final cut basics

Vox pops

In last weeks lesson we were asked to go out and collect a selection of Vox pops from students around the university. Together with simon and Esther we asked various people the question, do you like poetry? We recorded around fourteen responses and then returned to the gate house and began the process of editing.

The task was very rewarding and helped my overcome my initial feeling of reserve at stopping people and asking them to comment. I realized that most people do have something to say and that the responses are very varied. I think this task has helped set us up for recording on thursday, it was a good practice run and has given us a good idea of what to do and expect.

soundscape assignment

For this assignment we have been asked create a soundscape 3 - 4 minutes in duration which demonstrates an understanding of the use of audio to evoke an atmosphere.

I have decided to record the process of cooking dinner for two, which will involve a trip to the supermarket as well as cooking dinner.

I have begun recording the sounds for my soundscape using the Edriol mp3 recorder.

I had to experiment at first to try to get the sound levels right and have found that it is better to break a sound affect down into sections if there are various sound levels. For example with opening the door the first part the door handle going down is much louder than the actual squeak of the door opening so I recorded them separately at the correct level and will put them back together in the edit.

Having collected most of the sounds I want to use I have been going through the lengthy process of editing each sound using Sony Sound Forge audio editing software. I have given each sound a relevant name and normalized the levels, with some sounds I have managed to edit out unwanted peaks and noises and have experimented with the noise gate to reduce buzzing sounds in the background.

Sound Forge

Once I have processed and named all the sounds I will then use logic to assemble them and create the soundscape.

Final stages

I have now completed naming and processing my sound recordings and have begun to assemble the sounds in logic using mulitracks, one track is for enviromental back ground noises and another two tracks for the individual sounds.It now seems my sound scape is begining to take shape.

I reckon I have another three hours or so to finish assembling the sounds and making any final adjustments, but I am going to give myself a whole day in the gate house in case of any unforseen problems that might occur.

Famous Last words...

Today I learned the very valuable lesson in the importance of saving your project as you progress, I managed to loose a few hours work whilst working on my project in Logic, which resulted in my having to stop two thirds of the way through, bounce out the project and bring home the files to finish off. I saved what I had of the project as a wav file knowing Sony Vegas was compatible with the format, and was able to import it along with the other sounds and finally complete it just in the nick of time.



Although I gave myself a little extra time thinking I might run over by a few hours, after todays experience in future I will give more time for unforeseen problems and think at least a day would be a much better time scale to give myself.

Montage.

I had to think long and hard about this one I checked out magnum in motion to glean some insperation and ideas. I finnally came up with idea as using glastonbury festival as my topic.

As I Live in the village that hosts the festival I am well aware of the controversy that surrounds the event and the impact that 250'000 weekend visitors have on both people and the environment, I aim to illustrate through montage the side that you do not see and the reality behind the festival.

Photos taken on saturday.

I already have some footage and photos from previous years at the festival which I intend to use, but with this montage I want to draw a comparison between the land whilst the festival is in full swing and the site how it is when there are just the cows, the rabbits and the birds. Saturday was beautiful autumn day, so I took the opportunity to go out and photograph and film the festival site as it is when peaceful and quiet.

Lengthy Process

I have began editing film and choosing photographs for my montage, trawling through old footage was a lengthy process but I managed to narrow down the clips I want use. The editing software I am using is sony vegas,

It works in a different way to final cut pro, but the principles are the same, and I have gained a better understanding of the program by doing the tutorials on Final Cut Pro. I am now able to organize all the media into bins and understand the setup process more clearly.

In the lesson today I finished off my montage, although I had worked on it at home I still needed to tweak it a little.

The music I used was from a band called Back of Beyond and the album is called meeting pool, all the imagery was taken by myself.

In the Name of Fun

In the name of fun from mandybriggs on Vimeo.

Radio program assignment

We have been set our first group assignment. Together with Simon and Esther we are to produce and construct a radio program 4-5 minutes in duration.

At the end of last weeks lesson we were given some time to come up with a topic, Simon came up with the subject of music and we were all happy to go along with it and got down to discussing what would make interesting listening.

I found that ideas developed quickly between us in comparison to working alone and after brain storming for half an hour or so, we decided to do do a short program about music and the effects different eras and genres have had upon society and how that compares to music today. We will use a mixture of narrative, music, voxpops and interviews to construct the program.We have each taken different subjects to research, mine been punk rock and the blues. The team will meet again on Tuesday to discuss our ideas further.

Today we had to present our pitch proposal but had to rethink and refine some of our original ideas before making the presentation. Mike pointed out that we would need more than five minutes to cover all the topics we had chosen, so we narrowed down the idea but have kept with the original theme of Music and its revolutionary effect upon culture and society.

We will be asking " Why isn't music revolutionary today" and looking at the reasons that might be.

• The digital age and the major changes in technology.
• The way people consume music today is very different from how it used to be, with the click of a button single tracks can be simply down loaded to a computers music library, not as engaging as physically going out to the shop and buying a C.D or vinyl album, which came packaged and would usually tell some sort of story about the band.
• Has society simply become more apathetic and our youth less rebellious. Is there less to kick against hence the lack of new raw talent crying out against the system. As we have seen in the past with other musical movements there have always been clashes and rebellian against establishment.

I found this clip whilst researching for ideas and think this illustrates some of the issues weve been looking at.

On Tuesday our team got together to discuss our radio program further, we have each taken on different tasks and have arranged to meet in Bath town centre to record vox pops from the general public. The question we will be asking is "in your opinon why do you think music isnt revolutionary today". We are also going to interveiw people who have a conection to the music industry and ask the question " why do you think the advent of the digital age affects music production and consumerism today"

The action points I have been given to complete before our next meeting on thurs are as follows..

• Book recording equipment and broadcast lab.
• choose five music tracks from the dance era
• collect voxpops from freinds people

Tues 17th nov.

The team had a brief meeting today to catch up on how things are going. The equipment is booked and we are all set to go on thursday, to collect vox pops in Bath town centre. We discused how the introduction would go, and what music we will use.

Radio Program Update

Today the team met in bath town centre, we set up the equipment and checked the sound levels and set about collecting vox pops. We tried to aim for sheltered parts of the street as the wind was howling a gale today and also took into consideration the street cleaners noise. I had asked for a 'Dead cat' to cover the microphone as I knew the wind was going to cause us some problems.

We found that most people were willing to give us their opinion and were not deterred by the few no,s we received . Each of us took a turn at both recording and interviewing, when we were happy with the amount of vox pops collected, we went for a coffee and did a spot check on the recordings to make sure they were fine.

I will save the recordings we have so far to my computer, then the team will meet again on wednesday to begin editing.

I am pleased with the outcome of today I feel we achieved quiet a lot and we each had a positive input into the project, what is more I found the task enjoyable and was intrigued to hear the very different responses that people gave.

Meeting 23rd november

Minutes

present : Simon Partington, Esther Ridings, Mandy Briggs.

location: gatehouse, Bathspa

Date: 23/11/09

Action point: each team member to edit down recorded material.

Action point: have their chosen music ready in a format to import into Logic.

Time line : edit together the remainder of the vox pops and audio by 2nd dec and finish overall process by 4th

Today we had a short meeting in class and ran over some of the details we wish to use in the edit. Each team member has collected vox pops, interviews and music needed for the show and its now just a matter of editing the audio and choosing the relevant material then recording the narrative.

25th November

I began the process of editing the vox pops and interview I have recorded, I found that some of the techniques I had learned previously in the voice over edit, came in really handy. I have had to really narrow down and edit the recordings as five minutes is still a short amount of time for all the content we have.

I have put together just over a minute of the radio show combining the interview music and voxpos relating to the dance era. The music tracks have been sourced from both my own music store and from you tube: Ledfeild, dance track, rave track. I have combined the music with relevant vox pops and sections of my interview. Keeping things to a minimal is proving to be difficult and a ruthless approach must be taken, only the most relevant recordings need to be used.

The team plan to meet again next week when we can go over what has been done so far and discuss the finer details of what will go into the final edit.

minutes
Meeting!!

Present: Mandy, Esther and Simon!!!
Date 1/12/09
Location: Gatehouse

Action point: Meet Friday following class to further post production. Possible meet on Monday if needed!!!

Action point: All members of group to bring their recordings/music to aid with Radio show!!

Mandy says do not check with Rich, Simon and Esther disagree … after much deliberation we find out that Mandy is correct.

Order Coles microphone for voice over.

Mandy and Simon post to blog the voxpops and edits already completed.

Esther to write out ideas for the script.

When we met today one of the action points discussed was to post to our blogs the edited material we had done so far and the vox pops collected in Bath:

Vox pops and interview

Dance Rant x factor

Finished !!

Monday 6th December, the team got together in the gate house to finish off the final edit and record the voice over, we used a Coles microphone for the task as we were working in the gate house and their were many environmental sounds. The "Coles lip mic" was designed to pick up sound directly around it and not to record unwanted background noise.