Video & Sound Production: Project #1— Audio editing

12.04.2021 - 02.07.2021 (Week #3 - Week #14)

Seerat Tayyab Mukhtar Qureshi - 0345576 (BDCM)

Video & Sound Production

Project #1

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1. Lectures:

Week #3: This week our lecture was about storytelling in film and film sound. Mr. Martin told us about what a narrative is and the the differences between the story and the plot. A narrative is chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time and space. We make sense of narrative by identifying its events and linking them by causality (cause and effect), time, and space.

Story = Who & Why

Plot  =  What happened? How that happened? When & Where?

The main difference between plot & story from an audience standpoint is that all we have before us is the plot – the arrangement of material in the film as it stands. Then, we create the story in our minds on the basis of cues in the plot.

Plot segmentation: The dividing of the plot into major occurrences.

Plot segmentation should be:

Major changes within the narrative e.g. changes in action, time & space

Short and succinct with key points only

Plot segmentation should not be:

A synopsis of the film

Lengthy description 

We then looked at sound elements,

Fig 1.0: Sound elements

We also learnt about the history of foley and how foley artists create sound using various techniques.

Sound shaping:

This week Mr Martin gave us a lecture on how to create various different sound effects on Adobe Audition. 

The first thing he taught us was a phone call effect and we followed along and recreated it.

Phone call

Muffled sounds

Reverb

Sound shaping

Exercise #2

Phone call

Closet

Big Stadium

Toilet

Underground cave

Exercise #3:

Alien Voice 

Layered Explosion

Triple Punches

2. Instructions:

Module Information Booklet

3. Project #1:

In this project, we are given a silent clip and we have to add all the sound elements to it.

Fig 1.1: Our clip from the motion picture Soul

I started off by trying to find some ambience sounds effects. 

Fig 1.2: Sound effects and music 

I found some city sounds, wind, leaves swishing, footsteps, cat meows and some ethereal music to to the part where the leaf lands on Joe's hand. 

I then recorded all the dialogues on my phone using my headphone mic.

Fig 1.3 Audio recordings

I then imported the footage and all my sounds into Premiere pro and synced them up with the video.

Fig 1.4: Editing in Premiere Pro

Then I adjusted the volume and fade of the clips using the Audio Gain option. I locked all the tracks I was done with 

Fig 1.5: Locking tracks and adjusting 

After quite a bit of adjusting I was satisfied with it and I exported the video.

Fig 1.6: First cut

Mr. Martin will review it next week and then give us feedback. He said I should re upload without the music. I edited the dialogues to fit the ambience better and mimic the original movie scene.

Fig 1.7: Edited dialogue without music

Mr Martin gave me feedback on my video and I needed to change the cat footsteps sounds. It was a bit hard to find a suitable sound.

Fig 1.8: Final after feedback

4. Feedback:

Week #3: Mr. Martin went over our exercises and gave us all general feedback on our shot sizes. He said we don't need to reshoot because we will have a chance to try again in another exercise.

Week #4: Mr. martin said my dubbing was good but I shouldn't add the music just yet because it makes it hard to appreciate the dialogue. He said my other sound elements we're looking good too and I should just re upload it without the music. 

Week #13: Mr Martin gave me feedback on my exercise 1 and 2. He said that I Should find a new sound for the cat footsteps because it clearly sounds like footsteps on grass instead of cat footsteps and they don't match well.

5. Reflection:

Week #3: I thought the lecture about foley was really interesting and how they make the sounds in the movies. It's cool to see how much goes on behind the screen and how so many people are involved in making a movie come together. The exercise we have is quite interesting too but I am a bit nervous about it because it seems like mixing the sounds together is going to be a difficult process.

Week #4: I actually enjoyed the process of finding all the sounds and dubbing then compiling them into the video and to see it go from a completely silent clip to one with sound, dialogue and music. It's really interesting to learn how we can alter sound and create environments.

Week #13: The semester is almost over and almost all our projects are wrapped up. We just need to make some final changes to our exercises to make them perfect.