During the minor project module I also helped out fellow student Michael Reynolds, edit his final piece for minor. Mic was working on a short horror film, trying to display horror tropes and what scares and builds suspense. He filmed all his shots and got all his footage done quite quick but wanted my help in editing the final piece, due to his lack of experience and knowledge in Avid and editing. I agreed to help him but with his minor work been how to create and build suspense and such, I was only there to assist with the collecting and editing of the piece, whereas Mic needed to make the cuts and let me know exactly what he wanted, I needed to stay creatively bias from his work.
Mic brought me all his footage and I imported it all on to the computer and then into Avid. Once I had gathered the footage in Avid we sat down and watched all the clips so I could know which were the ones he wanted to use and which were useless to his project. After we sorted out a folder with all the useable clips, I transcoded and consolidated and we began the edit process. Mic would tell me which clip and shot we wanted to use and whereabouts in the clip to cut before adding it to the timeline, we then carried this on until we built up a good rough cut of the edit, and played it back and then tightened it up. Certain areas of the video didn't go to as Mic had planned, and so he made changes and cut around bits to improve its quality and make it flow better, but overall the piece still achieved what he set out to do, and was a whole collective piece by the end.
Once the cut had been completed, their were certain effects and titles Mic wanted me to add to the footage before it was exported. We started off with fade transitions here and there throughout the whole video and added a title credit on the intro of the films title. For one of the clips in particular of the grim reaper, Mic wanted it speeded up so I used the motion effect editor to make the clip faster to the point Mic has happy with it. Other work I did on the project was adding and editing audio and sound effects in the piece, making sure it all synced up with the visuals and that it faded in and was to the correct audio level. I also used some superimposing effects over a ghost appearance scene to give the effect there was more ghosts and played a couple of similar clips over the top of each other which gave an interesting effect that Mic really liked. I also added end credits to the piece to finish it off before it was exported. Once the overall piece was to Mic's standards I exported the video and Mic was able to use it in his presentation and to hand in.
The forth and final clip I was editing for my minor project was The Conjuring 2 (2016). This clip is taken from a horror film, and gives a very intense and suspenseful performance from all aspects and areas of the footage. It's very eery and uses both its audio and visuals to pull in it's audience and to scare them at the end. The scene itself is quite isolated and features a young girl watching television alone, when things start to get unusual. For this specific piece I used the footage of the clip on three different layers, with the first been the original and the other two able to edit on. With the clip being a horror film, I wanted to give the edit and very olden feel but I also didn't wanna add to the suspense or help the horror film in anyway. I added very small but noticeable scanlines to the piece and cut off the sides of the piece, using the left to right tool. I used the border control effect and removed the edges and sides of the clip and had the original footage playing underneath, giving a sharp distinction where the two clips meet. I also cut directly down the middle of the clip, and took away a lot of the colour from the right side, almost making it black and white, while the left side still had complete colour. After adjusting and changing certain aspects of the colour already, I decided to apply my colour effect technique and make minimal changes to the colour, just enough to take away some of the eeriness that the clip has earned.
In an effort to break tension, but my have ultimately done the opposite, I added cuts in between the footage, some short, some longer, and this was cutting to black throughout the clip while the sound was still playing. This was to raise frustration out of the audience that they can hear but can completely not see what is happening in such a tense situation.
After finishing on the visual adjustments to the clip, I moved on to alter the audio for the piece. Audio is so important in horror films and there is no exception here. The audio is quite and important element in this piece and I wanted to take that away from the clip completely. Many horror films are known for using infrasound in their films to create suspense and make the audience uncomfortable so I wanted to cancel this out. I used an audio file of airplane cabin sounds which is used among many people to calm themselves down and supposed to ease peoples nerves, so I added this quietly underneath the original audio. For the original audio I used Avid's own audio tool D-Verb, and adjusted the settings to give the audio a very faint relay and echo, slight ambient effect to make it sound like the audios coming from another room, and this really worked collectively to produce a low quality sound track for the visuals.
This is my forth and final piece of editing for my minor project and I'm very happy with how all the final edits turned out. I think its good that you can see a progression through all the clips, and that there not all just edited the same, you can see certain techniques done better and new effects that completely change the outcome of the piece. This was a good edit challenge for me to take and has elevated my editing skills and game for future productions.
The third clip I was to edit for my minor project was Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). This is a very CGI heavy piece, full of special effects and action set pieces, very reliant on the visuals, and very little sound input at all. The clip is of course robots fighting each other with humans stuck in the middle. I began editing this clip by rearranging the size and making it fit for 16:9 and cropping any overflow parts of the footage. Then because this specific clip is CGI orientated and features very fantastic colours and tones, I decided to completely boost up all the colour effects I possibly could. I used colour effect and heightened a lot of the qualities to give a strong overwhelmingly bright visual experience for the audience. It gave the footage a very cheap feel and even took away from some of the action, making it look silly and cartoony. After adjusting the colours, I added a second layer to add the footage again and superimposed it over the footage of the original, and played it one frame behind, giving the slow and lacking effect again that the footage is jumping and buffering a little bit. Also on this layer I added a little ripple effect that would play throughout, making certain areas of the footage more noticeable and almost adding a lens flare of sorts to specific shots. I quite enjoyed the impact this had on the footage, and it was something new for me to add to my editing style for this piece. Over the top of all the footage I had short clips of digital interference and even some analog disruption playing off and on, really stealing the attention from the audience and becoming quite irritating. In the comparison picture below, you can see the true effect of my altered visual footage, next to the high quality original footage.
After the visuals had been altered, I moved on again and started working on the audio for this action packed sequence. Because audio has such a strong effect on the viewer and the majority of this audio was score/sound effects and explosions, I really wanted to deteriorate the audio quite effectively on this piece and really see whats more important. For the original basic sound I used Avid's very on D-Verb effect and minimised all aspects of the sound so you're really struggling to listen out for anything of importance. Under all this I played some microphone distortion which really impacted the final piece greatly. The distortion was very loud and synced up great with some of the action, It makes the piece unwatchable and a absolute waste of time watching. This effect may only find its true purpose of this clip rather than any of my other ones.
Out of all the clips, this was the one I was most interested and excited to edit and I'm very pleased with the final result of these clips. I spent more time on this clip than the previous two, and incorporated old and new techniques to really find that balance of low quality visuals and low quality audio. The response my experiment gathers from this clip will be very important in seeing which is of more importance. I'm very excited for an audience to give their opinions on all of this clips so far.
The second clip I was to edit for my minor project was Goodfellas (1990). The clip I decided to use from Goodfellas was the very iconic scene with Joe Pesci come to be known as "Funny How?" This is a very strong performance piece and gets real intense, real quick. I wanted to use this clip because it relies on its audio quality quite a lot but it is elevated when accompanied with the visuals, when you see the strong performances of everyone involved. Like the
Gravity clip, I began by editing the visuals first. Due to the film been the oldest out of my choices with been released in 1990, I wanted to give it a very home video feel to it, but also a cheap knock off style as well. I used an image of scanlines and superimposed them over the top of the footage, this added a very dated feel to it, and made it seem like it was been watched on VHS or a very old TV of sorts. After adding the scanlines I also wanted to give a very disfigured look to the visuals and cut the footage horizontally through the middle and removed the bottom half. I added the clip in again and enlarged the footage slightly and this was to be played under what had been cut, so it all played in sync and in time but the bottom half was slightly larger and quite off putting. After making these changes, the visual quality had been lowered pretty noticeably and isn't anything like it used to be, so I only wanted to make any other alterations very minimal to not go overkill on the clip. I edit the visual style of the clip by using Colour Effect again and altered the piece slightly to create a brighter tone than the original, which again makes it visuals look cheap.
Again after editing the visuals I needed to focus on switching them around and altering the audio. For this clip, I wanted to keep with the theme of making it feel old and vintage and I decided that as well as editing the audio in my own way, I was going to add TV static over the top to give a very irritating and distracting sound aspect to the piece. Because the visuals for this clip will be normal and of high quality, I wanted the audio to completely distract you from that and make you want to stop watching. I think everyone has had disruption like TV static on their sound before and know just how annoying it can be to the production as a whole. We've come to evolve with technology so static and disruption in audio is only their when we want it. I again used D-Verb to alter the sound because this piece is very dialogue heavy, and if you quieten that audio so the talking is very minimal and sounds far away, then you have your audience straining and struggling to follow the plot, making the piece unwatchable.
I'm pleased with the direction my clips are taking, this piece in particular is very good and I think achieves everything I wanted it to achieve from the get go. It's good that from the progress from the Gravity clip I was able to use some of the same techniques and effects, as well as using new ones that would not be as effective in other clips, but work just right for this piece. I'm pleased with progress my edits are making.
The first clip I was to edit for my minor project was Gravity (2013). I used one of the most recognisable clips from the film which is the major set piece where everything goes wrong, and you find are protagonist astronauts becoming unattached in space. I begin first with editing the visuals and altering them to a low quality standard. I started the process with a little resize and making sure everything was tight and fit in with each other.
I then started applying the colour correction and colour effect techniques I learnt from experimenting. The colours in Gravity are very strong and vibrant, in fact the film won academy awards for best visuals and best video editing which is what I'm trying to alter for low quality. Adjusting the brightness and the contrast was very helpful in making the visuals look cheap and pirated almost. The hue and saturation is also a good area to edit as it can produce drastic or limited changes to the picture. I wanted to find a balance between these two in not making it so drastic that it looks ridiculous, and not so limited that it's barley noticeable, there needs to be some kind of effect that people can notice and put them off their viewing experience. I also added a second video layer playing the same clip from Gravity but a frame later, and superimposed it over the top. This made it see through and gives it an almost stuttering effect which can be very off putting.
I also used both digital and traditional video interference clips that were superimposed over the top, to really give a glitchy effect that makes it almost impossible to finish watching. Below you can see a side by side view of the original clip from Gravity, and the the video altered version I made for my experiment. You can see that my version is a lot more blurry and unclear, as well as the colours look a lot more cheap and weaker in my video altered version.
After working on the visuals and altering them to the low standard, I needed to do the vice versa and work on altering the audio to a low standard and keeping the normal high quality visuals. For the audio I used Avid's own audio effect tools, mainly D-Verb. D-Verb allows me to alter the sound and make it sound ambient almost. I wanted the sound to put people off and have them struggling to understand, so the audio was altered to make it sound like it was coming from another room. D-Verb offers quite a range of effects like this but I didn't want to over do it for this edit, as I hope to improve and add more in future edits and alterations.
I'm very happy with how this edit turned out, on both fronts with the visuals and audios. I think the visuals are effective for making them seem low standard and off putting, but I definitely think I can improve the style in which I'm doing it and making it seem less obvious and seamless through experience. I'm very pleased with how the sound turned out because it sounds exactly like a cheap pirated rip off DVD with the audio almost coming from the over room. This was a good first experiment in the project.
With all this talk of high quality sound and high quality visuals, I decided to research a little into how the majority of people view and watch their content, at home on a television. Televisions are constantly changing the game with new revolutionary screen sizes and quality like 4K, but all this comes at a cost. All these changes to the display are actually affecting the quality of the sound. With making TV screens thinner and larger, the sound is becoming an after thought, when its just as important as the detail to visuals. You may not be fully aware if your television has bad audio. "Ask yourself this: have you ever had to turn the volume way up to hear a line of dialog? Ever had miss entire sections of plot because there was so much going on on-screen that the jumbled mess was unintelligible? These are prime examples of bad audio. The sound you hear is compressions and rarefactions in the air (the soundwaves), produced by a small moving object called a driver. To produce deep bass sounds, the driver either has to be very large, or have lots of power behind it. To produce very high sounds, the driver should ideally be fairly small. With enough processing and amplifier power, fairly small drivers can produce surprisingly decent sound. Modern TVs have none of these features." This proves just how important sound is and my experiment will back this up. This also proves that television companies don't care about the sound their selling with their TV's as much as the visuals and their stunning "4K" quality. Now this could all be a marketing scheme to get you to buy separate speakers and spend more money, but when buying a TV you shouldn't just be buying the visual side, you should also be getting the same quality with your sound system in the TV.
"There is no worse place to put a speaker driver than the back of a TV. Think about how someone sounds if they’re talking with their back to you. Not very clear, right? High frequency sounds are very directional. Sure, if your TV is near or mounted on the wall, some of the high frequency sounds will bounce back towards you (and in fact, this is how TVs with rear-firing speakers are designed to work). However, if the TV is out further in a room, you’re out of luck." Maybe one day television companies will devote as much time and effort into their audio side as much as their visuals, as without quality sound, the TV could be considered worthless. Source: https://hdguru.com/what-hdtv-manufacturers-dont-want-to-tell-you-about-tv-sound/
Originally my plan for this module was decided on genres which would most benefit from this experiment, and which ones may lean towards needing stronger visuals and than audio but recently I've had a change of heart. Due to time constraints and creative decisions, I've decided only to use my own films and student films very minimally to show how this kind of experiment doesn't perform positively on these types of footage. I've experimented with certain student footage to discover it doesn't affect the quality as significantly as I'd like, so I'm using this in my work to show I tried with this type of footage but didn't receive the results I'd like.
Because of this I've decided it may be best to edit and alter big budget feature films that have set the high quality standard that audiences are accustomed to. Fair use is a rule/law that makes this possible for me as a student and creative editor, where I can use and edit the footage to my own purpose and be protected under fair use. The genres I've landed on using for my work is:
Action/Adventure
Horror
Drama
Visual Spectacle
These four genres should cover the range I'm hoping to explore but more could be added if needed. Action/Adventure should provide a heavy action set piece with a lot of visual activity with the audio necessary to follow the plot. Horror will provide an uncomfortable mood that relies on both sound and video to fulfil its purpose. Drama will be a dialogue heavy piece with an intense acting performance needing both visuals and audio. The Visual Spectacle will rely on its action packed special effects and overwhelming visual content which will put audio to the test.
The four films that should cover these are:
Gravity (2013)
The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Goodfellas (19900
Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
I've found clips in all these films which will help me complete my experiment. They match up with all the guidelines I was looking for and should help me achieve success from this module.
For this minor project I have decided I will be editing on the professional software Avid. Avid is the industry standard for editing and I've learnt more and more skills since I've been at Uni. For this module I need to learn the opposite of everything I've been taught, I'll need to downgrade and disrupt the quality of the videos instead of improving them and editing for a higher standard. I've began researching techniques and ways of lowering the quality and quite a few or using the same tools I already use for improving but lowering and decreasing certain aspects to see a major effect on the visuals.
Tools such as Colour Effect play a major part in the importance of degrading the visual quality, changing the hue and saturation can have significant effects on the colours and remove or add brighter and darker tones completely changing the final outcome. You can also alter individual colours with this effect to really change and add an off putting visual look to the film. Another technique I've learnt to change the visual quality is to give the appearance of poor frame rate and sort of give it an echo. To achieve this I need to use the visual twice. On one layer will be the main footage that will be used for maintaining the story and to be edited, while the second layer will be placed above and set to play one frame after the original clip, but superimposed over the top making it see through and noticeable on the video. This is a very effective technique in lowering the video quality and is quite off putting for the audience. Along with the colour changes this is my primarily method of effecting the visual quality of the footage, other changes will be applied here and there so all videos don't look the same, but I don't want to alter it too much because theres a chance of overkill which could ruin the experiment.
For the audio quality I looked into using different software for editing the sound aspect as Avid does offer their own sound effect editing, there are other software which is for only sound editing. Adobe Audition, Audacity and iZotope are professional and industry standard softwares known for sound editing and can offer unique sound editing for my work but my main goal is to lower the sound quality instead of enhancing or improving. Lee should me new methods of using the Avid sound editing tools and very interesting ways of altering the sound to achieve the effect I want. Using Avid's own sound editing tools does not only create the sound effects I'm looking for, but it also makes it simpler with less and less going to and from softwares, exporting and importing files and clips.
While researching films with bad audio, it only seemed fair to research films with bad video and weigh up each side. Surprisingly, other than films with really bad visual effects, they're aren't too many films with low quality visuals, that weren't because of the time and availability of technology during that era. Films such as The Blair Witch Project were filmed on a low budget and used the low quality visuals (and also audio) to it's advantage through a clever marketing scheme. Many 80's and 90's films have been criticised for their bad quality and foggy like cinematography but this is mainly due to the converting and restoring process at the time. Many films from earlier decades like the 60's have been remastered and tend to look better than films from the 80's and 90's because they are yet to be remastered.
Films that are probably considered to have the lowest quality of footage is the earliest form of it, such as silent films but you can't criticise this genre based on its visual look and quality. It started the whole industry off and set us on the path we're on now.
A recent release film that seems to have the attention of movie fans due to its low quality visuals in theatres is Spectre (2015)
"At this point, I noticed that the quality of the main film was nothing like as good as the preceding material.
It looked soft, unsaturated, grainy (but not in a good way) and noisy and indistinct in the shadows. At times it almost looked like a high-res version of a VHS recording!
I have no idea what was going on here. I don’t know if there was something wrong, or whether this cinema buys lower resolution copies for its secondary screens (I really do doubt that). Or maybe I’ve got so used to digital that I was noticing that most of the movie was acquired on 35mm film. I’m no expert on cinema film delivery or projection, but I am used to looking at very high quality material, and this certainly wasn’t.
It was all the more striking because I had already seen that the cinema was capable of projecting extremely high quality pictures."
Now this seems to be up for debate at the moment but there are numerous accounts of people having the same viewing experience. Most high budget films are of very high visual quality so the quality of Spectre at these cinemas must have really been low for people to have noticed and talked about it after there experience.
It's not all that common that many big budget films are released with low quality audio anymore these days, but there a few that slip through the cracks. Although in some cases the quality of audio can be quite opinionated and matter to you as an individual, more than a general majority, but I've decided to research into some films that are known for their bad audio.
A common movie many people bring up when discussing bad sound is Christopher Nolan's Interstellar (2014). This wasn't just from your average movie going audience, many insiders in the industry also have problems and complaints about this one. The feedback hasn't been positive when it comes to the sound mixing of the film. Theres been many talk about misunderstanding dialogue and completely not been able to hear it, due to composer Hans Zimmer's score increasingly getting louder. This has many people wondering how it got released like this, it completely takes you out of the movie at some points and is not the standard you've come to expect from these films. Interstellar's sound mixing team includes rerecording mixers Gary Rizzo and Gregg Landaker, who are both experienced pros and worked with Nolan before on 2010's Inception, winning them an Oscar.
In 1972's The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, there is a few sound effect issues here and there but nothing to major to really affect the film too much. Audiences have pointed out that in a seen where someones windshield gets kicked in, you can hear the sound of breaking glass before it actually happens, and again in a scene during an assassination attempt, one of the assassins gun is smoking but it made no gun shot noise. These are very minor audio mistakes, that shouldn't be happening in a film of this standard but not major enough to ruin the quality of the overall production.
Similar to the audio problems in The Godfather, 1993's Jurassic Park, directed by Steven Spielberg also has a few minor inconveniences in the audio department here and there. During lunch, when Malcolm says, 'And now you're selling, you wanna sell it,' the short quickly cuts to Gennaro. In it, Malcolm's lips are still moving after he's finished speaking. Again in the kitchen scene, the instant the first velociraptor hops up onto the counters, it knocks off a large metal pot. There is no sound of it hitting the ground. I began researching Jurassic Park because of a debate we had in lesson with our tutor Andy Conway. Conway claimed that the audio and mixing in Jurassic Park was of low quality and that Spielberg was more focused on Schindler's List at the time, and that Jurassic Park was an after thought. This sparked much debate in the class due to many of the students loving Jurassic Park and was quite amusing to hear everyones different arguments for and against the quality of Jurassic Park.
Though audio seems to be the outright favourite, I want to find more and understand more about why video is the dominant output when viewers are concerned. Eric Lamontagne works in the sound department for many big productions in TV and Film, and was interviewed on this topic and I looked into his responses.
"Saying sound is more important is quite a statement! Many storytellers would argue that moving picture started silent and that audiences were entertained. That said, I believe I do understand the need for sound that supports the image but sound must only carry the story naturally."
Lamontagne believes sound is necessary to support the story, if and when its used. He goes on to talk about how many blockbusters now are overshadowing that with their visuals and it can take away from the storytelling. Of course there is ADR and replacement processes but Lamontagne likes to capture the best audio he can, on the day.
"It has been my goal to capture as much live performance on the day of production as possible, a personal and professional goal that I share with many fellow sound crews. At the end of the day though, my role is to do my best to capture the performances to support the story."
This got me thinking about silent films again, and how is the music and score that accompanies the film, necessary to support the story? In many cases the audio can add comedic and dramatic effect with its timing in certain instances. I believe this certainly supports the entertainment of the film, it helps keep audiences engaged, but does it support the story? This gives me three ideas. A silent film that is completely silent with no music, a silent film that is accompanied with random musical score, and a silent film that is accompanied with an original synced score.
The outcome of this will help me understand how audiences will rank the viewings of silent films, and if audio really does matter and support the story of a silent film.
"But for the most part a silent film was silent unless accompanied by live music. But was the music always there? When films were first exhibited commercially, in 1894, via the Edison Kinetoscope peepshow, they were silent. You peered down into the machine, paid your cent or penny, and thirty seconds of so of silent miniaturised action played before your eyes. Edison wasn’t happy with this, and in 1895 introduced the Kinetophone, an adaptation of the Kinetoscope with accompanying (though not synchronised) phonograph recordings. Yet for the most part people started seeing silent films silently." From the early days of silent film, most of the audiences were seeing them silent and still enjoying them. For a time, unless accompanied by a live orchestra or such, the film you'd be watching was in complete silence. I want to find out why this changed. Sources: http://www.reelmarketer.com/interview-how-sound-is-everything/
https://thebioscope.net/2011/08/29/when-silents-were-silent/
When researching audio vs video, there is an absolute handful of books, websites and articles that are pushing the point of audio been better. This one is no different. But this one gave me new ideas.
Why Audio Matters Most for Audiences by DaCast.com goes with the argument that "our sense of sound is the most integral when it comes to communication, making audio an essential aspect of any broadcast." I can't debate that at all, it's a hugely valid point. Our main sense of communication is talking to each other, which for lack of a better term, is sound orientated. It only make sense that the easiest way for us to follow a story would also be through sound. The page goes on to offer a test to any readers that doubt their opinion. "Don’t think sound is all that important? Try this exercise: pick your favorite scary movie and watch it on mute. Meanwhile, play a nice, relaxing song in the background, or a comedy track from your favorite standup comic. Stripped away of its intended audio cues and music, which are designed to build suspense, tension, and terror, it’s doubtful that scary movie will have the same impact." This exercise is a great insight into the modern horror film, that features too many jump scares and not enough actual scary footage. Although there are plenty of horror films known for their hauntingly visuals and films such as 2015's The Visit which actually as no score or soundtrack at all. I'm really interested in doing something like this for my experiments. Using some horror footage and seeing how much of the audio actually elevates it from just the visuals. Showing the clip with high quality video and low quality audio, and then low quality video and high quality audio, will show which of the two is more important to the production and the audience of a horror film. Then if in the future if any of us are making a horror film, we'll know to maybe focus or lean towards one because the audience get a bigger kick out of that one. Sources: http://www.dacast.com/blog/audio-matters-audiences/
I've started research looking into debates and discussions of Audio Vs. Video to help me understand both sides of the argument, and where I should start and go next in my experiments and work. Many of the articles and videos I've found heavily lean towards audio been the dominant answer to this debate. Video Entrepreneur Magazine have an article that backs up the argument of audio been a higher priority than video. In their article "Audio is More Important Than Video Picture Quality" by L. Scott Harrell, he talks about how video picture quality is some what mistaken for been more important and gives tips on how to improve you audio quality.
"Most inexperienced video entrepreneurs make the mistake in the beginning of their careers focusing a lot on capturing the best quality visuals for their videos and, all too often, completely blow the sound."
This can speak heavily towards students such as myself who are just starting out and developing their filmmaking skills. From an outsiders view, audio isn't talked or thought about much when discussing a film or it's production but its one of the most important elements, and If done correctly, its quality will go unnoticed because it's done its job. For many of us on the course, it wasn't until the editing stages till we realised just how important and skilful audio capturing is to the final edit of a film. Now this is not to say that you can neglect the video quality of your production also, but the misconception of a videos quality needing to be high for it to be successful just isn't gospel. L. Scott Harrell goes on to talk about how that even if the video component turns out to have flaws and be less than perfect, that with the right quality audio, that is clear and free of distractions, that production can still go on to be a success. This talks mainly more to the pre-production and production side of making sure you always capture high quality audio. The article however goes on to discuss the opposite side of this and how studies have shown that even if the audio quality of your production is just medium to marginal quality, then no matter how high quality or good looking the video picture turns out to be, that audiences are likely to react to the production as a whole negatively. But again, just another reason to be precise in your audio recording. The article is accompanied with a short list to help you capture audio better.
Tips for recording superior quality audio:
1. Voice-Overs are Easy and Reliable!
There’s no doubt that while shooting video and sound in an outdoor location, recording high quality audio can be quite difficult. However, with a little preparation, you can prevent a potentially disastrous situation. Perhaps your best option in windy or noisy outdoor environments is to record most of your audio track indoors, or in-studio, and simply apply it is a voice-over. In other words, you will be recording the audio off-camera separately in a different location and later add it to the video during the editing process. I know several very successful video entrepreneursthat don’t even bother shooting video and use only b-roll or stock video clips that they’ve either shot previously or have purchased online instead. They tend to focus more of their time developing a killer script and recording great audio for their projects.
2. Set Up a Sound Booth
It is best to record audio in a small, carpeted room with wall treatments (pictures, curtains, etc) in order to avoid a harsh sound characterized by an echo. If audio is more important than video for you then you should be recording in some sort of studio. When it comes to make-shift recording studios, closets are actually the best choice.
3. Be Prepared and Have the Right Equipment
If your video production requires you to record your audio and video at the same place and time, then be prepared for the wind and ambient noises you may very well pick up from the background. Try to choose a quiet location and shoot the video when there’s no wind if at all possible. Definitely use a dead cat, or wind muff, windshield which are microphone covers designed to minimize wind noise when recording in less than perfect wind conditions. Keep in mind that a little wind noise is enough to ruin your audio track and is almost impossible to edit out. With most camera configurations you can monitor the quality of your sound during or immediately after recording using a pair of headphones. They’re a pretty cheap insurance policy against leaving the shoot only to find out that what you’ve recorded is essentially garbage.
4. Get Close!
Getting the microphone physically closer to your subject ensures better audio quality, less background noise and better fidelity in your sounds. Although, a full length body shot may seem like a better option, the audio quality will be affected, since you will be far away from your mic. Make it a point to plan your outdoor shots at a closer distance to the camera if you must use a smartphone, iPad, tablet or other mobile device or your camera’s onboard microphone.
5. If You Are Going to Be a Video Professional, Use Professional Gear
Most of the microphones built into cameras are omnidirectional and record unwanted sound from every direction, the microphones in mobile devices like iPadscan be even worse. When recording audio dialogue a uni-directional mic is really best. If audio is more important than video in your situation, the perfect situation is to use even a decent quality off-camera directional microphone plugged into a separate audio recording device. The second best option would be to use a microphone plugged into your camera. For professional video content creators and entrepreneurs running video businesses, we consider an external microphone a MUST HAVE piece of gear.
It's shocking to discover how much of a disruption bad audio can be to a film production. In the early days of cinema, quality was not to the standard to which we have it today. During the silent film era, the quality of the video was not incredible high, it would be grainy and somewhat shaky but it was very often accompanied by backing music. This might be one of the first experiences of filmmakers using good audio to attract and audiences attention. Silent films completely silent are not the easiest films to watch and keep your attention, but suddenly with the addition of sound and music, they become interesting and easier to view. If this was switched and a silent film had amazing video quality and low audio quality, even though its a silent film, I think the switch would be negative on the film.
Raindance Canada uploaded a video to their YouTube account in 2014, showing their own example of why they find audio quality to be more important than video quality. He discuss how in some cases the bad audio can be forgiven in such a purpose of stunt videos where a man might be skydiving, the audio here could be forgiven cause its main focus is on the video. Vice versa with found footage films, the video quality is not high but thats to support the style in which it is been filmed. The video discusses how with bad audio, the content is hard to take seriously, insinuating that bad audio may lose you professionalism and give a sign that your work is not legitimate. The video ends talking about how you shouldn't have to choose but if you have to choose, maybe good audio is the way.
The majority of my research so far has strongly sided with audio quality been inferior to video quality, and have made very strong arguments to why. I want to continue my research into this argument and search more for reasons that a film might consider having better video than audio for a legit reason. A case where its more important to its purpose for the picture quality to be stronger than the audio. So far my research has given me new ideas to what my experiment is going to entail, and to try and make it dig deeper than just the surface question. Hopefully finding some useful results worth reporting.
Minor project, along with dissertation, is the first module of our third year studying Creative Film and Moving Image Production. It's main aims as a module is to helps us focus on a single practice within the industry, and enhance and develop technique and skills within this role. It's a research based module primarily and helps establish opportunities in the future. This is also one of the modules that is heavily focused on the technical aspect of the course. My main area that I want to specialise in throughout my third year of university is writing, but this module I'd like to focus on something else, something that can match the aims and goals of the module better and more suited to the objectives, so I've decided to focus on editing for my minor project.
Specifically, audio quality Vs. video quality. On the surface this doesn't appear to be the most ground breaking area I could've chose, but with been a film student I wanted the area to apply to me as a student now and to be able to have instant results and effects on my work while still at university. It will also be going deeper than just audio vs video, and into editing software, and featuring more technical aspects that can develop and provide solid research that'll support my ideas throughout the module. From my basic research, there is already talk online about this debate, especially on the YouTube space, with content creators wanting the best audio and video quality they can get for their audience. There are articles online discussing the argument and we've also had quick talks about it in sessions and lectures, where the primary consensus seems to be that audio quality takes priority over video quality. An audience would rather be able to hear whats going on clearer than see whats going on clearer. If you can't hear or understand the dialogue, then you're struggling to follow the plot and it takes you out of the movie, no one wants to listen to horrible audio. Whereas if the video quality isn't good but you can still hear whats going on, it makes it a little easier on the audience and helps fill in gaps here and there. I want to be able to put this to the test. I want to experiment with audio quality and video quality to see which means the most to the audiences, but I also want to experiment with different types of genre and different styles of filming to see if this changes from what you might expect. Some genres may find it more beneficial to have better video than audio and this will be an aspect I would like to explore.
I'm hoping to look into how this affects styles such as found footage and audition tapes etc. Different methods and styles of filming but may reflect on how one area maybe more important than the other. The results from this module will help me determine how to improve student quality audio and video and boost it up to an acceptable standard, if not already, and also learn on depending what you're editing that maybe you should focus on one area more than the other, cause the audience is going to appreciate that more and altogether will improve better storytelling through the edit. The finished product of the module along with all the research and development will be a final 3-4 minute video featuring clips and genres with bad audio and good video and vice versa to present in front of an audience with a survey to gather findings. It will range a variety of genres and storytelling styles and will also include my efforts of improving low quality audio and video and trying to restore them to a high level, through the industry and my own techniques.
Week 4 of the course starts 29th February and is the final week of the course they have to offer. This weeks focus is on 3D compositing and how it can be used to benefit your film and adds more to your surroundings. As we live and work in 3D why shouldn't 3D play a part in the film industry. The week starts off with articles and videos discussing what 3D compositing is about and a little history about the subject before introducing you to the HitFilm task this week.
The task is to actually do some 3D compositing of your own with the provided stock footage, the shot to work on is like an establishing shot, and will be built up of different 3D layers to achieve the end final shot. Theres a layer of a background of an industrial park, which will be the bottom layer, and then layers to be overlayed such as the actor, the sky and some fire and damaged cars to add atmosphere to the scene. They're all been added using 3D compositing so they're not just flat additions to the scene, but fit in to the scene and the 3D world it's building.
Of course the week continues on with articles from The Blaine Brothers and Haz discussing why and when they use this technique but there is also a video of Haz discussing the power of archive footage and how important it is to keep them if you use them on a previous production. Archive footage has the power to be used multiple times in multiple ways so it's best to to just toss it out. The week is slightly longer with it been the final week and further on discusses Matte Painting and it's uses digitally. With 3D compositing Matte Paintings can bring scenes together and are not just flat backgrounds anymore.
A very interesting and helpful video included in this weeks selection is Haz on marketing your film. As Haz is an independent filmmaker, he has quite some experience in marketing films and he discusses the best ways and why some ways maybe better than others, to get your film out there. Haz recently used a Vimeo account to premiere his latest film, and choose this over a YouTube release and he chose this platform because he wanted film executives to see it and didn't want adverts popping up all the time. Theres a professionalism to marketing and getting across your style and your film, in the manner that you wanna project yourself to be. The course comes to an end with some thoughts of inspiration and a lesson of never stop making films.
Week 3 of the course commences 22nd February and is now more than half way through it's duration. Week 3's main focus is on Masking, Cloning and Crowds, these are very important techniques within the filmmaking world and the special effects world, and have been used on many huge blockbusters, to recreate war scenes in films, and to build armies that aren't really there. It's a clever technique and quite tricky to pull off. The course has an introduction to the basics of Masking, Cloning and Crowds, and how you would use these techniques in a film. It also features a short video on how you would prepare for a shoot that was including these special effects, which will be good to show with my crew if they intend to use any of these.
The course also comes with a Masking Checklist:
If the colour or contrast of the image in your mask is different to the background layer, then sometimes a large feather will help it sit better in the shot, as the edges become gradual.
A good way to keyframe a mask of particularly complex moves (say someone running in a zig zag across the scene) is to set keyframes at extremes (say every abrupt turn of the runner), and then set more again half way between those keyframes. And then half way between them…until the mask moves with the runner. It’s still easier than frame by frame!
You can change the opacity of your mask, say to 95%, which can subtly bring the image underneath through to help with making your object ‘sit’ in the shot. Too much and you turn them into ghosts!
Make sure you have enough points on your mask to accommodate future action in the shot. If you’ve put your actor into a rectangular mask and she starts ‘star-jumping’ later in the shot, you may have problems of overlap with other nearby characters. So, always look ahead through your footage.
You can keyframe backwards. Start with your difficult star-jumping actress and then move backwards with your keyframes.
Computers are dumb. If your mask isn’t blue in HitFilm, it’s not keyframeable!
These are important to remember and keep in mind if ever filming on set for any of these techniques.
This weeks task in HitFilm is masking and cloning and provides all the footage for you to achieve these techniques. It uses both these techniques to create a scene of a man walking through a location multiple times at the same time. This technique is a great way to increase the scale and production value of your film because it makes it seem like you have greater the amount of people than you do. The week then continues on to have The Blaine Brothers and Haz talk about how and when they use masking and cloning in their productions, which is quite often in their own cases. For me green screen and masking and cloning doesn't seem to much easier and effective as a practical effect, which appears more real on the screen for a film.
Week 2 of the course has started, 15 February and heavily features and includes tasks and articles focusing on Green Screen. Green screen is a huge and innovative technique and tool when it comes to special effects and has helped change the game significantly in modern special effects. There are early articles on green screen and keying which are helpful to give a little intro to the history and behind the scenes of the skill and technique, and also build your knowledge on special effects. This weeks task requires to use the already downloaded software HitFilm and goes through layering, keying and masking your shot, as well as stabilising and grading your background to make it more convincing.
I've worked with green screen before in small doses and have had experience using the keying tools in software like Adobe After Effects and Premiere, but this task was good and refreshing because I was using professional footage of green screen work and it made it easier and simpler to actually edit, when it's filmed correctly and with the purpose of been keyed out. The weekly tasks are proving very helpful and offer a lot of room to experiment with after you're done, and even use your own footage in the software with the new technique. The week goes on to feature small quizzes on the world of keying to build your memory of the technique up and features more videos and articles from the Blaine Brothers and Haz. There is a brief mention of rotoscoping which I have knowledge of from college, and an article about the 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which heavily features special effects and most importantly green screen.
Glenn has prepared me that he does have green screen in mind for certain shots and now I have more knowledge and experience on the subject and skill, so if the footage is filmed correctly there should be no problem.
Open Auditions for all productions took place today in the studio at CCAD Hartlepool. The auditions ran all day and everyone was welcome to try out for roles and perform on camera. Certain actors had given definite signs they would attend and the rest we we're open people would just show up... which very few did. John, Drew, Tori, Steven, Simon and myself were present at the auditions and a grand total of 4 auditions took place! The first to arrive was Megan Thompson who auditioned early on around 9-10am, she did a general audition and was open to playing any of the required roles for our productions and was very excited and energetic about the possibility of working with us. Glenn was impressed with audition and cast her as Arienne in his Maniaframe production. The auditions slowed down after Megan's audition and struggled to find actors to turn up, eventually fellow student Dan Whalen auditioned for the role of Reggie Reynolds the radio host in John's Urban Legends production. Dan had an understanding of the character and what we we're going for and pulled off a great audition for the role so much that we had him under consideration to play the character.
Our tutor Mike Boyle also auditioned to boost up the numbers and was given part of the script from Glenn's production and auditioned for one of the clowns that would appear in it. Mike NAILED IT of course as he is a talented and experienced actor with an ability to take on any role :). Eventually later on another actor turned up for an audition, George Collins or working actor auditioned for the role of Reggie Reynolds and absolutely blew everyone away. He was given multiple scripts to work with and to get to the learn the character better but I think Drew and John has already agreed by this point that he was perfect for the part. George was cast as Reggie Reynolds.
Overall I wouldn't say the open auditions were a clear success but we did gain two new actors from it who are pivotal to the cast and productions so it was still helpful even if the turn out wasn't how we may have expected it to be. I think all the producers know that there are more ways now that the could advertise the auditions and to maybe gain more definite auditions for the day so less time is wasted waiting.
We ran through and checked all the previous discussions from Production Meeting 2 and have now got the VLE open and the production has now been allocated 600B of space on the EditShare. I have completed the script for The Babysitter and have started first drafts of The Hookman and The Killer in the Back Seat. Chloe is coming on with some great experimental edits and is learning new technical options within editing. Jacob has recorded some test sounds for the voice overs for Reggie Reynolds. John has organised an open audition for 16th February. Equipment rehearsal has been booked in the studio for Friday 19th February.
This week we discussed that The Killer has been cast, along side the Father in for The Babysitter and the remaining cast is still pending. Everyone is available and will attend the equipment rehearsal on the 19th, and a location has been confirmed for The Babysitter and was chosen out of the four recce's. Chloe is still continuing her edits and all crew members are continuing their research into their respective roles. The budget for the production has been finalized and confirmed, a signed form for this will be signed on the 16th.
Next weeks production meeting will be checking in on:
How the scripts for The Hookman and The Killer in the Back Seat?
How did the open auditions go?
How did the 2nd equipment rehearsal go?
Have the remaining cast for The Babysitter been confirmed?
Is everyone feeling comfortable and confident with the equipment and software?
What is the stand on pre-production for The Hookman
An important sequence in ManiaFrame that the whole crew were focused on capturing with great quality, was the office scene with a clowns death. This was quite a strong and pivotal scene with its visual style. The crew planned out and tested how the death scene would go down using a pump and fake blood to give the squirting effect for when the clown slits his throat. We had three clowns dressed and acting for the scene, along with a bunch of extras to fill up the scene with office workers. We captured the majority of the cut aways and build up scenes early on before we cause a mess with the death scene and it gave more time for the clowns to get dressed and prepared for the shot. We did a few run throughs with the actors to plan out the best way we could make it look crazy and brutal without hurting or injuring anyone, we managed to organise and choreograph and good looking death scene which would translate well on film.
We filmed the office scene in the Seminar Room at CCAD and rearranged tables and chairs to give a more office building feel. The extras were all great and helpful with sparing their time for the shoot but the main shot to capture today was the clowns death scene, which was to be a one take with no other times to repeat it, so all the pressure was on the one shot. Dan practised capturing the shot so he understood where he was following and how to keep it focused on whats happening, Glenn hid under a table and operated the blood pump which would release mayhem once the clown pretends to slit his throat. The shot went as great was we wanted and had us all give of a sigh of relief when done, all the actors and extras were stunned and impressed with the shot as well. The only problem that was really wrong with the scene was that it seems like there is quite the delay with the time the clown slits his throats and when the blood starts pouring out. You can't really see the blood start flooding out of the throat until they hit the table and little later on. It still works great and doesn't take you out of the film or make it less believable, we just would've preferred or more bloody and graphic scene but we can work with what we got.
The whole shoot was really built upon and around this shoot and was great to have it out of the way and not be worrying about it anymore. The other shots for the day were simple and basic compared to it and went quite smoothly, we successfully put together one of our most complicated shoots to manage and pulled it off quite well. The white clown costume which was been worn by the Ryan Siggers who performed the death scene, was created specifically for our production by someone on the Costume Design and it was incredibly well designed and great looking. I'm glad we were able to use other course to our benefit to add more production value to our shoot.
Another important shoot day for the production was the runaway scene and death scene of a main character, this was to take place in forest and we researched multiple forests and locations for the scene but landed on Wynyard Woodland Park, as it was suitable for filming and was also closer by than many of the others. The shoot was one day and only required three actors. I was driver, runner and actor on this shoot, playing the part of young Abraxa's. We had to carry the equipment into the forest to a spot we searched for early that had everything we needed close by and would hopefully be quiet with less people walking by. We had some issue with sound as we were given the wrong SD card and the recorder rejected it, so we were down without sound for the shoot but it wasn't too bad as the scene was to be dubbed in a different language with english subtitles.
The location was beautiful and looks great for filming and will translate great on film, there weren't really any complications or mess ups, it ran pretty smoothly, as always time constraints was our main issue, and I feel like Glenn may have over scheduled the day with too many scenes to capture so we were in a rush to capture all the footage so we wouldn't have to go back for a second shoot day. It was quite stressful with how long certain shots were taking to set up, knowing we one had not a lot of time left and more and more shots to get. Once the filming started it would get more progressive but any breaks were just making us fall behind.
We managed to capture all the important scenes and cut aways and quite a few look really good whereas some may lack quality due to Dan's camera work with it not been in focus on the right thing a few times. Overall I'd say the shoot day at Wynyard Woodland Park was a success and it was great to shoot at a new interesting location which would set our production apart from others, as it was another great look environment and location to add to the production. Whereas a lot of other productions are using a lot of local and common looking locations for their work.
One of our main shots and main scenes in the short film ManiaFrame, is a teashop scene which we filmed at Penshaw Monument near Sunderland. The monument is a great landmark and a great place to film as its such a sight and adds production value to our film. It's open to the public so a main issue was just making sure we didn't have any interruptions or people walking into shots. We had quite a few difficulties with the weather filming at Penshaw as it's quite high up so we had to carry the equipment up to it and it was quite windy which was an issue for sound and had the cast and crew very cold throughout the shoot. Time issues prevented us from getting all the shots the first time round and our second trip had a problem with the film camera and the film jamming preventing us from filming anything. Our third visit was successful as we used the Blackmagic camera due to our upcoming deadline and not having enough time to shoot on film.
We were able to capture quite a few establishing shots and dolly shots on the 16mm the first visit and was quite a smooth shoot apart from the cold weather and the crew took quite some time setting up which had us unable to capture all the shots we'd like as we ran out of time with the actors. This resulted in adding a second shoot day at Penshaw which was quite an inconvenience as we already had such a tight filming schedule. Our second shoot day didnt go successful at all, we drove all the way to the monument and carried all the equipment up to the location and was unable to capture any footage due to the camera jamming and us been prevented to fix it causing us to call of the shoot. This resulted in a third and final shot day after easter when we should've been in pre-production which delayed our editing time and we needed to film digital as we wouldn't have enough time to get the film processed and edited before the deadline. We filmed on the Blackmagic and had quite the successful shoot day but still had complications with the wind which was a pain for Jamie who was on sound.
After seeing the footage come back the location was the perfect choice and looks fantastic on film. The production went to many locations and I feel it added production value to the film and gives it a look, feel and style that many over student films lack by filming in simple and common locations which takes you out of the film. Despite the difficulties that we had, the shots at Penshaw were great experience for filming in public places and ended up being very valuable. If we were to do it again, we would probably try to get more coverage but we would also be more efficient with already filming their on multiple occasions.
During the minor project module I also helped out fellow student Michael Reynolds, edit his final piece for minor. Mic was working on a short horror film, trying to display horror tropes and what scares and builds suspense. He filmed all his shots and got all his footage done quite quick but wanted my help in editing the final piece, due to his lack of experience and knowledge in Avid and editing. I agreed to help him but with his minor work been how to create and build suspense and such, I was only there to assist with the collecting and editing of the piece, whereas Mic needed to make the cuts and let me know exactly what he wanted, I needed to stay creatively bias from his work.
