Reflection 2 – Sound

 

 

In this reflection, I would like to focus on my sound work of “what’s in the box”. I come up some new epiphanies when I was doing the editing and when after the edits were finished. They are very interesting and impressive for me.

 

The main epiphanies I found are in the “music” part. As we all know, music is an important section for the sound, and it plays a role of rendering the audio effect and reinforcing the mood expression.

 

“The music climax should match with the video climax”

The first epiphany is “I delayed the climax part of the piece of music in order to match it with the video climax”. Delaying the musical climax part is indeed sudden occur to my mind when I was doing the sound editing. The reason I decided to do it because the original musical climax part is around at 30 seconds, however, in the video clip, the 30 seconds position is the normal dialogue instead of the climax of the story. Thereby, if audiences were watching the boring conversation between characters but the music was in the excitement emotion, they would feel confused. In order to solve this problem, I moved the musical climax forward on the “PR timeline” and put it under the “Sharon puts the box on the table and leaves” part. At the same time, as the prelude part keeps the same position, there is a gap between the prelude and climax. To fill the gap, my operation is I duplicated a short prelude and inserted it into the gap, then I used the audio Constant Power to make sure the new audio clip plays smoothly. However, it is not a perfect solution because the music piece I chose is very melodic and impressive. For someone who never listened before, they feel okay with the piece of music; but as for people who already listened to and knew about the music piece, they feel uncomfortable and confused, wondering why the climax comes so late (that is the first question that my mom asked me when she watched the video).

 

“It is ‘different’ sound when you listen to it now or a few days later”

As I mentioned earlier, I was not only found epiphanies when I was in the editing process, I had another interesting epiphany when I re-watched my work, which is also related to the music. When I duplicated the prelude, I was not simply put the prelude-copy into the gap, I made some changes on the volume in order to avoid audiences realize that it is repeated. I thought the volume of the prelude-copy is okay when I was doing the editing. However, when I was ready to write this reflection and I re-watched the video, I found I can barely hear the second prelude. I was confused. I didn’t make any changes after I exported the video, why it happened. I stared at the video volume and suddenly remembered the words previous tutors taught me: it is different to hear the sound when you wear the headphones or not; it is different of the sound when you are in the premiere pro and when you listen to it in the QuickTime; also, it is different to hear the sound when you just finish it and a couple of days after you finish it. Previously, I only cared about the first two principles and tried to avoid the same mistakes. However, this reflection gives me few days pause and then I re-watched the video, it makes me found the problem I never pay attention. I guess because I focused on the sound of the video work very much, no matter I was doing the editing or when I exported it and relistened it, I always listened to the sound very carefully. Thus, the sound was impressive in my brain and seemed “louder” in my subconsciousness, in fact, it is not loud as much as I thought. That’s why it became the “low” volume sound when I re-watched the video. The epiphany I got from this practice is that not only the sound you hear would be “different” in different stages, but also the most important thing is waiting for one or two days to re-watch your video and check it.

 

“The sound source decides the sound position”

The last epiphany I would like to share is that the sound clip inserting position is quite important, otherwise, the audiences would be confused, in particular, in the video consisted of still images. The long time Foley sound is easy to consider where it is put, such as the footstep. However, it is difficult to figure out where are the positions to put the wild lines and Foley, especially for those which are not clear enough and easily mixed with other sound effects, but those are too obvious the audiences cannot to ignore them at the same time, such as gasp, sigh, sit down and lean on the wall. I repeated the video and tried to find why some sound effects made me so uncomfortable and wonder where the best places for them are. An epiphany comes into my mind suddenly, I realized the reason why these made me so confused and uncomfortable: it is not my recording quality and sound itself, it is the position problem which confused the audiences that they don’t know the sound source! For example, I want to insert the “Lenny leans on the wall heavily” Foley sound, this Foley sound itself is not easy to be recognized and identified as “lean on the wall”, so if I put it under the image shot of “Lenny lean on the wall”, audiences are confused what the sound it is, because we cannot see the action movements in the frame, the sound seems like no sources due to without the visual aid. But, if I put the “lean on the wall” Foley sound under the connection point between “Lenny touches the box” and “Lenny lean on the wall” shots, audiences can see and know there are two different actions, thereby they would determine the sound source, further they know the sound is “leaning on the wall” and could link the action movement with the sound .

 

The whole “Lean on the wall” Foley sound is under the “Lenny leans on the wall” shot

 

“Lean on the wall” at the connection point of two shots

 

There are epiphanies I fund in the “what’s in the box” sound exercise. I am very glad I have done this exercise because I got some epiphanies and learned some tips about editing sound.