tabletopaudio

New Ambience: Skull Island

Added 2023-03-15 16:29:04 +0000 UTC

Edit: The music only track somehow contained ambience so it was replaced on 21 March, 2023.

Greetings Patrons,

I guess I was in the mood for old-school Hollywood adventure this week. I do love expository music in film, especially fantasy and sci-fi. I find it works particularly well as a storytelling vehicle in other mediums as well.

For Skull Island, I borrowed a small motif from James Newton Howard's 2005 King Kong film and used it as a jumping-off point to go in a different direction.

The ambience for this one was a bit of a puzzle. My idea was that the point of view would be from a boat approaching, or at anchor off the coast of the island. I ended up doing exactly this but then I thought of characters washing ashore without a boat. Then I had this idea that there were humans on the island and you could hear their drums in the distance. Well, obviously that wasn't going to work with the music playing. All of this meant that I needed a few versions - particularly of the ambience.

As this is in patron-only sneak-peek mode (live on the site next week), I've attached the mixed-version, music-only and ambience-only versions. Additionally, I did a mixed version and an ambience version without the boat. Finally, I did an ambience without the boat and added the distant drums, which I think came out pretty well and obviously wouldn't have worked with the music. Hopefully one or a combination of these will work for your story!

Thank you all, as always, for your continuing support.

Best,

Tim

https://tabletopaudio.com