12%, With Only Sound Effects

The prompt

So, I chose a scene for this project that could not be more difficult to recreate. I love movies, so I was drawn to the prompt. My favorite scene in any movie ever is the “12% Scene” from the 2014 film Guardians of the Galaxy (if you’ve seen the movie you know which one I’m talking about). The issue is, it is five characters talking. There’s no action, there’s barely any movement. So how do I translate that to sound effects?

The first step was to turn the voices into sound effects. I tried to match the rhythm of the voices with the percussive instruments I had. For Rocket’s voice, I scratched and tapped my desk, mostly because I could sustain it for the laugh. For Star-Lord’s, I scratched a tape dispenser I have that’s shaped like a hedgehog because it was easy to hear and I could control volume. For Drax, I knocked on a plastic drawer to get the low pitch. For Groot, I tapped and rubbed the pins from a now delofted bed together because I could sustain it and change the pitch (that’s mostly how Groot communicates). For Gamora, I tapped a flower pot to get the higher pitch of her voice. I recorded all the voices on Audacity and filtered out the sound of the air conditioner.

While there’s not a lot of movement in the scene, there is some. The fact that the characters stand up is important, so I recorded moving my chair to signify that. But yeah, a different scene would have been easier.