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.