Editing Sounds

Since this was a 'Non-Sync' project, the sound work was very important. Because they're isn't any dialogue, the sound we were given needs to be used efficiently to create a narrative between the characters as well as the whole misé-en-scene. We wanted to ensure that the sound worked with the footage we'd chosen to use, in the sense of both flowing with the visual, as well as creating emotion and empathy with the characters (which is known as one of the most important features to think about when editing a drama), therefore the audience are enticed to watch the film throughout.

We started by looking through the script because we wanted to see which voiceover sections we wanted to use and what would work together to allow the piece to flow. There were sections that I felt didn't need to be in our piece, because it was clear or 'over-describing' the situation, or was just completely irrelevant. For example, a section in the script stated: 'the man was wet under his clothes.' - we didn't find this line particularly interesting and didn't really give anything to the overall narrative, and if it doesn't contribute to the film in any way, there is no need for it to be in the cut.

When we'd decided which sections of the sound worked well, we worked with the footage to fine cut the piece together. Part of the fine cutting process was, of course, editing the sound. We listened through each clip, and used Soundtrack Pro to cut out any clips or pops in a clip (luckily there weren't many) and re-imported the new version back to Final Cut Pro to work with the video and audio together. 

When it came to the voiceover, we spent time editing out parts we didn't need, changing parts around to create more drama and empathy and ensuring levels and pans were set correctly throughout. 

The sound consisted of both the voiceover as well as the atmos tracks. The atmos tracks, in my opinion needed more time to edit then we had - this is because they weren't recorded in the best quality and therefore would need time spent in Soundtrack Pro to bring them up to a standard we wanted to use. Unfortunately, due to our bad planning, we didn't think about the atmos until the very end of the project, which caused problems with time, however we managed to look a little into editing the atmos through Final Cut Pro, by editing levels and pans to ensure it worked with the footage and if needed, gave a dramatic effect (e.g. when a train passed by, the audio was to pass from one side and pan to the other, depending on the direction of the train). 

If we had managed our schedule better and thought about everything we needed to do in the process, I would have definitely have spent more time editing the atmos sounds.