I have a rough cut of my edit done, I’m fairly happy with the visual layout and I’m currently working on sound design and recording narration. It’s sitting at 3:30 at the moment, and I’d like to expand on that up to around 4:30, so I’m trying to source some more relevant footage and seeing if I can do that. But if in the end, it doesn’t actually add anything to the film, I may just remove it again. The sound design is getting there, I have a lot of tracks panning and volumes changing to create emotions. I think I’m up to 11 audio tracks (not all at once, but things J/L cutting audio-wise), which is becoming chaos to look after. And the main thing now is really tightening the audio, because I was very ambitious at the start and there are a few moments that sound quite messy.

I’ve taken in a lot of feedback so far, I’ve completely re-written from a film that offers solutions and was meant to be chefs looking at seafood, and it has now become a story about my own engagement with the ocean. I’ve removed the seafood element as I thought with the timeframe, its much easier and stronger to just focus on getting people to feel for the ocean as a whole, then try to break down the complexities of seafood production. I’ve really put a lot of myself into this, and it’s becoming something I’m super excited to see finished and am proud of. I don’t usually play the role of seriousness, but I’m passionate about a lot of environmental and social issues, but I often take a backseat role and avoid any serious engagement, so this whole process has really made me want to do more.

In terms of interesting elements from the reading, the first title is track organization, and oh lordy do I need to attend to that. I’m really involved with the sound design process for this as well, as I’m really pushing for the audio to drive a lot of the emotions. I’ve been playing music since I was pretty young, and a lot of my late teens, I wanted to do sound production for film and tv, so I have a fairly strong idea of sound design. I’m just really focusing on getting dynamics right, as Broderick Fox (2017) says, that dynamics really empower sound. You could have perfect sound in terms of timbre, but if there’s no volume and dynamic differences it all blends into one big monotonous drone, so I’m really just trying to find the moments I want to sound to be loud, and where I want relief to be.

 

References;

Fox, B 2017, Documentary Media: History, Theory, Practice, Taylor & Francis Group, ProQuest Ebook Central, <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/RMIT/detail.action?docID=5103711>.