1. The conception of the idea for the final product.
2. The pre-production stage.
As the sound manager, my role in the pre-production was to create a list with all the sound effects needed and start research/create some. I had some good ideas at the start of the project for some sound effects when I made the list of sound effects that I would need. I thought about creating new dark background sounds to match the Film Noir genre. I had already found some gunshots on the internet and was going to look for more. I made them listen to Jeff who told me he had better ones that we could use since he already prepared for this project. For the background noises he had already made his own mix which I have to say sounded awesome. But in the end, I didn't contribute a lot other than that at this stage of the production since the list was done, background noises had all been already done by Jeffrey and already some sound effects had been done by both Jeffrey and I. Overall my contribution in this stage was rather satisfactory.
3. The production stage.
This stage was rather easy and I was in charge of holding the microphone while listening with earphones how the sound was like through the mike. If something didn't sound correct I had to tell Jeff so that we could reshoot or change the shot if the actors were too far away and nothing could be heard. during this stage, I have not been a drag to Jeffrey and the rest of the crew and handled the microphone pretty well with only minor problems that occured. My job as the sound manager in the production stage was well done.
4. The post production stage.
In the post production stage not much contribution came from me as Jeff insisted on doing almost everything and all my suggestions were rejected. So since I didn't have a lot to do, I made sure that the little I did was done right.
5. The success of the product.
The sound overall was really good exept for some parts where the dialogues went from soft to loud (its hard to notice) but other than that it was well done. No feedback about the sound were given that could improve it (yet). I won't critisize what Jeff did with the sound but instead critisize myself for not insisting on doing the work myself and letting the director do everything.
I don't deserve good grade for what I did in terms of my role but I hope to get a little credit for the little I managed to do which were done good such as a few sound effects with the phone and computer and the narration and the voice recording that was also done well which in the end didn't cause much problems to the editor.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Creation of the "Plunge" (Me as the sound manager)
18/02/09
When our roles were distributed, I was very happy to be the sound manager because it is an area I have experience in (from my Year 9 computer music classes and our last year's sound project where I did almost everything). It was very convenient to already have a script and once Julien corrected it, I already had a global idea of all the sounds I should make. Jeff who already prepared himself for this film sent me several Dystopian sound samples that he mixed using Audacity, a free software. Whilst the others were working on their parts, I made a list of all the sounds needed for our film. Jeff who is a very dedicated director gave me homework and asked me to investigate different types of mikes(microphones) and how to minimize ambience pick-up. I found though my research that the mike we should use for our outdoor shootings was the school's shotgun mike (jeff had already decided our locations which were Julien's appartment and the docks at cyberport). I found out through my research that shotgun mikes were especially used to shoot industrial videos or more film-like productions.
23/02/09 - 10/03/09
However even though it was the school's best Shotgun mike, we were still unhappy because it picked a lot of backround noises which made it sometimes difficult for the shooting outside as we had to sometimes wait for an airplane to pass or sometimes hold the mike further from the actors but at the same time block the wind from disturbing the sounds. (for example) which in the end made us loose a lot of time. Unfortunatly like I said earlier it was the school's best shotgunn mike and we had to deal with it in our own ways. It was also really annoying because it meant that I'd have to edit the sounds a lot later at school which is an area where I'm not particularly good. The shooting and Julien's house was pretty smooth. No real problems were imposed to me as a sound guy as there were almost no background noises that disturbed. As the sound guy, I did everything I could to save Jeff time and helped him in any way I could. By that I mean that I tried not to waste time and tried to do things in the right way before he asked. That way his job as a director was less tiring.
Later without even asking me, Jeff generously brought in some sound effects which he found on websites that offer free sound clips. It was very kind of him and saved me a lot of time, however I still would've prefered to have found those sounds myself. I know Jeff prefers to do a lot of things himself as he likes perfection and puts film before anything else as his priorities, but I think he should've let me at least find those sounds myself and later then agree on whether we should use those sounds or not.
In class I recorded Julien's opening narration and recorded some more "phone" sound effects. Jeff even created two ambient tracks - one for interior scenes and one for exterior scenes by tampering with various sounds and compiling them together in the free program Audacity. Because of the lack of time, Jeff wasn't able to teach me how to use this program making me rather useless for the last part of the project. Going over the film in Final Cut Pro, We noticed the background noise in scenes with conversations was different between cuts. This was very distracting (and disorienting: when checking for continuity errors, we would mute the sound); it wasn't surprising and we knew this would happen before we even shot the film because the shotgun mike picks up background noise which would be different because noise varies in between shots as footage was shot at different times. Because of this, Jeff exported the audio of the last scene and went home to edit the sound using Audacity. He made sure the dialogue audio levels stayed the same as the shotgun mike's distance from the actors varied in different shots. He minimized the background noises and added in an exterior ambient track to run in the background so that the overall audio would sound seamless in between cuts to different shots. Jeff did a great job and the sounds were really good. In the end I realized that Jeff had been more useful in my own area than me as he had already planned and prepared sounds before the project even started and did most of the complicated sound editing.
Overall I amreally disapointed with myself as the sound manager during the project and I feel like I haven't done enough. I am right now preparing myself for the future by learning by myself how to use Audicaty on the internet so that next time I will be able to edit sounds myself. In the future, I will also make sure that someone else doesn't do what I'm supposed to do before I even had the chance to do something. I know we had very little time but I think Jeff exagerated a bit by not trusting my sound manager skills and doing almost everything instead without telling me. I have now even prepared a list of website with free sound effects I could use in the future to save research time.
When our roles were distributed, I was very happy to be the sound manager because it is an area I have experience in (from my Year 9 computer music classes and our last year's sound project where I did almost everything). It was very convenient to already have a script and once Julien corrected it, I already had a global idea of all the sounds I should make. Jeff who already prepared himself for this film sent me several Dystopian sound samples that he mixed using Audacity, a free software. Whilst the others were working on their parts, I made a list of all the sounds needed for our film. Jeff who is a very dedicated director gave me homework and asked me to investigate different types of mikes(microphones) and how to minimize ambience pick-up. I found though my research that the mike we should use for our outdoor shootings was the school's shotgun mike (jeff had already decided our locations which were Julien's appartment and the docks at cyberport). I found out through my research that shotgun mikes were especially used to shoot industrial videos or more film-like productions.
23/02/09 - 10/03/09
However even though it was the school's best Shotgun mike, we were still unhappy because it picked a lot of backround noises which made it sometimes difficult for the shooting outside as we had to sometimes wait for an airplane to pass or sometimes hold the mike further from the actors but at the same time block the wind from disturbing the sounds. (for example) which in the end made us loose a lot of time. Unfortunatly like I said earlier it was the school's best shotgunn mike and we had to deal with it in our own ways. It was also really annoying because it meant that I'd have to edit the sounds a lot later at school which is an area where I'm not particularly good. The shooting and Julien's house was pretty smooth. No real problems were imposed to me as a sound guy as there were almost no background noises that disturbed. As the sound guy, I did everything I could to save Jeff time and helped him in any way I could. By that I mean that I tried not to waste time and tried to do things in the right way before he asked. That way his job as a director was less tiring.
Later without even asking me, Jeff generously brought in some sound effects which he found on websites that offer free sound clips. It was very kind of him and saved me a lot of time, however I still would've prefered to have found those sounds myself. I know Jeff prefers to do a lot of things himself as he likes perfection and puts film before anything else as his priorities, but I think he should've let me at least find those sounds myself and later then agree on whether we should use those sounds or not.
In class I recorded Julien's opening narration and recorded some more "phone" sound effects. Jeff even created two ambient tracks - one for interior scenes and one for exterior scenes by tampering with various sounds and compiling them together in the free program Audacity. Because of the lack of time, Jeff wasn't able to teach me how to use this program making me rather useless for the last part of the project. Going over the film in Final Cut Pro, We noticed the background noise in scenes with conversations was different between cuts. This was very distracting (and disorienting: when checking for continuity errors, we would mute the sound); it wasn't surprising and we knew this would happen before we even shot the film because the shotgun mike picks up background noise which would be different because noise varies in between shots as footage was shot at different times. Because of this, Jeff exported the audio of the last scene and went home to edit the sound using Audacity. He made sure the dialogue audio levels stayed the same as the shotgun mike's distance from the actors varied in different shots. He minimized the background noises and added in an exterior ambient track to run in the background so that the overall audio would sound seamless in between cuts to different shots. Jeff did a great job and the sounds were really good. In the end I realized that Jeff had been more useful in my own area than me as he had already planned and prepared sounds before the project even started and did most of the complicated sound editing.
Overall I amreally disapointed with myself as the sound manager during the project and I feel like I haven't done enough. I am right now preparing myself for the future by learning by myself how to use Audicaty on the internet so that next time I will be able to edit sounds myself. In the future, I will also make sure that someone else doesn't do what I'm supposed to do before I even had the chance to do something. I know we had very little time but I think Jeff exagerated a bit by not trusting my sound manager skills and doing almost everything instead without telling me. I have now even prepared a list of website with free sound effects I could use in the future to save research time.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Monday the 2nd of February
Today was after months of waiting our first film class of this semester. Ms. Wong began with a PowerPoint presentation including all the rules of film class and a brief outline of what we will be doing this semester in film studies. The rules are more or less the same as last year's rules so nothing new was learned there other that we won't be using a DW anymore and a blog instead. I was a bit worried at first about using a blog because I wasn't sure whether you could do everything like in a DW like put pictures but it turns out that a blog is even better that a DW because you can also post videos.
After that Ms. Wong told us to get into groups (my group: Chris, Henry, Andy and myself) and work together to complete the "Scavenger Hunt" exercise sheet she gave us which included three pairs of identical shots with different meaning. The purpose of this exercise was to recap (or learn for the newcomers) the basic camera and shooting techniques.
The first part of the exercise was to have a pair of identical shots of someone looking at a piece of paper, scrunching it into a ball, and then throwing it away. In one case, the shot had to look sharp and detailed, and in the other it had to look gritty, with a documentary feel. Because we were not really focused, we simply took two shots one with good focus and the other one without without going any further into details like the position of the camera or for example in the first shot I think we could've maybe have more focus on the person and have the background more blurry. For the second shot we could've deliberatly moved the camera a bit to enhance the documentary feel, but like i said earlier we didn't really try hard.
The second part was to have two shots which involved the use of colour; we were to use it to show first a student walking up stairs and looking up in surprised anger, and second doing the same action but looking up in surprised sadness. We weren't quite sure on how to change the colors in the camera so it took us a bit of playing with it to find out. The shots we took were only half succesful. Using the blue color to show sadness really worked however the shot that was supposed to show anger wasn't as succesful. Well the shot did have a sort of dark side to it but i don't know if it really was anger.
The third part of the exercise which was probably our most succesful one was to use lighting to show a harsh, unforgiving encounter between two people, and an upbeat, happy encounter. We shot this in two locations, one in the sun out door and one in the shade (obviously). It is really interesting to see how the lightning can change the mood.
For the last part we had to film a student typing something but it had to be like a dream. We tried to put different transparent things in front of the camera so that it would give an unclear image to make the shot "dreamy" like but it didn't work. So in the end we just filmed Chris typing but we filmed it through the camera of my Iphone, meaning that the camera was filming in the camera. We thought it was quite cool even though it didn't look like a dream at all.
After that Ms. Wong told us to get into groups (my group: Chris, Henry, Andy and myself) and work together to complete the "Scavenger Hunt" exercise sheet she gave us which included three pairs of identical shots with different meaning. The purpose of this exercise was to recap (or learn for the newcomers) the basic camera and shooting techniques.
The first part of the exercise was to have a pair of identical shots of someone looking at a piece of paper, scrunching it into a ball, and then throwing it away. In one case, the shot had to look sharp and detailed, and in the other it had to look gritty, with a documentary feel. Because we were not really focused, we simply took two shots one with good focus and the other one without without going any further into details like the position of the camera or for example in the first shot I think we could've maybe have more focus on the person and have the background more blurry. For the second shot we could've deliberatly moved the camera a bit to enhance the documentary feel, but like i said earlier we didn't really try hard.
The second part was to have two shots which involved the use of colour; we were to use it to show first a student walking up stairs and looking up in surprised anger, and second doing the same action but looking up in surprised sadness. We weren't quite sure on how to change the colors in the camera so it took us a bit of playing with it to find out. The shots we took were only half succesful. Using the blue color to show sadness really worked however the shot that was supposed to show anger wasn't as succesful. Well the shot did have a sort of dark side to it but i don't know if it really was anger.
The third part of the exercise which was probably our most succesful one was to use lighting to show a harsh, unforgiving encounter between two people, and an upbeat, happy encounter. We shot this in two locations, one in the sun out door and one in the shade (obviously). It is really interesting to see how the lightning can change the mood.
For the last part we had to film a student typing something but it had to be like a dream. We tried to put different transparent things in front of the camera so that it would give an unclear image to make the shot "dreamy" like but it didn't work. So in the end we just filmed Chris typing but we filmed it through the camera of my Iphone, meaning that the camera was filming in the camera. We thought it was quite cool even though it didn't look like a dream at all.
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