The importance of sound editing
- 2. Sound Editing / Factual The clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5V6gdu5ih8 Planet Earth use lots of sound effects for safety reasons because they cant really capture the sound of animals fighting or making interesting noises so most of the time they will have to add different sounds to the edit to make it more realistic. For example if two lions were fighting they couldn't really capture the sound properly so they would just add foly sounds to make it match with the lions. The reason why this type of sound needs to be edited is because the producers won’t want noises that are unnecessary because it will just spoil the scene. Such as if there are birds tweeting in the background but they don’t want to hear the birds they want to hear the elephants they would have to edit the tweeting out or add there own sounds. Some sounds in programme’s and documentaries needs to be cleaned up to make them sound more professional and more presentable for the listeners. Most documentaries use their own sounds and just erase the actual sound to make the scene more intense and dramatic so its not boring for the viewers. SAS Who Dares Wins uses a lot of different sounds for action scenes, for example when they need to make the scene more striking and appealing for the audience. An example of this is when two people are sparring each other and the sound isn't very good because you can hear people talking in the background or you just cant hear the punches the editors and the producers will add sounds of punches to match the scene. Sometimes they might keep some of the original sounds and then just add the extra sound effects over the top to make the scene more striking A lot of shows just clean and edit their sound because it sounds more professional and it makes the viewers enjoy the show more. Most of the time they will add sound effects to make the scene more intense and dramatic for the audience.
- 3. Sound Editing / Fictional Star Wars uses foly sounds to capture the perfect sound, for sounds that haven't been recorded. The Star Wars producer said most of the sounds in Star Wars are foly sounds because when they record the real sound when shooting the film they can never capture the perfect, intense sound they want from the final cut. For example Chewbacca out of Star Wars never had a sound because he was just a made up creature so the director went up to the sound editor who did all the foley for the film and said ”we need an unusual sound for Chewbacca”. So the editor went and looked everywhere for the perfect sound and in the end he ended up recording different animal noises and combining them altogether to create the perfect sound. I seen this example in a documentary called ”sound matters” it showed that the foly artist wanted the audience to connect with Chewbacca and they wanted Chewbacca to have emotional sounds as well. The foly artist was called Ben Burt. To achieve this they recorded bears and lions and other animals eating and drinking. Ben wanted people to connect with Chewbacca and to sympathize for him so that’s why he wanted to get the sounds as realistic a possible. Ben had to think of creative ways to achieve the perfect sound for the film so the sound would match with what was going on and how Chewbacca was feeling at the time. Even though the character is a made up character George Lucas wanted to bring him to life through sounds so it would engage the audience and viewers. This shows that foly artists use anything to make the sounds sound believable and realistic. How Chewbacca’s sound is made - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iEm7gW2I38
- 4. Sound Editing Equipment When I edited sound I used a mac and the apps I used were premier pro and logic pro x. the ancillary equipment that is used within the mac workstation is the magic keyboard and magic mouse. The model is an IMac 21.5, the graphics are Intel Iris Plus 640 graphics. When editing sounds on logic pro, there are different commands and shortcuts you can use to make the editing much easier, here is some R – Record M – Mute Track S – Solo Track These are just a few of many shortcuts and demands you can use on logic pro. When I edited sound I used 2 studios to capture the sound and then I used a classroom Mac to edit it. When we were in the studios there was different background noises such as, fans, air con and sometimes we would have to record the lines a few times because someone would either laugh or cough/sneeze. Whilst editing I used headphones so I could hear every little sound in the clip. Control H – Hide Tracks Shift R – Capture Midi Recording L - Loop X – Mixer K – Click Z - Zoom Y – Library O – Loop Library C - Cycle
- 5. Sound Editing Techniques When looking back through all the footage I had to choose the best audio files for the final cut because we recorded each line at least 3 or 4 times. So listening to every file took some time but in the end I picked the best clips for the final cut. Once I had chosen the perfect audio clip for the cut I had to edit each individual clip because at the beginning of the clip might have been a long pause before the person started to talk and at the end of the clip you might of heard people talking. So I needed to cut the beginning and ends off all of them so in the edit was just the person talking. Each clip was reordered separately so each voice actor were different distances away from the mic so when I was listening to the audio clips you could tell because on some of them the audio was louder than others. So when on logic I had to go on each individual clip and change ”audio gain” so that they all sounded the same. This took a long time because every clip was different and I had to find the right level of audio to have them all on so they all sounded the same. Here are some keyboard shortcuts for audio editing: Ctrl + X – Strip Silence Ctrl + E – Convert Region to sample track Ctrl + Shift + T – trim Audio in Audio File Editor These are just a few of the shortcuts for audio editing in Logic Pro. However, there are many more but these are just tge 3 basic ones.
- 6. Sound Editing Procedures When I went through each clip I noticed that there was some faults and errors so we had to go back in the studio to record the line again. The faults and errors insisted of: giggles, background noise or I even came across missing audio files. We had to go back to the studio 3 times to record the lines again. When we recorded we didn’t record in order so when I went to edit and bring it altogether it was all out of place and it was a pain because I had to listen each one and put them in order then when I finally had the scene put together I listened to it through whilst following the script and it still wasn’t in order. So I had to undo everything and start again and I put them all back in order again whilst I was following the script and it still wasn’t in order so I came to a conclusion that we were missing lines from the script. Then we went back in the studio to record the missing lines, finally everything was recorded and in order. I named each individual clip and stored them all on my computer and my memory stick so I wouldn’t loose anything and I always had a back up plan. We recorded so much audio the majority of it went in the trash because it was either faulty or had an error in.