Editing Hana Bi

I thought it would be easier to edit it through adding in the most distinctive pieces first, such as the main actions like walking, spray painting and wriping the paper off the car.

Therefore I started at the beginning with the foot steps. Luckily the speed in which you hear the footsteps in exactly how it was so it was only lining up the first step and the rest just feel into place. To add some dimension to the sound i altered the volume so that as he walks away from the camera you hear the foot steps slowly get quieter before he stops. I then went through the entire clip and each time he moves around and therefore taking a step I added a step of sound. Then when he walks around the car il not only altered the sound I panned it to the right when he walks of screen then comes back central when he appears back in shot. These are all the green colour tracks.

Next I decided to tackle the car. Previously at college I had a similar project where we had a van wheel spin off and drive around so it didn't take me too long to piece together these sounds. I used a mixture of track to build up several sounds before I felt it sounds realistic enough. I first had the engine starting, then had a sound of a car on a dirt road and a car pulling up to get the sounds of the car reversing out of the garage and skidding stop. I would have wanted to use a sound of an actual car reversing cos it sounds different to a car driving forward but didn't have a car at my disposal so thought this would do. I then added the sound of a car wheel spinning off. I found in the library a sound of a car doing this and it drives of into the distance nicely so when i added this is fitted well so just faded out the other sounds and just had this as i drove off. These sounds are all the ... colour tracks.

I then thought I would start on the difficult scenes decorating the car. I started with the shaking of the can first as I thought this would be easier. It took a while to add them all in as there was a few quick ones in between the sprays, but I cut up the track into smaller shakes to place in each gap where he shacked the can and it seemed to work nicely. I then had to attempt to add the sound of the actual spray. first of all I used the sound of a deodorant can and i took me ages cos the spray sound I was editing was was shorter then the length of time he sprays. I tried repeating and overlaying the track so lengthen it but could here where it repeated itself and was very off putting. In the end I used the sound of hairspray can as this was more of a continuous spray sound that could be looped several times and flowed a lot better. I then went along and added this in every time I saw the spray can start and stop. These are all the red tracks.

Next was the news paper. I had several track of moving paper, ripping it and screwing it up and it wasnt till i spent ages layering and layering it it made it sort of fit. I took ages to try and match up each time he would touch the paper have a subtle rustling noise, then he would rip it so have that. Then he would screw it up and throw it on the floor so would try and match this as best I could. I then added in sounds of the tape ripping. Like the spray sounds it wasn't as long as the action on screen was so I used time stretch to try and make it longer but if it was stretched too much and turned a bit tinny so its still a bit shorter then is it on screen but it was the best I could do. Each effect I tried to get rid of the tin-ness seemed to make it sound worse so decided to stay with a shorter sound. I also added in the sound of the plastic as he pulls it off the car. in the end i used a sound that was suppose to sound like clothing but to me sounds a lot more like plastic so when added it worked well. I overlapped it so had two tracks of it one a gentle rustle of plastic and the other the sound of him pulling then screwing it up into a ball. These are all the grey tracks.

Thought it would be best to try and add some of the smaller subtle sounds to add a bit more to the piece, such as when he puts his jacket and hat down and fiddles around with the lights on the roof. For the coat and hat I used a sound of a flag and cut out a small flap of the flag. This worked well with the action on screen and think it was just enough sound to make the actions seem more realistic rather then try and add more sound to it and over crowd it. For the sound of the roof I used a track that was suppose to sound like packing boxes but I thought it worked well as was just noises or rummaging around and this could work as you cant exactly see what he was doing. I just doubled this up with two separate parts of the sound bite to build up a bit more then a flat sound. These are the ... colour tracks.

Through out the whole piece I added the ambience track of a wind. in one of the shots you can see the big fabric doors moving in the wind and on the last shot you see trees moving so this implies it is a windy day. In the interior shots I turned the track down as it would obviously be quieter but as the fabric doors were still open a fraction you would be able to hear it still. and then when it switched to an exterior shot I increased the volume slightly. I really liked this as in the last shot when the car drives of and can no longer hear the engine you can just hear the ambience of the tress and wind still and I really liked this. This track I coloured blue.

To try and bring the piece together and make it flow I decided to add in a music track. As I am completely useless as being creative, especially when I comes to composing music I decided to use a track from Free Music Archive. I found the track ... and thought this worked well but didn't like it when i got to the singing part. so i cut up and looped the intro stages where there was just a simple beat. I thought this would work to just keep up a rhythm to the piece as visually it was very boring as just shows a man painting his car.

I think that there are both strong and weak elements to this piece. I like how I have synced up the sound of the spray paint, which did take ages, but then think I should have worked more on the paper and added more tracks to build up more layers to it to make it seem more then it was.