Evaluation

Evaluation

The process for making the sound for this project has been a very difficult one. I am happy with the experience I gained working with a team and having to rely on others to accomplish specific goals, however overall the organisation as a collective was poor and without a cement schedule and log, this project would of reached my initial expectations.

I began this project believing that the end piece I do complete with the group will be good enough for me to submit to film festivals, now reaching the end has shown me that this is far from the case. In this post are included some personal thoughts and experience whilst editing on Pro Tools.

First it was quite the issue trying to a project to work with. I very deeply believe that my group have severely underestimated and underappreciated the effort and time it takes to create good sound design. On that note, I received the first rough cut with less than a week to go for the final submission, which is beyond unfair. This is a result of the poor planning undergone.

I began the sound editing by creating a workflow that will be able to remain consistent. This meant gathering the files used in the rough cut and having the exported video present for me to work with directly in Pro Tools. I imported the rough and begun with reproducing the atmos I had created in the 2-minute piece as the group revered the effectiveness of the sounds.

Once duplicated and aligned correctly I added the equaliser effect on both tracks to remove unwanted frequencies in both sounds.

What I thought was a good idea was to take the audio from the video clip and equalise the sound to make the sounds of actions heard clearer for example the keyboard being tapped. I played this back to Thomas who was with me at the time and he preferred the original version of the clip so I reverted the sound back and removed the sound effect I had applied.

From the previous sound project I completed for my other module, my confidence has risen with using Pro Tools. One drawback I realised about myself from that project was that I never named sound clips, which meant I was never sure what clip what was until I played and soloed them. I have proactively started renaming clips in Pro Tools to make it easier for myself to navigate and to speed up my workflow.

After renaming the current clips and importing my next sound it was time to move onto the next scene with the lift. I have numerous of takes of lift atmos, lift motion upwards and downwards and outside of the lift sounds. I decided to use the sound that was most appropriate at this stage, which I believe to be the atmos ascending. I asked Thomas whether the lift would be ascending or descending as he was the writer of the story and he confirmed that the lift was ascending. I noticed that the cleanest bit of the lift atmos isn’t long enough, so I duplicated the track and added fade ins and outs between the duplicates to extend the sound.

The next task was to introduce the next scene of Shaun watching television and hearing the news report. I was under the impression that this was to be very similar to the 2-minute piece, which entailed a news bulletin background, a news presenter voiceover and the atmos, however speaking with Thomas. A decision was made for a different sound to be introduced, which played when the news reporter voiceover would play. Different from the 2-minute piece as well I used the other outtake of the news reporter as this is apparently the better version, however the voiceover was split of two halves as the 2nd half of the voiceover was mispronounced.

I imported the sounds Thomas had exported from Garageband as I have never used that software and splice parts of the sound to make an introduction sound and a break sound for the news report voiceover. A lot of sounds like the news reports needed fades to sound less abrupt when finishing.

I progressed with the sound project and inserted the call centre atmos that I used in the first part of the atmos.

I wanted to introduce the television being switched off sound again, because it assists with the smooth transition between the scenes.

I added the limiter effect to bump up the gain on the track and wanted to bring in the delay again to make the remote resonate.

I brought in the living room atmos to add to the project, however I wanted to bring in all the sounds to made the project realistic, this meant added everything in as quickly as possible, however other members of the team were fixated on perfecting an edit that is likely to change.

One of the biggest issues with sound editing is that the dialogue changes with each take, so that means with every time the clip changes the sound will need to change too.

One solution I thought that would help was to get the Avid project files, this was a very difficult task as TS didn’t have the project on a hard drive and had it on a computer that can be accessed by anyone, so in the end I had to get his login details to access the computer to find the project and put in on my hard drive. As I was editing with Danayet, she told me that she didn’t like the sounds for the living room scene sequence, so I changed it and inserted a news sound in between the news reporter voiceover.

I started to reconnect the sync sound for the shots we did in Shaun’s room, which sounded really good in the project.

Danayet told me that when the red light is flashing on the computer, she would the sound of a police siren to play, so I inserted the clip, because she expects the underpass scene to be inserted at this position.

Whilst editing I noticed that the sound of Shaun’s room was very empty, so I decided to add room atmos to make the space a bit clearer.

Other scenes that I started sorting sound for are the night and fight scene sound.

The sound currently used for the project seemed quite boring and timid. It does what you expect and only hear what you see, which as a good sound designer know that this isn’t the only way to sound design. I gathered the sound of a gnarly dog to connote the chase Tom does after Shaun.

I also gathered some punch and kick sounds to make Shaun hear something as he walks towards the alleyway.

I split the punches and kicks up to make it sound like a brutality the man in the alleyway is taking.

The sound of the guy getting beating up needed to be automated to pan from right to left and become gradually louder to indicate the movement of Shaun walking over.

The punches needed EQ’ing to sound more gripping. I also added reverb and delay to add to this effect.

I automated the pan and volume of the punches and kicks to reproduce the effect I created with the sound guy of the beaten up.

I need the sound of two people to struggling the emphasise the action when Shaun pushes Tom, I brought another sound I thought would be good.

The next action I wanted to emphasise is when Tom chases after Shaun, I wanted the sound a whoosh sound to dramatise speed. The edit currently shows when Tom starts running, but I continued to experiment as no picture lock was set by this point.

I was satisfied with the sound created by duplicating and slightly altering the positions of the duplicated clips. The sounds of leaves scattering, a fall needed to be heard when Shaun is pushed to the ground and Shaun heavy breathing. I recorded some sounds of myself heavy breathing, but I sourced a better alternative and began to automate the volume and pan.

The sound of the fall needed to follow.

The camera sound used for the call centre has some really good keyboard sounds picked up, so I decided to EQ the sound to make the keyboard louder and duplicated the track to allow my full manipulation of it.

I started adjusting the levels of the project to make sounds flow with each other smoother. This led to me adding reverb to the tracks for the living room scene with Shaun and his parents.

As Dannie said she didn’t like the punch, kick and dog sounds I had to remove them, however the impact they brought to the project were very significant. I decided to find alternative fight sounds to interest her and removed the sounds she didn’t like.

A few adjustments needed to be made to achieve the desired sound.

In conclusion, the aims of the project were met, because the film does convey a feeling of group from our main character Shaun. The group did stick to the initial feeling wanting to be conveying in our project and both this one and the 2 minute exercise do this. I like how the film flows and doesn’t feel abrupt and how the visuals and sounds do compliment each other to preserves this effect. I disagree with the final film being completely ungraded, I feel the group has discarded a editing tool, which would of greatly of exaggerated the final piece. I dislike how some of the sounds aren’t as natural as they could have been. If there wasn’t such a miscommunication between group members, this probably wouldn’t have led to different members constantly being at different shoots and would have solved the problem of having members take on different roles to help each other. Had the group had the motivation it has had in the last few weeks leading up to the deadline, the project would be of a quality that even revered professionals could not dismiss.

I am very grateful to my crew as there have been several times that I have been concerned about the completion of this project and the piece has in the end been complete. If to however redo this, the project will certainly be a lot better and organisation is a necessity that would not go a miss. I am also thankful to my lecturer who maintained the constructive forward thinking of the grouping including myself and for all the questions I consider when approaching the drama genre and character development.