War of the Worlds - Edit Stage 3

During our seminar in which neil was going through the clips he said about War of the Worlds and I made these notes of ideas and things to think about:

• There are CU and MLS so will sound different
• They are hiding so don't want to be loud
• Floor - covered in dirt and leaves so will be crumbly
• Use Pan and Volume to make sure the prob moves
• Rat - scratchy
• The prob has a personality - flares, moves and constantly changes
• Snakey ??
• When gets closer to the mirror - crank volume up
• Boot - massive feature sound!
• Speed up and build tension then relief again
• Use a cellar as similar settings

So taking on these comments I went down into my old dark cellar and use this as the setting for my recording. I mainly focused on trying to get footsteps on the  dirt and used several types of shows to get the difference between Racheal's and Tom's.

War of the Worlds - Edit Stage 2

Editing today I thought I would just carry on from where I left off. I added in the clicking as the lights turn on the the front of the Robot eye. I did this by getting the sound of a clock and cutting it up and placing then each times the light flicks on then editing the EQ and Pitch of it before I was happy with it. I then went through and started adding in the breathe from Racheal when the camera is close up and you see the cob webs moving as she breathes. The breathing sounds I had were either too fast or too slow so decided to cut up the faster ones and place each section of a breathe each time I saw the cob web move direction. I think this little pause in the breathe at times is nice cos shows that she's trying not to be that heavy.

I also started building up on top of Tom cruises footsteps with Racheals i uses a similar footstep but changed the EQ so sounded different to Tom's. Once I had lined all these up I went to Save but being Soundtrack Pro it crashed and didn't. Went to find it again it was nowhere to be found so my afternoon of lining up sounds was wasted and had to start the process all over again.

I then went and started the process again lining up the clicks of lights and footsteps and breathing again, here is a screen shot of some more sounds I added since it crashed.

War of the Worlds - Edit Stage 1

I started editing the piece today and though I would play about trying to get the noise I wanted for the robot eye.

First of all I just started with the basic and created a waveform thinking id start with a basic noise. This was harder then I thought, I wanted the small and spaced out sound waves of the low frequency notes but the pitch of a higher one. I attempted to slow down a higher pitch tone, this didn't work, I tried changing the pitch of a low frequency tone but this also didn't give me the humming I wanted.

I thought I would move onto actual recording. I was going through the sound library trying to think of sounds that I could manipulate into the humming that I want. I came across a recording of a truck engine that had a rhythmic hum to it so decided this was a good starting point. So got the sound into Soundtrack Pro and started playing around with effects. I kept altering the Pitch of it, time stretching it to change the rhythm of it. I also applied EQ to it to cut out the higher and lower sounds trying to get the right sound. This was better then the waveform idea but still not what I wanted

Carrying on searching through sound for inspiration i thought about an actual hum from a fly or bug. Got a recording of a fly of the library to experiment with but like before everything i tried just didnt give me what I wanted and could picture in my head. I then went on to recording of a hover. This turned out to be the best so far. Like I had on the truck engine I altered the speed to slow it down a little, EQ to roll of the high and low tones and then played around with the Pitch. This seem to work the best so far. when listening to it a couple times I couldn't stop concentrating on the other noise still in the original hoover recording that I felt I was getting close but no where clear enough to use it.

Giving up on recordings I turned musical and went on Garage Band. Just opened a basic piano and played one single note gradually in creasing and decreasing the tempo. Imported this into Soundtrack Pro and adding the effect I tried in the previous sounds I found that this is what I wanted. I went through the clip changing the tempo of the notes so that when the Eye moves faster the tempo increase and then slows down when the eye does. I Then thought that not only change tempo but I was going to change the pitch of the note in relation to the speed of the eye. I felt that I would best do this with the use of creating points on the timeline and dragging to certain pitch changes as this way I could be accurate with when exactly I wanted it to change.

Like in my plan I played around with the use of pan and volume along with the tempo in order to try and create more dimension to the piece. I started with the volume and going through in creasing the level at times when the eye came closer to the camera and quieter when it moves away, as well as being quite when the camera focuses on the People. Following that i did a similar process with the panning, when the eye was left of scene I would make sure it was panned left and when right of screne it was paned to the right etc.

I thought my next step was to start adding in all the layers of the people. I thought I would just attacked in in order of how it happens on screen. so the first main actions of the people was Tom Cruise when he crawls back behind the arm of the sofa so used the recording of bare feet walking and added a slight echo to it which I think made it seem like the wood creaking slightly underneath him. 

War of the Worlds - Plan

Like I have done on the exercise I decided to break down the scene but the main sounds that I felt were important to help bring this scene to life. Here is the screen grabs and my noted on sounds:

• This shot start with the robot eye appearing and the lights turning on. For the sound of the eye I want an almost humming sort of sound the changed frequency in relation to the speed in which it is moving. I haven't figured out how Im going todo this but I know what I want it to sound like.
• The lights on the eyes turn on, I think for this i could just use the sound of a build flicking on like if you was to turn on big lights say in a hall you hear them warm up and ping on.

• I goes to the close up on the character Racheal you see cob webs of how heavy she is breathing. Obviously here I would make sure i have heavy breathing to show how scared she is. 

• On sweeping shot you start of on the eye then sweep round and follow Tom Cruise as he crawls back behind the sofa. Here I would make sure I layer it up with the sound of his clothes moving as he moves and the subtle noise as he lifts and places his hands. 
• I always was to try and play around so that when the eye turns around the end of the sofa to look into the camera intensify the humming and play around with the different pitch levels on it. 

• When the rat runs across screen I plan to layer up sounds of rustling sounds as obviously can record a rat running across an old wooden floor. 
• I al so want to heighten the pitch when the rat appears, almost as if it make the eye jump helping bring him to life. kinda of almost like Walle would make a high pitch noise. 

• When Racheal runs acrooss to Tom's arms I will have to match up her foot prints before he spins around and holds her still. I think I will just play around with normal foot prints syncing them up and trying to make them a bit quieter as she would have been trying to be quiet.
• The eye appears from into the frame on the right hand side before leaving on the left to i think this could be a good place to pan the humming creating some more dimension.

• They move a mirror into the view of the eye and hide behind it. I will have to make sur ei include sounds of picking up and placing the mirror down.
• I think here, especially when the camera is held with the eye on the right of the frame and them on the left, to have them heavy breathing and might see what its like with a heart beat or something. but I think I could play around here with music also. 

• Here I will have to make sure i have the noise of her foot falling out but I want to make sure this is quite a loud as would be intense in relation to the quite of the rest of the house. 
• With the noise of the robot I will also want to do something similar like when the rat runs out with the use of pitch and speed of the humming.

• When the eye goes around the back of the mirror I want to build up the tension here as you think they are there and are going to get caught, could try this with the use of a low level frequency building up or some sort of music.
• I'd like to also try and make the humming seem a little disappointed here as if the eye thought he had found them. Not too sure how i could go about this yet but think it will take a bit of playing around to find a way.

• When the eye is going out the house I will try and carry on the disappointed hum continue and have a similar noise as the lights made when they turned on to have when they turn off.

Comments on Edit

During the presentation I made these comments about what was being said:

• Found the shake of the spray can a bit of putting as was too loud so should have brought the level down a bit.
• music was a good choice as created an low pulsing but may have been improved if built up to where the car was, either has finale of music when drove off or bring up the level of engine for the finale. 
• The atmos was a good level and brought it together.
• Liked the fact I played around with Atmos, Foley and Music.

Overall I was pleased with my outcome. looking at other peoples, especially those that had some Hanna Bi too, made me realise the things i missed out and how i could improve mine. I think the fact I had watched it over and over I don't notice these little things as focusing on sounds i'm trying to edit. For the fact that sound wasn't my first choice and swapped over I did really enjoy doing this exercise and found it a lot of help when looking at other peoples work now. 

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.

Laura Moses

I came across this journal by Laura Moses and thought this segment sums up the use and importance of the sound in relation to image really nicely. She writes about how sound is used to enhance the visuals and is just as important the the image. The sound track needs to be effective enough to become multi-sensory but not distract from the image. If you was to replace every sound in the frame in certain shots then this could be overwhelming as everyday life noise is far to dense at times. 

Here is the full extract:

Sound design is the process of planning and creating a sound treatment that will enhance the storytelling of a film. Effective sound design improves a film withoutbeing overbearing or calling attention to itself.

Walter Murch coined the term sound design after creating the sound treatment for Apocalypse Now--a film that, along with Star Wars, forever changed the approachto sound editing in filmmaking. By incorporating simple aspects of the craft into our films, we can enhance our productions to better connect with consumers,which will result in more bookings and will increase the value of our product.

"Sound is NOT there to 'help' the visuals. That's kindergarten filmmaking. Anyone who says that film is a visual medium is being foolish and naive."--Randy Thorn,sound designer (Harry Potter, Forrest Gump, Eragon)

The elements of sound are dialogue, music, and effects. The category of sound that is sorely underutilized in our industry is effects. Think about music videos. Thepurpose of a music video is to sell a track of music. Therefore, the music is primary, with all else being secondary. We, on the other hand, are attempting to tell astory, and music plays only one small part in accomplishing that goal.

Ambient sound is the natural background sound of any given environment. Ambience creates atmosphere and establishes a setting. It serves to set the mood andtone of a scene. If a couple is walking on the beach and ambient sound of the surf is captured and placed strategically in the film, the oceanic atmosphere will beheightened. The setting will then become multisensory.

"Sound is a heart thing."--Alan Splet, sound designer (best-known for his work with David Lynch) Sound speaks to the emotions, not the intellect. Its power, thoughoften subliminal, can be extremely profound. There's a scene in As Good as It Gets where Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt are having dinner at a restaurant. Theambient track consists of the murmur of background conversations and the faint clinking of glasses and silverware. As their conversation becomes more intimate, theambient sound is faded down, bringing the audience into this revelatory, private moment.

In wedding films, ambient sound of the bridesmaids laughing softly as the bride is dressing sets a tone of happiness and excitement. Clients will often be unaware ofthis type of sound treatment on a conscious level. However, they will connect with it emotionally. And affecting your prospective clients emotionally, through yourclips, is vital to selling your product.

The term "room tone" refers to the sound in an empty room. No room is truly silent, and each has its own distinct sound. In the making of motion pictures, roomtone is recorded and used behind dialogue to smooth out cuts and provide a consistent sound bed when, for example, the director's voice is edited out.

Event filmmakers can use room tone to improve the quality of just about everything we film. Pockets of dead air in a production are a silent killer. Prerecorded roomtone will erase the jarring effects of dead air when sniffles or other unwanted sounds are edited out. Additionally, you can fade up room tone (or ambient sound atan outdoor wedding) as a lead-in (and out) to sound bites in stylized productions. This will reduce the jarring effect of going from a music only track to livecaptured sound.

Another key element of effective sound design is walla, a studio-captured mumbling (or buzz) of background voices. Walla adds atmosphere and a sense of reality.The genesis of the word goes back to the days of old radio shows. To create the sound of a crowd in the background, players would assemble and recite "walla"repeatedly to simulate conversation without any discernible words. Nowadays, Automatic Dialogue Replacement (ADR) groups record actual backgroundconversations for films.

If you're unable to capture clean sound on location for a cocktail hour, simply add a track of walla along with your music track. It will enhance the effervescentatmosphere of friends and family being together; plus, with the music, it helps smooth out the cuts.

Prerecorded sound effects provide realism. Sounds such as birds singing, crickets chirping, and waves crashing all serve to take a wedding film from visual tovisceral. The number of sound effects that can substantially enhance concept video productions is limitless. Sounddogs.com (http://sounddogs.com) has everysound effect imaginable.

The significance of a moment can be conveyed through the employment of hyper-real sound--sound that's exaggerated to convey a message. An example is thebreaking of the glass at a Jewish wedding where the sound can end up more of a whisper than a roar. By raising the level of the sound beyond what one wouldexperience in reality, the magnitude and significance of the act are emphasized.

Our brains naturally tune into the sounds that are pertinent to us and background the rest. We tune out sounds such as footsteps. Exaggerating these sounds keepsthem from being overlooked. As sound editors, it's up to us to decide which sounds we want to be the focus of attention for our audience.

Attempting to re-createthe actual soundtrack of life would be distracting because it can be too densely loaded with noises. The trick is to use sound to make a point rather thanoverwhelming viewers with a cacophony of competing noises.

"Unveil the truth by embracing the false."--Laura Moses

By thinking creatively and using sound effects to reveal the truth within our stories, we can touch the hearts and souls of our audience.

By Laura Moses

Source by Event DV; Jan/Feb 2010, Vol. 23 Issue 1, p37