My Time to Shine

   The time has come for my favorite section, the audio. It’s my strongest skill in the group, so naturally, it’s my favorite. The first step to audio editing is extracting and analyzing the sound from each clip. I have to go segment by segment to ensure we have clean and crisp-sounding audio. As previously mentioned, we had terrible luck with audio during filming.  This was very difficult for me, but I succeeded to the best of my abilities.

  So, when you extract the audio, you can slice the clips to remove pieces that won't work for you. It was a tedious process that took me at least 8 hours. I have to listen with both headphones in so I can pick up the background noises if there are any. Once I’ve cleaned them up to the best of my ability, I have to make sure the audio matches what’s on the screen. This is very difficult with dialect. You can only tweak it so much before the words are out of sync with the mouth movements. Once that tedious process is done, I must layer in sound effects. Those are typically used from editing software or downloaded from YouTube. They are usually straightforward, besides placing them in the right spot and fading them in and out correctly for as seamless audio as possible. Then I listened to it thrice to ensure I could catch anything I missed. It’s a funny process I turn off my fan and sit with both headphones in to make sure I can pick it all up. This is a lot, but I enjoy the fine combing of details in projects.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Short Film Review

Image
   We had just recently completed our audio, and before we moved on to add titles, we needed our film to be reviewed. It’s important to have a new set of eyes review your project after you’ve been staring at it for so long. They can pick up mistakes you cannot because you’re rolling over them. So, we left it up to our friends, who can be very brutally honest with us.   The biggest changes our friends decided we needed to work on was the lighting, audio, and transitions. This was especially frustrating after the work I had just put in to try to make the audio less terrible. But I couldn’t help but agree. You could still hear the wind pretty badly over the dialect in many scenes. They also made the comment it felt jumpy. We took that as if the transitions were not as smooth as they could be. That is another completely valid argument. We did not work to blend the scenes as best as we could. They also mentioned that there was some glare in a few scenes. This was a struggle we experienced
Read more

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule but schedule your priorities!

Image
My group struggled with scheduling issues. I have a hectic schedule most days, as do my group members. Trying to find time to film has been a challenge for us. When I would be free, someone else wouldn't, and so on. I am very involved with my school, so I have been doing extracurricular activities after school most days. And one of our group members is a nail technician, so she's had nail appointments the days I have been free. Other days the third group member would not be able to find a ride to get to the filming location. The video also depended on people outside of the class to complete the idea we had in mind. So the group has to work around their schedule the most because they focus on the video idea. They are the siblings of our one group member and their girlfriend. They are both in sports so they have had sports games that have collided with when we can film.  This scheduling problem has forced us to stray slightly from the storyboard. The concept has moved slightly fr
Read more

Clips and Time Crunching

Image
   Now that we’ve finished filming, it’s time to head to our tried-and-true editing app, CapCut. We’ve used this for every project, and I’d like to think we were successful. The first step is adding the clips into the software in order. Despite how simple this may seem, searching through all the videos is difficult. We have to make sure it’s the right clip and place it in the right spot regarding the order. Then it’s time to eliminate time. That’s the most heartbreaking part. You spend hours acting, getting lines, and making sure your costume is correct. Only to have to cut scenes because they take us over time.   When we put the original clips together, we had 7 minutes and 42 seconds. A lot of time is extra. We start filming slightly before and slightly after to make we catch everything. So that cuts down a good chunk of time. Then we must speed up certain clips for the movie, which eliminates a lot more time. Then, we start to determine which scenes are unnecessary after the movie
Read more