a rat squeaking sound because this coupled with the rat's movement, I felt, would draw the alien away and also it was a nice little effect in the mix. However, I couldn't find anything on the network that I couldn't use for a rat squeaking so I used a free sound I found online of baby chicks chirping and then edited it by pitch shifting it up to sound like a rat squeaking. 

The internet page where I found the sound.

I increased the pitch in Pitch Shifter II so the rat's squeak sounded more high-pitched.

For the alien shutting its metal visor down, I didn't have a sound for so I looked online on freesounds.com and found a metal hubcap rolling on the floor then falling and used this for the metal sound of its visors clamping together but quite low in the mix.

The internet page where I found the sound.

For the mirror sequence, I decided to only use the sound of the mirror being put down that I had recorded instead of using the scraping of the mirror being moved around as well. I did this because I felt that the people moving the mirror wouldn't want to make any sound to attract the probe to them so I just used the sound of the mirror being put down and added a little reverb to it so it had an echo to it, as it is a heavy object in a cellar. 

Here I added a little reverb to the mirror but upped the dry so it sounded like it was actually being put down it front of the camera and not echoing heavily throughout the scene because it wouldn't in real life.

For the part where the alien's eye focuses on the girls shoe, I used an actual camera shutter sound of zooming into something because even though the probe appears to be futuristic, I felt that the zooming sound was still electronic enough sounding to use for the alien. I added some reverb to it though to make it sound more threatening and lowered the frequency with a Low Pass Filter as the original sound was brassy.

I lowered the frequency because the original sound sounded a lot harsher and brassy and also put reverb on so that the metal echos a little when the metal lids close.

For the alien sound, I bounced the track I had made in Logic and then put it in the Soundtrack Pro project. However, the panning noise and the volume I had edited in Logic sounded much more different in Soundtrack Pro and was hardly noticeable so I had to re-do the entire panning and volume in the mix. However, this factor made it easier for it to correspond with the other sounds in the mix. 
The alien sound itself, I felt although with its panning and volume changes to make it sound like it was moving, felt like it was missing something more to give it that sense of space. I tried very quickly at the end of the edit to try and add something to the project in logic that made it sound better but I couldn't find the right kind of sound and then I ran out of time to really edit it again which was unfortunate. 

This shot shows how I panned the drone sound for when the machine moves around the cellar and used volume to give it a sense of space, depending on how close it is to the camera or to the humans trying to hide from it.

However, overall, I enjoyed the edit and making and finding foley sounds to use and manipulate.