medieval battle sound design

[EmperorLeo]

Hey guys, I was hoping to ask a favor from all you who happen upon this thread. I'm currently at college, tasked with a project to "make" a medieval battle scene with just sounds. There's no movie component to it, so there's a lot of freedom there, but I'm missing things to recreate the sound of soldiers actually walking in armor and the battle scene itself. After midterms the last week, I'm pretty taxed on ideas, so I'm really grasping at straws to try to recreate good sounds of men walking in chain/plate mail and men actually fighting in the armor. I've tried a few different things, such as a hammer on a thunder sheet (4 feet by 4 feet sheet of metal used as a replacement for thunder) and scaled it back to simpler things like cans clanking together, but nothing I come up with seems to work effective as the real thing. I'm a bit worried that I'll have to find some real plate mail and record someone actually walking in that (i'm really hoping it doesn't come to that, because that'd be impossible to find).

Any ideas, even if you think they're insane is worth a shot in my book because I've spent multiple hours recording, searching for the right sound but failing to find the right one. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, and when this is finished, I've full intention of posting it to a link for you guys to watch if you're interested in listening that is.

[LocoColt04]

I've got a friend who runs special effects for one of the top haunted houses in the nation - I'll run this question by him and see if he has any suggestions for you!

[EmperorLeo]

So I wanted to give an update on this. After about a week of kicking ideas around, I discovered that a dog chain works excellent as chainmail. I don't have anything to imitate plate mail, however; I discussed this with my instructor and he told me, "Go watch Lord of the Rings." After a marathon, I realized you only hear the people moving in platemail when its not a battle and because I'm designing a battle, this is quite the easy fix/work around. Thanks Loco for trying to help! If you do hear about any ideas, don't be shy - shoot them out and I'll try to record them to see how they sound!

[midgetbob]

a bunch of small chains... keep them kinda tight, not enough that they can't hit each other, but not so they're just dangling. that'll (potentially) give you a walking sound of chain mail. Other than that... armor was fairly rare in the medieval world. it was expensive. Most people wore leather or nothing, so any creaking leather would suffice.

most of the battle noise should come from screams and thuds. and twangs of bowstrings.

[EmperorLeo]

While you may be right about platemail being rare, this is suppose to be placed to a movie, so exaggeration is key. What I ended doing was taking some tin cans and splitting them down the middle and through the use of EQ, pitch shift, and laying, managed to come up with something that does the job fairly well. Through the virtue of weapons, it's much more of a bonus to have the sound during the battle, but pre-battle? It was vital. It added a much more realistic sound to the horse moving around. I'm very grateful for both of you for helping me.