Week 11 (28/11) : Acoustic Portrait Edit and Critical Introduction

This week I started the edit of my acoustic portrait, I imported all of my recordings into Adobe Audition and gave them a second listen through. Much to my surprise, the editing process for the acoustic portrait was a lot simpler than I first thought. I decided I wanted to give my piece a cyclical nature so I started it off with the sound of a door opening and the light turning on, and ended it with the door closing and light turning off. All the recordings that I used throughout the piece were my own and I did not rely on any existing sound effects at all. It was really exciting to be able to put all my recordings together and paint a sonic picture of my bathroom, incorporating all the different sounds that a lot of people wouldn't even recognise normally. I layered a range of sounds on top of each other throughout the piece in order to created an element of extra depth for the audience, in order to fully experience the atmosphere of the bathroom.

I'm really happy with how my acoustic portrait turned out, especially as it wasn't my original idea! My acoustic portrait can be found here.

After finishing the edit of my acoustic portrait I then went on to write my critical introductions. I struggled a lot with this as I find it really difficult to explain the intentions that I have behind my work in a sophisticated and effective way. Luckily, after speaking with my tutor and discussing ways to make the process easier I managed to write two critical introductions that I was really happy with.

I'm really happy with how the whole module turned out and I'm so pleased that I managed to create to pieces of work that I'm proud of and thoroughly enjoyed producing. 

Week 10 (21/11) : Acoustic Portrait Shoot & Walter Murch Presentation

This week I planned to shoot my acoustic portrait but unfortunately I had a lot of problems booking out the equipment that I wanted to use for when I wanted to use it. Due to the fact that the equipment has to be returned by 10am the morning after you book it out (and that I also live off campus) meant that the days where I could book out/use the equipment were very limited. I managed to find a day where I could book out the equipment, shoot, and get the equipment back by the next morning at 10am. I went down to the Greyhound Stadium in Hove (23/11) and set up the equipment. Unfortunately, due to it being mid November and extremely cold outside it meant that there was next to no one at the stadium apart from the dogs and their trainers. I recorded some sounds of the dogs running around the track, the man speaking over the tannoy etc, and when listening to it back it really didn't pick up much at all. The sounds were really uninteresting and there was way less sound than I originally thought there would be. 

Due to the sound equipment being in very high demand at this time in the semester the kit I wanted to use was all booked out during the times when I was able to pick it up and shoot. Unfortunately this meant that I had to come up with another idea, fast (as the Greyhound stadium really didn't turn out as planned). As I had the kit already and still had a little time that evening I decided to make an acoustic portrait of my bathroom. Although it seems like a simple idea at first, I'd never heard anyone make an acoustic portrait of a bathroom before so I thought it would be a good opportunity to experiment, and the sounds would be easier to manipulate in my own home as I had full control, rather than at the Greyhound stadium when I had to catch the sounds as and when they came. I returned home with the kit and set it up again in my bathroom. I managed to get some really intricate recordings of my Mum running a bath and swooshing the water around, taps running, brushing teeth, deodrant spraying etc, and I was a lot happier with the quality of these recordings. Usually I hate the squeaky floor in my bathroom but it actually made a nice sound and added an element of greater depth to the recording. I spent around two hours playing around with different items and utilities in the bathroom and recorded as much footage as I could before I ran out of ideas. It was really fun to experiment with all the different sounds and I'm excited to put them into Adobe Audition and see what I can do with them.

In class this week (25/11) I had to give my presentation on Walter Murch. I was meant to be producing and giving this presentation with another member of my class but even after lots of trying I was unable to actually get a response from him, so I was left to create the whole presentation myself at the last minute, which was very tricky. I managed to produce a presentation that I was fairly happy with. The presentation that I created and my notes can be found below.

Week 9 (14/11) : Editing Session No.2, Intro and Outro

In this weeks class (18/11) I had a fairly easy job, I had completed the majority of the interview edit the week before so in class I went down to the foley studio in the Media, Film & Music building with a couple of students from my class as well as my tutor in order to record our intros and outros. I was the last one to record my intro and outro which actually worked in my favour as I was able to watch the process beforehand to get an idea of how it all worked and how my peers were doing theirs. I wrote down a brief script of what I wanted to say so that when I got into the booth I didn't have to panic and think of what to say off the top of my head. 

I found the recording process really interesting as I had never been/worked in a studio like that before, so being able to experience it for the first time was great. I had to record my intro and outro a couple of times due to the fact that I tended to rush through what I wanted to say really quickly, I think that I can confidently say that this was down to nervousness! Despite this, after a couple of trial runs I managed to slow down my script and animate my voice so that it sounded more 'radio-esque'. It was really scary being in front of the microphone and having two other people behind a big glass screen watching me speak but it was an interesting experience nonetheless, and I'm quite happy with how both my intro and my outro turned out.

After coming back from the foley studio I took the recordings from the USB that we used and  transferred the recording to my media for drive. I put the recording into Adobe Audition and cropped the clip, leaving just my part of the recording in the timeline. After listening to my recording back I noticed that I have a lot of sibilance in my voice, so I put the recording through the effect 'de-esser', just to make it sound a little less sibilant. I then went on a website called Bensound to find some royalty free music that I could use as a backing track for my intro and my outro which would transition nicely into the interview. I found a track called 'Happiness' that I really liked and thought would fit nicely with the tone of my interview  so I downloaded it and put it into Audition. I faded it in and out at the beginning and end of my interview in order to create a nice flow throughout the piece.

I was really happy that I managed to shoot and edit my speech based package so quickly and efficiently without any problems. I expected this project to go a lot less smoothly than it did so that was definitely a nice surprise! The whole editing process was fairly simple when I got into it which made things a lot easier. After I completed the edit I sent a link to David to show him the final product and his feedback was very positive! He said "The recording sounds very professional and as this is your first ever individual sound project I am truly impressed, well done!". I'm really happy with the result of my speech based package and I thoroughly enjoyed the process. 

My speech based package can be found here.

Week 8 (7/11) : Interview Recording & First Editing Session

This week I got into contact with my interviewee David Elphick and organised a time with him that worked for both of us to record the interview. As well as this I also sent him a brief run down of the sort of questions I would be asking him about just to give him an idea of the type of thing we would be talking about so he could prepare a few things in advance in order to make the interview go more smoothly. 

On Wednesday (9/11) I picked up the sound equipment after my lesson and got the train to Costa in town where I met up with David. We both got some drinks and got settled whilst I set up the kit, and we got into the interview fairly quickly. I had planned all the questions beforehand and written them on the notes on my phone so I placed them infront of me so I had some key questions to refer back to and asked any others that came to my head whilst carrying out the interview. The interview went really smoothly, so much so we shot it all in one take. I listened back through the recording quickly and I thought that the quality was really good and I felt like I managed to cover everything I intended to ask so we left it there. Before packing all of the equipment up I checked how long the recording was and it turned out to be just over 7 minutes, so I was definitely sure that I had enough footage! I'm really happy with how the interview went and recording it in Costa was really effective as the background sounds of the baristas made a nice actuality bed for the piece.  

In this weeks class (11/11) I imported my recording into Adobe Audition and put it through multiband compression, and normalised the audio to make it sound that little bit more crisp. After that I cut out all the parts where you could hear me speaking, where I was then left with just David's audio. As I had just under 7 minutes worth of recording (after cutting out all the parts with me speaking) and the finished piece is meant to be 3 minutes, I had to go through and carefully choose all of the parts of the interview that weren't as interesting/relevant as the rest and cut them out. After a while this became more and more difficult and I had to ask my tutor to help me identify remaining parts of the interview that didn't need to be included. By the end of the lesson I managed to complete editing the bulk of the interview I just had to create an intro and outro and then the speech based package would be complete!

Week 7 (31/10) : Project Concept Presentation

For this weeks class we had to prepare a short verbal presentation outlining and explaining the ideas that we had thought up for both the speech based package and the acoustic portrait. 

Speech Based Package Idea: 

An interview with Director and Producer of bmusic Brighton, David Elphick. 

I know David as I used to work for him filming and editing short television segments (including interviews, live music sessions etc.) and he has worked with local music artists for years so he therefore has lots of experience.

I think that he would be an interesting person to interview because he has a lot to say about the local music scene in Brighton.

I would like to talk to him and discuss the Brighton music scene and his experiences/favourite parts about working with local music artists from Brighton and the surrounding areas.

I aim to record this interview in a coffee shop in Brighton as I think it will make a nice actuality bed and wont distract from the interview too much. Also there are a lot of coffee shops in Brighton and I think that using this sound as a background for the interview will really draw the audiences attention and remind them of Brighton.

Acoustic Portrait Idea:

I do not have a clear idea for my acoustic portrait as of yet. I want to come up with an idea that hasn't already been done before and isn't cliche or generic (i.e Brighton Pier, beach, etc.)

I came up with the idea of doing an acoustic portrait of a bus/bus journey and portraying all the different sounds that occur during the journey (e.g. chatting passengers, bells dinging, bus doors opening and shutting etc.). After a while of thinking I came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be practical to carry all my sound equipment on a busy bus as it would become very difficult to concentrate on recording good quality sounds whilst looking after the kit on the bus and being concious of the people around me.

I proposed this idea to my teacher and he agreed that it wouldn't be practical enough to actually record. Whilst speaking to him we came up with the idea of creating an acoustic portrait of the Greyhound Stadium in Hove (which coincidently isn't too far from where I live, making it even more accessible and practical for me). 

In the same sort of style as my idea of the bus journey, I aim to record all of the different sounds that occur at the Greyhound Stadium (e.g. dogs barking, people chatting etc.) and create a portrait of the place and what it feels like to experience being there.

Week 5 (17/10) : 'The Spoken Word' Interview & Exercise

In this weeks class (17/10) we were introduced to the sound booths and live recording studio! It was really cool to be shown around the facilities as I had never encountered any spaces like this before, I'd only ever seen them in films or on TV. After being shown all the facilities and equipment we were asked to go out in pairs and conduct a short interview with someone on campus about a subject of our choice. Myself and Connor paired up and we decided that I would interview him about his job at the Globe student bar in Brighton. We went straight to the sound booths and we came up with about 5 or 6 questions that I could ask him as well as a short intro and outro to complete the interview. We recorded the interview a couple of times in order to give us a little bit of practice and allow us to get the perfect take so we weren't limited to just one. After this we took all the clips and put them into Adobe Audition and put a few effects on them to change our voices slightly so they sounded clearer and more effective, we also added in some intro and outro sounds to round the piece off.

The interview that I edited can be found here.

Week 3 (03/10) : Contact Microphone (& Hydrophone) Recording Session

During this weeks class we got to experiment with contact microphones and hydrophones. We were given a visual demonstration of how the kit works and how to set it up and in pairs/small groups we were given the microphones and asked to go out onto campus and experiment recording different sounds and see what sort of outcomes we could get from doing so. My group and I were lucky enough to be given one of the two hydrophones so we went straight to the stream of water that surrounds Falmer Square and tried it out. The sounds that we were able to get from the hydrophone were really entertaining as it really made you feel as though you were underwater and it was really cool that we were able to create that effect using the kit. Other sounds that we recorded included metal railings/wooden objects and the sounds created by tapping them, slinkies etc.

We then came back into class and experimented with different effects on all of the sound clips in Adobe Audition and mixed them into one long piece. We were able to reverse, loop, speed up/slow down the clips and the sounds that were created by using these simple effects was quite extraordinary! Unfortunately the export of my file corrupted and I lost my entire session so I was unable to post it onto my soundcloud.