Sound

Sound is one of the most important parts of any film. Sound can influence how people interpret the film and if done wrong, can end up making your film look bad or end up making people feel confused. There are two types of sounds that make up films: Diegetic and Non-Diegetic. Diegetic sounds are any sorts of actions used on films. For example, when voicing the sounds of the characters or the sounds of the objects in the film. Non-Diegetic sounds are the opposite, and therefore are all the sounds that wouldn't be visible on the screen. Examples of these are: a narrators voice, sound effects (light bulb noise, when someone comes up with an idea) and mood music.

On Monday, we were set the task to edit our existing film that we made in last week's session and add our own sounds to them. In our groups we identified what sounds were needed and what we could use to portray the sounds in our film. Most of the sounds were easy to reproduce - when I sat on the sofa and it fell, we made the noise of one of the ends of the sofa hitting the floor. However, for the sounds that were down to timing, like when I dropped the wood in the film, we had to try and make that sound just like how it was shown. The microphone we used was very good at picking up the sounds but was too good at times, where it would pick up on Ed talking to the class in the other room! We had to make sure that only the sound we wanted was picked up on the recorder. One way we could have resolved this problem could have been by asking Ed to be a little more quiet, or by waiting for Ed to finish speaking with others.

Next, we had to edit the films on our own with the sounds we had recorded. I had noticed that some of the sounds were out of sync - this was very hard to try and put into sync again but by using the sound stretcher I managed to slow down the foot steps that were originally too fast for the film. Additionally, whenever we recorded a new sound, the recorder would make an annoying sound that I had to try and edit out without cutting out the sound that was needed. Other than that, all of the sounds we had recorded were very good and matched with the film perfectly, all I had to do was match them up with the film. After I had finished syncing up the sounds with the film, I realized that it sounded very bland because at times when I was just walking in the film, all I could hear were the footsteps and nothing else. So, I decided to add music to my piece and it gave it a bit more life.