The editing of sound was something that was quicker than we originally thought it would be. It was said in the criteria of the project that all the music had to be obtained from a reliable, non-copyright source - which was something we were dissapointed about as we originally had thought of some excellent copyright music that would have fitted in with our film opening. Saying this, the music we did found fitted in really well with the action, and we got it from audolgfl.org.uk which has a large range of non-copyright material.
It was in fact a learning curve for all of us in terms of managing the music, but has left us prepared for the next time we need to use music in a project. At first we were unable to specify a certain point for all areas where the music would change without the voiceovers being present, and so it meant we have to wait until their editing is complete before we are able to finish off the music.
We did need approximately 3 styles of music for our film; one disco-themed track for Jimmy Jazz, one salsa-themed track for Rodrigo and one fighting theme for Jimmy Jazz's 'workout' - and these all needed to be alternated at various points of the film. Instead of using several for each genre, we wittled it down to one of each and picked out various parts of the song for different parts to avoid repeating the same music over and over. This turned out to be the best idea because it provides the audience with a specific assosiation to each character.
The 'workout' routine is the only music we struggled to decide on. We wanted a sound that resembled one of 'Eye of the Tiger', but of course could not use that s it is copyrighted. So we browsed and browsed this site to find something that was as similiar to this thee as possible. Sophie and I spent just about 40 minutes of searching this site and narrowing down the one that was most fitted to the theme, which in the end turned out to be a song named 'Tough Titty'. It was important to us that the music was perfect, as sound is something that makes a film and we did not want to rush a decision in order to get it done quickly. Quality takes its fair old time.
Whilst doing this, Sam and Perry focused on editing, and whilst normally we all liked to be involved in each process we found in best to split off and perform seperate tasks to try and fit in with time contraints. Obviously once the music was selected, we played it to the boys to ensure that they were completely happy with it, which forutnatley they was!
If anything, we should have perhaps switched roles more often so that we could all experience different areas of the project. However, with time being something we did not have a lot of we tended to stick to our strengths in order to produce the best result.
Sunday, 18 April 2010
Editing: Voice Overs
The voiceovers were the thing that we were all most anxious about, as it was seen as the 'make-or-break' of our film opening. We needed them to link the story together, and add more elements of real life film into it. Fortunately for us, we were able to make this to be somewhat of a success. The actaul recording of the voicovers was something that proved to be difficult, we needed to find a quiet area whereby we could record without any background noise. We needed to script the speech, and ensure that it would fit in with the timings for it. For some parts we even had to try a bit of lip-synching, which proved to be somewhat of a challenge.
The lipsynching was quite clearly the most diffucult for us to do, but needed to be done because the speech could not be heard on the film due to background noise (which we failed to acknowledge when filming). We managed to do it by getting the boys to watch the actual video of the film and talking at the same time, so that they could get a sense of the time and tone in which it needed to be spoken in. However, we had to film this material on a phone camera in order to take it away to a quiet place, so they tried their best to work with this and talk in time the best they could with the video. It proved to be very difficult to do without the precence of timer, and ended up recording it several times in order to make it to the best standard we could - it was very much a situation of trial and error. In the finished piece you can tell where we have added the lip-synch as it is unaturally loud and is ever so slightly out of time with the mouth movements of the actors - however this only occurs once, so we weren't too dissapointed with our efforts.
All in all, our voice overs worked pretty well. I found that they were extremely useful in explaining our characters background whilst there was comedy happening on the screen. It complimented the action perfectly. Our biggest worry was how many we needed, we did not want it to seem crowded as it would have clashed at parts. Luckily this was not a problem, because all sound aspects are managable - this includes the volume, which meant that the background music could be turned down when the voice overs occured in order for them to be heard better.
Some of our voiceovers needed to be recorded again, thi is because the boom mic managed to pick up a lot of unwanted sounds, but this could be due to the fact that we had never used one before, therefore were not skilled with it. This was a bit of a hassel to fix, but needed to be done in order to make it more proffesional and neat.
One of the most frustrating occurances during the editing process was the tendancy of the editing programme we used to crash half way through use, and not auto-save any progress we had made. It is unsure to us whether this is due to a fault in the software or hardware failure, but either way it was unfixable during the editing period and certainly slowed us down. We needed to remember to save our work every couple of minutes or so, as it was known to crash at any unpredicatble point. But unfortunately, this was learnt the hard way after occasions where we hd completed copious amounts of editing which was then lost due to it. This usually led to us losing approximantely 20 minutes of editing time, and did become very repetitive as we had to repeat some processes over and over again. We tried everything to fix the programme, including rebooting the system and getting help of the computer technician. Nothing worked, so we had to complete our work this way for the entire time.
With the voiceover we had to try and limit what we said so it lasted around 10 seconds, because anymore time would have led to a clash with other film imagery and would be unrelated to the point being said.
The lipsynching was quite clearly the most diffucult for us to do, but needed to be done because the speech could not be heard on the film due to background noise (which we failed to acknowledge when filming). We managed to do it by getting the boys to watch the actual video of the film and talking at the same time, so that they could get a sense of the time and tone in which it needed to be spoken in. However, we had to film this material on a phone camera in order to take it away to a quiet place, so they tried their best to work with this and talk in time the best they could with the video. It proved to be very difficult to do without the precence of timer, and ended up recording it several times in order to make it to the best standard we could - it was very much a situation of trial and error. In the finished piece you can tell where we have added the lip-synch as it is unaturally loud and is ever so slightly out of time with the mouth movements of the actors - however this only occurs once, so we weren't too dissapointed with our efforts.
All in all, our voice overs worked pretty well. I found that they were extremely useful in explaining our characters background whilst there was comedy happening on the screen. It complimented the action perfectly. Our biggest worry was how many we needed, we did not want it to seem crowded as it would have clashed at parts. Luckily this was not a problem, because all sound aspects are managable - this includes the volume, which meant that the background music could be turned down when the voice overs occured in order for them to be heard better.
Some of our voiceovers needed to be recorded again, thi is because the boom mic managed to pick up a lot of unwanted sounds, but this could be due to the fact that we had never used one before, therefore were not skilled with it. This was a bit of a hassel to fix, but needed to be done in order to make it more proffesional and neat.
One of the most frustrating occurances during the editing process was the tendancy of the editing programme we used to crash half way through use, and not auto-save any progress we had made. It is unsure to us whether this is due to a fault in the software or hardware failure, but either way it was unfixable during the editing period and certainly slowed us down. We needed to remember to save our work every couple of minutes or so, as it was known to crash at any unpredicatble point. But unfortunately, this was learnt the hard way after occasions where we hd completed copious amounts of editing which was then lost due to it. This usually led to us losing approximantely 20 minutes of editing time, and did become very repetitive as we had to repeat some processes over and over again. We tried everything to fix the programme, including rebooting the system and getting help of the computer technician. Nothing worked, so we had to complete our work this way for the entire time.
With the voiceover we had to try and limit what we said so it lasted around 10 seconds, because anymore time would have led to a clash with other film imagery and would be unrelated to the point being said.
Film Opening Idea
Due to the personal nature of people in our group, we thought the best genre of film opening to shoot was a comedy. We thought this would be entertaining, and that we could all contribute different ideas and thoughts as we all have an interest on this type of film. We then decided it would be comical for there to be an element of rivallry between two charcters, and that they would both be equally as poor in standards whilst believing they were infact very good.
The plot is based around a young disco dancer who goes by the name of 'Jimmy Jazz', who in fact is a very rubbish dancer. He is eccentric, and struts his stuff all over town whenever he gets the chance - the more public, the better. But to his dismay, a new guy on the block - Rodrifo Jaunez Velutina the 4th - challenges Jimmy Jazz by entering the same annual town dance competition. Jimmy Jazz see's new Salsa Spanish Dancing Rodrigo as a threat to his believed 'top-dancer' position in town. The film would then go on to see the dancers go head to head in a comical array of situations in order to be seen as top dog.
Generally we just wanted the opening to introduce Jimmy Jazz and show tha he is the central character, as well as bring in Rodrigo to show that he is the opposing threat.
The plot is based around a young disco dancer who goes by the name of 'Jimmy Jazz', who in fact is a very rubbish dancer. He is eccentric, and struts his stuff all over town whenever he gets the chance - the more public, the better. But to his dismay, a new guy on the block - Rodrifo Jaunez Velutina the 4th - challenges Jimmy Jazz by entering the same annual town dance competition. Jimmy Jazz see's new Salsa Spanish Dancing Rodrigo as a threat to his believed 'top-dancer' position in town. The film would then go on to see the dancers go head to head in a comical array of situations in order to be seen as top dog.
Generally we just wanted the opening to introduce Jimmy Jazz and show tha he is the central character, as well as bring in Rodrigo to show that he is the opposing threat.
Anamatic Feedback
There was quite clearly one evident problem that seemed to occur from our anamatic, and this was the lack of visable structure. Some of our shots appear twice, but this was made clear to them that this infact was not a jump cut but actually a planned part of our future production.
A comment was made that it appeared to be full of 'just movement' scenes, and that the actual plot was quite unclear. This made it hard for them to grasp the initial idea we had and understand what it is we planned to do, therefore we had to add explanations to make it clearer.
Admittedly, we found ourselves in quite a rush to finish our anamatic. This meant that we hadn't placed in titles anywhere and things like that, therefore they will need to be added in at a later time.
Our anamatic skips from one spot to the next in certain areas, which is of course unintentional and infact due to the fact that we experienced problems with viedo capture and upload. We got told that our idea was 'original', but we were unsure whether to interpret this as a positive or negative thing. Yes, originally is something that many film writers desire, but it may just be bordering on the line of 'silliness' which is what we have to be careful of. We want it to be funny, not tacky.
The anamatic needs to be restructured and reviewed, and as a group we will need to shift through various ideas before we decide on the final cut. We need to make sure we don't lose sight of our initial idea, and make sure that our story makes sense - and avoid too much 'fluff' in the opening'. We need to portray a proper and desirable story in 2 short minutes, and due to the genre of our film it will need to be fast paced and include voiceovers.
A comment was made that it appeared to be full of 'just movement' scenes, and that the actual plot was quite unclear. This made it hard for them to grasp the initial idea we had and understand what it is we planned to do, therefore we had to add explanations to make it clearer.
Admittedly, we found ourselves in quite a rush to finish our anamatic. This meant that we hadn't placed in titles anywhere and things like that, therefore they will need to be added in at a later time.
Our anamatic skips from one spot to the next in certain areas, which is of course unintentional and infact due to the fact that we experienced problems with viedo capture and upload. We got told that our idea was 'original', but we were unsure whether to interpret this as a positive or negative thing. Yes, originally is something that many film writers desire, but it may just be bordering on the line of 'silliness' which is what we have to be careful of. We want it to be funny, not tacky.
The anamatic needs to be restructured and reviewed, and as a group we will need to shift through various ideas before we decide on the final cut. We need to make sure we don't lose sight of our initial idea, and make sure that our story makes sense - and avoid too much 'fluff' in the opening'. We need to portray a proper and desirable story in 2 short minutes, and due to the genre of our film it will need to be fast paced and include voiceovers.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)