Related to LO2

On the 10th of December, my plan was to finish a draft mix of the whole film. I still needed to do slight bits of editing. However I organised a meeting with the director to show him a draft of the soundtrack. This was sent to him before the meeting, and the media production group watched it along side with the music that was composed by Matt Jones. Therefore the director was prepared for the meeting and cold give me instant feedback when running through the film.

However he said that he was really happy with it so far and there was only a few slight changes needed to be made. This was mainly issues with volume, e.g. the wheelchair falling in to the bush, and the sound of the crickets in the night scene, in which i took into account and modifiers as suggested. The other thing was the sound of the crows in the last scene. The crow were originally randomly places to give ha atmosphere a dark feeling. The director said he liked the sound but they sounded like they were being played too often seemed like every time the actors finished talking the sound of a crow would be heard. Therefore i roomed some of the sounds to make it less  like that. Apart from that the director said he was happy with how it sounded.

Tutorial- Related to LO2

I had a tutorial with my tutor Lee Gretton, We overlooked some parts of the film and he gave me some advice on how to improve. Firstly, was to make sure i am getting rid of any out of sync sound. In the dining room scene, there were plate hits that weren’t meant to be there. After the meeting a scanned through the film editing rooming tiny bits of out of sync noises, that i hadn’t noticed before. The other thing Lee pointed about about the film is in the garage scene, the radiator sound in the background was good in the way it puts you in suspense. However the level and sound of this changed slightly every so often which loses the edge and makes you think it is a sound put in the background of the film. Therefore i made the rev leant changes to stop this.

Related to LO2

This post will look into some of the research i conducted and how i used that in the process of dialogue editing, atmospheres, foley and SFX.

The first thing i started was the dialogue editing. This would then determine on how much of everything else i would need to do. It would determine any foley i needed to do, atmospheres i have to create, and any ADR that was needed. However ADR was not possible due to time restrictions and actors availability therefore i had to make sure that the dialogue was as best as it could be.

For my research on dialogue editing i used a book by John Purcell: Dialogue editing fo emotion pictures-A guid to the invisible art. This was a very useful text, as it explained the role, how to get started, how to fix certain problems etc.

“A dialogue editor is responsible for every sound that was recorded during the shot. She takes the more or less finished dilm from the picture editor, makes sense of the edited sounds, organises them, finds out what works and what doesn’t. The dialogue editor wades through the outages to find better articulations quieter passages, sexier breaths, and less vulgar lip smacks…Dialogue editors work to remove the filming from the film. Dolly squeaks, camera noise, crew rustling, and light buzzes must go; otherwise, the magic of the movies is comprised.” (Purcell, 2007, 1)

So, just what is the dialogue editor’s part in this process:

To organise and mange the material.

To smooth the transitions between shots so conversations appear to be happening in the same place at the same time

To fix articulation problems, overlaps and language issues.

To address unwanted, unseemly actor noises.

To pay attention to changes and adds that will enhance the story or motivate characters’ actions.

to remove unwanted external noises

To replace sections of dialogue corrupt by distortion, wind, clothing rustle, boom handling and the like.

To determine what can be saved through the editing

Before i started this process i wanted to make sure i was prepared. Therefore read some of the chapters in Purcell’s book and used them as a reference when having any issues with the dialogue editing. The chapters that were particularly useful included:

Getting started on dialogue editing

This chapter was extremely useful in outline the necessary preparation before going ahead and diving into the dialogue editing. It suggests the best ways in which to set up, syncing an OMF file, using a template session etc. For this process I used my own template that i created previously. The template i created was created in reference to the pro told template we were given by grant Bridgman. However i simplified this a bit more for my benefit.

Grants template on the right, mine on the left.

Now the actual editing

This chapter gives an outline of the dialogue editing process. It talks about checker boarding the audio files on tracks, organising scenes into shots, splitting by sound edits, not picture edits. finding room tone, making edits etc.

Here is an example of my dialogue edit early on in the process.

Damage repair

This Chapter was especially useful as reference tool for when i needed to overcome an issue with the edit. It starts by talking about the common issues that dialogue editors have and how to repair the issues. It talks about using room tone , and how to use it to repair audio in regards to sounds being there that shouldn’t, and finding literate takes. In which i did for a few occasions where the dialogue was bad quality in the original recording.

The main books I referred to throughout the rest of the editing process included: The foley Grail, Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound, Sound for digital video, The sound effects bible, and Pro tools 101 (to refer to when having any issues with pro tools)

Atmospheres

The majority of atmospheric were either recorded as wild tracks on the day of location recording, or  recorded in previous occasions. The bird recording was recorded previously on a Zoom h4 with stereo microphone in a countryside area. Room tones were recorded on the shooting days, swell as some of the wind noises. The wind was especially goo to record on the shooting days because of how strong it was. However some sounds such as the clock ticking and the howling wind int he last scene where found in a sound effects library. The atmosphere of the garage scene was given to me by a friend. He recorded a fridge using a contact microphone. This was perfect for what i wanted as it had a nice low frequency sound that worked well with the scene.

Due to lack of time and studio space, swell as the creative decision, i chose to only use slight subtle parts of foley. The books: The sound effects bible and The Foley Grail, were great references to refer to, especially if i wanted to create some big hollywood style sound effects. However foley was only used in certain sections. As i haven’t had much experience in foley, i felt that if i over done it, the mistakes would have especially shown in such a silent film.

Related to LO2

Before i Cracked on with the editing process, i felt that it was necessary to meet up with the director and go through the film, making notes of what he wants, and some pre editing notes of my own. The notes of the scene by scene breakdown is as followed:

S1- Bedroom

Tidy Up dialogue

Sort out outside Sounds

Add atmosphere- bird sounds from outside and clock sound in bedroom

S 2-7

Improve dialogue

Add room tone

Sound of Shafer’s steps when leaving the room – 11 steps, 5 going down the stairs

Atmos leakage from outside (birds)

When Joan starts putting jacket on clock gets louder

Around 1.51 Fridge closes and Joan can here shader cooking from downstairs. (Add in chopping, sizzling of pan, extractor fan.)

Turning off extractor fan and laying cutlery, (still from joins perspective upstairs

Dining Room

Sound of Joan going down stairs from Shafer’s perspective when he looks up

Atmos, perhaps leakage from conservatory

Tidy Up Dialogue

Remove out of sync sounds

S8 Garage

Fan/ fridge atmosphere

S9- Joan’s Room

Outside sounds, bird chatters, Positive sounding

Foley- Movement of head on pillow

S10- Garage

Plastic snap from tubes

Fan/fridge sound

Tidy up dialogue

S11- Stairs

Clean Up

S12- Conservatory

Water droplets when paint brush hits water

Turn Down Clothing sounds

Clear sound breaths

Shot to Shafer, different sounding atmosphere, scratch sound when he rubs his beard

Breathing important at end

S13- Dream Scene

Fast hitting of elephant grass when running

11:04 exaggerated rip- music starts

Sound of footsteps, that transition into Shafer’s footsteps to the next scene

S14- Night time In Garden

Night time atmos- wind through trees/Crickets

Joans room- Quieter sounding night time atmos

S15- Garden Scene

Tidy Up Dialogue

Add Footsteps

Get rid of crew footsteps when Shafer is wheeling the chair

Kick of Wheelchair and hitting the bush

S16

Atmos- Strong wind, perhaps a crows, sense of darkness

Foosteps as Shafer Walks

Drop atmosphere as Joan starts standing up

Music Fades in