Given we submitted our major assignment this week, I thought it would be fitting to do a reflection on the production process, especially since assignment 5 is no longer a long form reflection for media studios.

Working on our audio piece has been one of the best experiences I have had working on a major project in a media studio. Firstly, it was fun to have a group that felt just as passionate about the project as I did. Collaboration felt genuine throughout the process, and we took time to bounce ideas off each other to improve our concept. Usually when creative work is delegated, it can feel disjointed, however this project didn’t feel that way. Even when we worked independently, it all felt under the same vision.

I really enjoyed the production process of creating an audio piece. The bulkiest part of the production process was post-production, compared to video which is usually production. There was a lot more freedom in post-production than with video, as we weren’t just limited to what we could see in a shot or just beyond the frame. After working on this project, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on reverb, EQ, pitch and working with adobe audition in general.

During assignment 2, out of frustration of generative AI not producing what I wanted it to, I often felt the need to pick up a camera to create footage. By comparison, I hardly had this issue when generating audio for this assignment. There was only one instance I felt the need to record my own audio of ambient outdoor noise. Something I did find limiting in the post production phase, however, is if we put an AI generated soundscape into audition, it would have different left and right surround channels, which made it harder to mix. I ended up mono channelling all our AI generated sound effects so they could be panned and mixed more effectively.

An opportunity for the future would be more intention in the order I build a soundscape. When editing, I went in chronological order when building the piece. This made it harder to mix levels later in making dialogue and ambient sounds balance across the entire piece. In future, I will get the levels right of the focus audio for the whole piece, and then build from there, one layer of audio at a time.