Film Reflection 10

March 16 2009

Today, my group and I worked very hard on completing our comic strip sounds as well as putting them in the right places (editing). We split the group in two like last lesson so that it could improve our time management, getting more things done in a shorter period of time. We were informed that the "How to be a sound designer" project was due on Thursday. Clare and I were in charge of recording the sounds, as well as editing them. Benny and Kevin were in charge of recording the documentary and editing it as well. Clare and I discuss thoroughly about which sounds we needed improving, because even though some sounds were re-recorded, they still did not fit with the comic strip; the background noise was either too loud or the sound didn't match the comics. We prepared the equipment, since today we did not need to record the documentary anymore because we filmed all the footage needed already, Kevin didn't come with us to record sounds, instead he helped Benny edit the documentary on Final Cut Pro. Once we got all the equipment, Clare and I went straight down to the carpark and collected many pieces are large rocks and prepared to record the foley. This time, the sound sounded a lot more realistic than before, though there were still a little sound of air conditioners in the background. Afterwards, we went straight back up to edit all the footage, including the sounds recorded last lesson (including dialogue, narration). First, we captured everything, ranging from todays recordings and the ones from last lesson. Clare was researching on foley to find out if there were any ways to improve the "effect" of the atmosphere in the comic strip. We learnt that silence can be a powerful sound tool and that sound effects helped create dramatic meaning to the scenes. There were many foley and sound recording methods that we found, though because we needed to finish the project as soon as possible, we couldn't re-record the sounds for improvement. We edited and made many changes to the comic strip, many sounds were not placed in the right places, and the newly captured sounds were mostly placed in the right places. Though as we rewatched the whole thing to see what we got, I figured out that the volume of the foley did not match the image. For instance, a cart moving away. This sound should decrease gradually as the cart gets farther away, though we had trouble changing the volume, and we plan to do that next lesson. Overall, today was a very useful lesson, we worked very hard in order to get things done by thursday, and fortunately we are almost done, we only need to work on the volume, and we are missing a sound of birds wings flapping. We plan to get everything done during lunch breaks and recesses.