Audio

Audio was the most technically challenging and time consuming aspect of producing our finished media product. Combining the addition of diegetic and non-diegetic sound with correcting dialogue, the audio/ sound part of our film took around 2 weeks to sort out.

We had to:

Add a soundtrack
Match the soundtrack to action on screen
Overlay voice recording to the opening 30 seconds
Add diegetic traffic sound in the background
Sort out the on screen dialogue using pre-recorded voices

ADDING A SOUNDTRACK

Soundtrack choice is very much determined by the genre that one picks to base their film around and as ours was thriller, the music had to either be one of two things:

Eerie, quiet, slow music à create anticipation and worry in the audience.
Upbeat, mysterious music à create tension and excitement.

We tried both of these options and came to the conclusion that the upbeat, mysterious music worked well for the spy aspect of our film. We could also refer to Mission Impossible and other such spy films for knowledge on soundtracks. Mission Impossible uses a very upbeat, famous soundtrack that excites the audience and helps them become engrossed in the film (please refer to my case study evaluation of Mission Impossible 3). We chose the title “Gritty Sex” from iMovie to help convey the fast paced, exciting feeling to our audience.

MATCHING THE SOUNDTRACK TO ACTION ON SCREEN

A phone call plays over the opening for roughly 30 seconds, consequently we were not able to put extra non-diegetic sound over the top. The dramatic introduction of the “Gritty Sex” soundtrack is brought about by Katerina tapping her phone. This was a technique Katie and I used to stop the introduction of music from sounding out of place and strange. By matching it to the on screen action, we were able to raise excitement levels within the audience.

We synched a bass note to the long shot of Katerina walking away from the camera, in attempt to add dramatic influence on the audiences’ feelings and add flow to our film. We also edited the soundtrack again to quieten when Shaun is first revealed in order to emphasize the importance of his character.

In conclusion, we manipulated the sound track to maximise how well audio and video worked together.

OVERLAYING THE PHONE CALL

Adding the separate pieces of voice recordings to create the mysterious phone call was harder than both Katie and I had initially anticipated anticipated. When recording the voice overs we were in silent locations, to reduce the amount of sound that interrupted the recordings. Further into editing we realised a problem with this theory: the phone call sounded completely fake and unlike a real life phone call.

In order to fix this we tried adding extra sounds behind the voice recordings, at low volume they could add a realistic atmosphere to the call. After trying many different sound effects available on iMovie, I decided that ‘Lobby’ was the most appropriate. By altering the volume to roughly 2% we were able to re-create a slight buzz/chatter in the background of said phone call.

This was a huge positive for the film because the call operator now sounded like she was at work, with people talking in the background. A realistic phone call was created.

ADDING TRAFFIC NOISES INTO THE BACKGROUND

On every filming day I was in charge of using my small, handheld camera to record random parts of the traffic for a period of time. This was just in case the camera we were using didn’t pick up all the traffic in the background. We later realised that it could be extremely helpful for when we started editing and cutting different frames together.

In many different versions of our 2 minute opening we included the ‘fake’ traffic noises in the background rather than use the ones picked up by the filming camera.

However, in the end we didn’t add traffic sound over the film, we replaced these parts with the soundtrack “Gritty Sex” we had chosen.

ON-SCREEN DIALOGUE PROBLEMS

Pre-filming, we recorded Stanislav and Katerina’s lines from the film to add over the top of the on-screen action. However, when we came to editing we realised that the pre-recorded voices sounded fake and unrealistic when put over the film.

When editing the frames together, the sound of traffic changed every time the camera shot switched to a different person. Because of this the live shot-reverse-shot audio didn’t work. We were forced to use over pre-recorded voices.