Sound- case study

Devising and Planning a Soundtrack:

Devising a soundtrack can become very complicated unless everyone involved has a role in putting it together, and everyone on the team know the plan for sound ect. Especially the director, recordists, editors, and the composer. If the plan wasn't made clear it may cause issues in spotting, which is the organization process for timings etc. Or picture look, which id editing the sound in sync with the picture which if a clapper board isn't used can be very difficult and time consuming. When recording sound, in some cases, it would be wise to make two recordings, it is very easy for a glitch to ruin your sound, and if so your whole scene.

Runaway- My short film.

In my short film runaway I made a decision to have make it a non dialogue piece. But still wanted to use sound, so I chose to largely make my own sound rather than solely recording on set as I had a clear idea of exactly what I wanted.  I wanted the surroundings of the main character to be clear to the audience. The girl has left home and taken to the streets, therefore I want a lot of windy sounds to show she is cold. This sound will mostly be pre recorded. I think using loud sounds of the characters surroundings can evoke her emotion, putting a loud windy sound with an image of her looking cold and upset makes it clearer to the audience how she is feeling. I used soundtrack pro to make our soundtrack, this is a non-copyright software giving you access to millions of sounds. On the software we would search the sound we wanted, for example footsteps, and then drag that sound onto our timeline. On soundtrack pro you can edit each track on its volume level and even distort the sound to create something new. After doing this I would export it as an AIFF to apply it to final cut. 

Locations- since I am not using dialogue, this makes the planning for on location different. When using dialogue you need a direct mic, which only picks up sound in the direction its pointed, for example the boom mic. But I want all sounds in my piece, so the audience understand the surroundings. Therefore I will take a recording prior to filming on set, I will use a zoom h2m, this mic generally picked up all of the surroundings rather than being directed to the sound on one spot. 

Boom:

Zoom H2M

M3P is a format for audio tracks, it has high fidelity, is easy and simple to edit with and it doesn’t cost anything. You can also use it with HTTP, FTP protocols and on CD or other portable media. The only problem is sometimes the sound can be low quality, depending on what source it comes from. It also makes music piracy very easy, converting videos (mainly from YouTube) to Mp3, and having the music in a lower quality than the artist intended. And seriously lowering the profit for the artists.  Music artists usually apply to MCPS for a PRS to cover their music rights. They make monthly payments for the rights company to track the artists music, and ensure it doesn’t get illegally copied or re-distributed.  

 My Promo

When recording sound for my promo video I had to asses the location first, in order to select the right mic, all depending on outside noise, inside echo etc. Since I was interviewing I also wanted to use the right one to pick up peoples voices rather than unwanted noise. An omni directional microphone is the shotgun microphone, I used this as it seemed like the best option. I propped it on a surface in which it was facing the interviewee. The sound was good, but it did have a few clicks, so i ran it through soundtrack pro using the 'clicks and pops' selection to eliminate it.