MDes Sound for the Moving Image School of Simulation & Visualisation

Kirstin Mclellan

Kirstin Mclellan BDes is a Masters student studying Sound for the Moving Image at Glasgow School of Art. Her passion in sound design has enabled her to create projects in 360 film – highlighting the feelings of isolation during lockdown and how anxiety can affect a person in even the most mundane environments.  Her areas of study this year have been focused on the impact of social media, how it can impact our mental health and how sound can elicit emotion in games.

Outside of university she has been involved in a number of projects; recording and creating foley and sound design in radio drama, film and computer games, as well as recording and editing voiceovers for professional companies.

Through out her studies she became keen in learning about Interactive Digital Narratives and collaborated with a small team to produce an interactive digital narrative using procedural audio and procedural sound design techniques.

Contact
K.Mclellan1@student.gsa.ac.uk
Works
Time
Trial Day
When the Rudder Snaps
To Send or Not to Send

Time

“Time” is a 360 immersive video focusing on the frustrations, anxiety and the longing to be reunited with others while caught in what becomes an overpowering confined space.  The soundscape and voice was mixed as a binaural piece, simulating the effect of a listener’s own head and ears on how sounds are perceived.  This gives a more realistic experience.

“Time” was created as a binaural audio piece:

For better listening experience use headphones 

(This piece of work is not to be used for any commercial purposes)

 

Credits

Created by and Starring Kirstin McLellan

Music belongs to Purple Music Website Music: https://www.purple-planet.com

Sounds from Soundsnap.

Sound Mixed in Reaper

Special Thanks to Simviz at GSA

Trial Day

The award winning game Trial Day is about receiving false information about the Covid pandemic.

The sound design , music and voiceover created a sense of a professional environment which subtly satirises corporate priorities.

As part of the COST-action INDICOR 2020 complexity jam, Kirstin was the sound designer, musician and vocal editor for a randomly selected group of unaffiliated, international game builders.  The team won the “Cash prize for further development” despite being the only team made up of members who had never met or worked together before.

The premise of the competition was to build a game or digital narrative, in the space of 1 week, to highlight the complexity of “too much information” in our digital world.  This game helped to shape the premise of Kirstin’s later works within her masters course.

Credits

Game Design, Narrative Design: Dimitra Mavrogonatou – Greece, Netherlands based.

Level Design, Game Design, Programming: Eren ÇAYLAK – Turkey

Sound Design, Music: Kirstin Carol Mclellan

Visual Design: Sid Chou –  Taiwan, NY based industrial designer & creative technologist.

Visual Design: Yiting Liu – Chinese, NY based creative technologist.

Special thanks

to Glenn Curtis for the epic voice over! Glenn is a Scotland based voiceover artist.

COST-action INDICOR 2020 Complexity Jam

 

To view link click youtube link bellow 

 

When the Rudder Snaps

“When the Rudder Snaps” (2020) by Jennifer Grey and Directed by Jacqueline Wilde is a work that was created at the beginning of the 2020 lockdown.  Kirstin and Jaqueline collaborated on the sound design implementation and worked remotely with highly talented professional actors.

“When the Rudder Snaps” is a fictional story about a politician who finds herself washed up on an unfamiliar shore with no papers and no passport.

The extra challenges of this piece were; how to best utilise limited resources in the recording process; how to obtain the best possible recordings and performances in far from ideal conditions; and how any flawed audio recordings could best be used.

The sound effects, voices and music were created and recorded during the first 2020 lockdown under “Stay at Home” instructions, without access to professional studios or locations.

(Not to be used for any commercial Purposes )

Credits 

Produced and presented by Script to Stage Renfrewshire.

CREW

Directed By – Jacqueline Wilde

Written By – Jennifer Grey

Sound Design and Music – Kirstin Mclellan

CAST

Theresa May – Elsa Strachan
First Interrogator and Caseworker – Elizabeth Malnar
Second Interrogator – Matteo Francesconi
Tribunal Judge – Unyimeobong Matthew

Voice over for credits – Glenn (Sim) Curtis

 

 

 

When the Rudder Snaps written by Jennifer Grey and Directed by Jacqueline Wilde

To Send or Not to Send

(The game duration is procedural and can end at different times.)

To Send or Not to Send is a 2d first person Fictional Interactive Digital narrative game which simulates a peaceful walk in a woodland environment. The player embodies a person who is friends with Brian, who suffers from anxiety.

As Brian walks in the park he will receive messages from his mobile where the player will be able to view the conversations and interact with the conversations by selecting emojis to “rate” how the conversation makes you feel.

The soundscape is generated and altered procedurally based partly upon the choices made within the game. The purpose of this game is demonstrate the possibilities of procedural sound design to emotionally impact on the player within the unity and fungus frameworks.( Caution : some abusive post shown people may find offensive )

The soundscape is generated and altered procedurally based partly upon the choices made within the game. The purpose of this game was to demonstrate the possibilities of procedural sound design demonstrate the possibilities of procedural sound design to emotionally impact the player utilising frameworks within Unity and Fungus.

Credits

AudioMixer Commands for Fungus  script  by  Sercan Altun

Programming  by Kirstin McLellan and Glenn Curtis

Animation effects by Glenn Curtis

Comments written by Marion Marlow

Visuals edited by Glenn Curtis and Kirstin McLellan

UI sounds designed by Kirstin McLellan

Game was programmed using Unity and Fungus

UI sounds designed in Ableton Live 10

Ambiences sourced from Soundsnap library’s

Special Thanks to GSA Staff at Simviz !

(If you click the quit button you need refresh the page on your browser to begin again)

 

 

To Send or Not to Send

To Send or Not to Send

Click the link to the game (this will take to an external site itch.ito)