Welcome to Just A Girl! This week, I received a sound project in class in which we were tasked with making a 1-2 minute story, only using sound. It was overall a super fun and creative project to film and edit, and it gave me great insight into how sound mixing affects everything. For this blog, we're going to discuss the process of filming, editing, scripting, and creation of this project. Since I did this project in a group with my best friend, PeanutButterAndNellySandwich, I will be speaking on the process of both working with a group and my contributions.
Let's start from the beginning
The Script
The first thing we did was come up with the story we wanted to create and then brainstormed on sounds and effects necessary to let the story progress. We came up with the idea of a woman getting kidnapped for the plot, and then created a base script including basic sounds like "Women screaming", " Man walking", etc. We began to find sounds to layer and as time progressed, so did the description of the story. The script was somewhat easy to create as the sounds we used were pretty plain in words, but when put together made sense in sound.
Editing
To edit I used, iMovie and my computer's editing software. I first used IMovie which I personally disliked as I was limited in how I could edit the video. For example, I couldn't layer sounds over videos, which was one of the requirements for the project. On the bright side, I was able to access another editing software on my computer, Microsoft Clipchamp. This app allowed me to do everything I needed from merging the audio to adding sound effects for free. Due to my previous experience on the app because of another class, finding and using the program was easy for me. Editing itself was a long process as I had to go back and attempt to listen to the audio unbiased (since I knew what was supposed to be happening). It even went as far as me having to film new sounds because the previous ones didn't match right.
Foley stages
Filming the audio was a fun task as it forced me to think about everything relating to audio. In some scenes, I had to figure out how to utilize uncontrollable sounds in the project while making sure it didn't sound out of place with the other audio clips. I filmed the car opening and closing, the trunk opening, knocking, the footsteps, and some of the screaming. Though my scenes were relatively easy, making sure there was no heavy breathing, or unnecessary sounds was difficult and resulted in me filming multiple times. Also, for certain sounds to give the mood we desired to create, I had to be creative with how I created the sounds. For example, for the footsteps, I had to put paper on top of grass and walk so you could hear the texture. My partner filmed about 5 scenes as well.
What I learned
From this project, I gained more editing experience, practiced working with one of my partners for the final, learned the importance of specific sound mixing and recording, and practiced bringing a script to life. It was a great project to work on overall and reminded me why I wanted to take media studies in the first place. This also makes me watch movies differently and pay close attention to how specific everything is. Even with sound that appears to be single system, I now consider how it could be made at home with separate materials.
Thank you for reading!!
No comments:
Post a Comment