Day 2 5-Second Sound Design - Robot Arms

Today I had a hard time finding a clip I wanted to redesign sound for. I initially thought about making a monster screaming sound, so I looked for a while through clips of those, but none of them spoke to me. I started just searching YouTube for any clip that might inspire me. I decided to look online to see what other people were doing to find clips, and one Reddit User suggested stock footage!

The following clip, I found for free on a site called Pexels.com. They have a bunch of free stock footage, and I was able to find a video of robot arms sorting chocolates. It didn't have any original audio, so I had to work from complete scratch. I first recorded a few samples of a Ryobi drill I have, then matched those up with the movements of each arm. Then I decided to fill an atmospheric sound since you can see reflections of people in the glass. I use Spitfire Labs to do that. Then, I decided there needed to be a small noise when the arms pick up, and place down the chocolate. Those are soft and subtle, but you should be able to hear it.

Lastly, I needed to make sure that all of these elements didn't sound like they were in your face, since after all, they were behind a sheet of glass. I routed the arm and placement tracks to a Bus track, where I threw on some EQ, a little compression, and slight reverb, just to try and match what I thought it should sound like. It definitely is not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with the way that it matches up! I hope you enjoy it!