Today’s class was really helpful because I’m at the stage in my editing process where I need to adjust the audio levels and make sure I can interweave my voice, ambient sounds and music to evoke specific feelings from the material. I hit a wall in the last session because after I became comfortable with cutting footage and audio and moving it around, the next stage was making sure each audio track was heard at the right levels.
The voice isn’t necessarily what I want to dominate the clips. Sometimes the ambient noises are the ones that work the best and I would like the piano to accompany them rather than the other way around. Also I don’t want music to feature too heavily throughout either because I feel like that gives a single dimension to the mood despite what footage is on screen. Music is a really strong evocative tool and can make the whole project feel the same.
Because my footage is of different places, I would like there to be shifts and changes with the locations rather than all the locations blending together using the one music track. I think I will also record some more piano with Penelope that is different to the sounds I already have. The pieces I have now of her own compositions are beautiful and thought provoking but I’d like a contrasting pace or tempo to experiment with.
It was also suggested that I record some of the comedy writing I did earlier in the semester and experiment using that and the footage I have already. This is something that really interests me because after doing some more research and watching some short films featuring music and musicians, I would like the voice to play the role of providing a common threat through the more abstract ambient sounds and images. I borrowed the zoom mic again today and will record this tonight and bring it into the edit suits tomorrow morning.
The conversations on audio today were really helpful. When we cut up audio it takes a different meaning when the moments are in segments. This is what I found in my last editing session, clips taken from Penelope’s recount of her first memory with music and her first love sounded quite different and took on different meaning when I cut it up and placed it with certain footage. Laying it out in post helps to see what the next experiment could be. I’m not necessarily interested in the literal account of a memory, it’s more about how moments of that can be captured and reorganised to create other meaning.