Video & Sound Production - Project 1: Audio Editing
05.09.2023 - 10.10.2023 / Week 02 - Week 07
Ilhan Rayan bin Khairul Anwar / 0361205
Video & Sound Production / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Project 1 - Audio Editing
Ilhan Rayan bin Khairul Anwar / 0361205
Video & Sound Production / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Project 1 - Audio Editing
LECTURES
INSTRUCTIONS
PRACTICAL
For our Project 1, it would be split into two separate exercises for us to do, originally it was going to be three exercises but I think Mr. Martin removed the third one so we would have less work to do which was nice.
Exercise 1 / Project 1A: Sound for Visual
For the first half of our Project 1, we had to do a "Sound Dubbing" exercise where we were given a nearly 2 minute scene from the 2005 film "Munich" by Steven Spielberg without any audio. The goal for this assignment was to find all of the sound effects ourselves and edit them into the video using Adobe Premiere Pro as well as providing the dialogue using our own voices.
Figure 1.1: "Munich" Video Footage, Week 2 (5/9/23)
The two sources for my audio clips come from YouTube and Freesound.org as the latter was recommended to us by Mr. Martin and the former was simply for any additional sound effects or audio files that I couldn't find elsewhere.
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| Figure 1.2: Sound Dubbing Spreadsheet, Week 2 (6/9/23) |
To make this process a bit easier, we were advised to create a spreadsheet of all the sound effects that we could identify as well as all the lines of dialogue in the scene.
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| Figure 1.3: Timeline Screenshot, Week 4 (24/9/23) |
There aren't many issues that I ran into while editing, it was mainly just searching for audio tracks and cutting them down to size so they would fit with the scene. The main issue I'd say with this exercise was making sure that all the audio files sounded realistic which was a bit of an issue for me as my headphones were acting really weird recently which made me nervous on if it would sound nice.
For the voice lines where we had to use our own voice, the challenge here was that we had to do both the little girl and the father, but that issue was solved easily by using the pitch shifter effect to create the intended vocal effects.
Figure 1.4: Audio Dubbing Final, Week 4 (24/9/23)
Exercise 2 / Project 1B: Sound Shaping
The second half of our Project 1 had us do a "Sound Shaping" exercise where we had to record ourselves saying a short line of dialogue of our choice and edit the dialogue in five different ways, those being:
- A phone call voice
- A voice coming from inside a closet
- A voice coming from a bathroom
- A voice inside of an underground cave
- An alien or orc voice.
The line that I decided to use for this exercise comes from the 2020 video game "Ultrakill" and the line I was referencing comes from the character Gabriel who says the phrase "Turn back now, the layers of this palace are not for your kind. Turn back, or you will be crossing the will of God." Using the Voice Record Pro app on my phone, I recorded myself saying this line and used Adobe Audition to edit the voice line.
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| Figure 2.1: Adobe Audition audio tracks screenshot, Week 7 (10/10/23) |
Although our lecturer recommended we create a separate file for each individual audio track, I didn't want to go through the hassle of creating a new one every single time so I simple added in the original audio file into a new track below the previous one and muted the former. The four tools we had to use for this exercise were: Parametric Equaliser, Reverb, and Flanger though I decided to have a bit of fun with this project and used Distortion as well as an additional audio file.
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| Figure 2.2: Parametric Equaliser page for the Phone Call audio, Week 7 (10/10/23) |
For the phone call audio file, I followed the one provided for us in our lecture slides and brought the bass and treble down while also raising the mid range which resulted in the slightly muffled sound quality.
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| Figure 2.3: Parametric Equaliser page for the Closet audio, Week 7 (10/10/23) |
For the closeted audio, I did the same process but instead of lowering the bass I kept it where it was and moved the treble and mid range to the same locations as the previous audio track.
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| Figure 2.4: Reverb page for Bathroom audio, Week 7 (10/10/23) |
For the bathroom audio all I did was I increased the decay time so that it had a slight reverb to it that's barely noticeable but isn't as major as the next one.
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| Figure 2.5: Reverb page for Cavern audio, Week 7 (10/10/23) |
While the decay time stays the same for this, I brought up the "Wet" output level at the bottom as well as slightly increasing the pre-delay time for the echo effect. This resulted in a much greater reverb sound with more of an echo which made it sound like I was actually in a cave, though with what I say for my voice line it feels more fitting for a cathedral.
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| Figure 2.6: Flanger page for Alien audio, Week 7 (10/10/23) |
For the flanger audio, we weren't given any specific instructions in the lecture slides and from what I can recall, we had to figure out how to do it on our own. So what I did for the alien voice was I brought up the Initial Delay Time, Modulation Rate, and Wet audio in order to create weird bug-like voice.
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| Figure 2.7: Distortion page for Static audio, Week 7 (10/10/23) |
As for the additional audio that I included for fun, I used the distortion page and created three anchor points for the positive and negative audio panels and moved them in a way where they would be opposites of each other. This resulted in an incredibly static-y audio quality that made me laugh because it reminded me of one of my favourite YouTubers who would speak into an incredibly low quality mic as a joke. Mr. Martin liked the extra audio I did as well which made me happy even though he never told us to do more.
Link to all Exercise 2 audio files:
FEEDBACK
None
REFLECTION
Experience
I had a lot of fun with this project, I love working with these kinds of applications as an individual with a film background and family so getting to do these exercises for the first time was very entertaining and educational. I would say the hardest challenge for this project was trying to find audio files that synced up well with the footage we were provided as well as trying to line them up with the footage so it didn't look off-beat. The second exercise was definitely my favourite of the two that we did due to how simple it was and the amount of possibilities for how we can modulate and manipulate our voices. I do plan on going back to Adobe Audition and experiment with it a lot more to see if I can create unique voice effects just for fun.
Observation
One thing that I noticed during this exercise was how complicated adding in sound effects can become during post-production, especially if you have to deal with multiple audio tracks at once. Since the first exercise focused entirely on the audio tracks I didn't have to worry about making any additional changes to the video footage which was nice. But picturing having to work on both the audio and visual tracks at the same time would be quite tiresome and stressful, but knowing me I'd probably find a way to have fun with it since I love this kind of work.
Findings
I found this project to be quite entertaining, getting to work more with audio which I personally had the least amount of experience with since I usually prefer pre-production and sometimes production work so getting to focus entirely on post-production content was very educational to me.
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