Julie's+Journal+1

Our film is about a celebrity superhero couple going a marriage consultant because they are having various problems in their marriage. The male lead character, Diamond Man, is a superhero known for his extraordinary strength and powerful image. His wife, Tiffany, is a female superhero who has ambiguous powers that enable her to do anything she wants. The film shows the process of the couple arguing about their problems, and their argument getting more and more intense. After the couple temporarily reunites, it ends with a twist that Diamond Man has actually been cheating on Tiffany.
 * Journal 1:**

My role in my filming team is sound editing. I think adding a soft piano music in the beginning will enhance the flow and sense of comfortable at the marriage counselor’s office. The rest of the film, especially the awkward moments and pauses between the three characters, will be mainly filled with ambient tones similar to the ambient tone used in the last scene of //Farewell, My Concubine//. Although //Farewell, My Concubine// is an old Chinese film, the purpose of the ambient tone is the same. I aim to create a sense of awkward silence and emptiness of the room. In the last scene of //Farewell, My Concubine// the two characters are in an awkward moment in a room. I want to convey a similar atmosphere with the ambient tone in our film.

I will also include background sound effects such as bombing, police car and ambulance sounds in appropriate spots to show that Diamond Man is very occupied with his job that he wanted to leave in the middle of the consulting period. This use of sound will add an audio appeal to the audience of the emergencies happening outside that is leading Diamond Man to leave. There will also be various foley sounds that I will create using different objects and materials to add a sense of reality to the audience when they watch the film.

The section of //Audio Postproduction for Film and Video// that I focus on reading is Chapter 8: Editing Dialogue because our film is a dialogue driven film.
 * Journal 2:**

During the postproduction process, I anticipate I will need to edit some dialogue in the audio that I recorded. For example, if one of our actors doesn’t have their lines memorized we can “cheat” and have one actor read the lines for the other actor so that the other actor can just repeat after. If this is the case, then I will need to edit the dialogues together during the postproduction process.

According to the book, the simplest way to edit dialogue is to find where it drops to zero in the waveform and cut at that point. This is very useful because I can find the point where the waveform drops to zero and cut to weave the dialogue between Diamond man and Tiffany seamlessly together.

Another technique that I learned from in the section “Using Phonemes” is how to combine two different audio takes. It is very common that there are good point in two different audio takes. For example in our film, Diamond man might say a long speech with great enthusiasm but it ends in a blurry tone. The second take might be less enthusiastic but cleaner in quality. According to the book, if pauses in the sentence or entire paragraph is hard to find or difficult to scrub, I should find stopping consonant and scrub. For example the word “special”, the “P” in the word is stopping consonant and creates a pause when the actor is saying the word. Therefore that would be a good spot to scrub and edit dialogue from the two different audio takes.

This chapter in //Audio Postproduction for Film and Video//mainly advises the readers to edit seamlessly and that is the goal of dialogue editing. The best dialogue editing is one where the audience believes it has been done in one complete take, and this is something I would like to focus and continue to improve upon.

I found three resources to improve my skills as a sound designer in my film team, //The Art of Foley//, //Tips for Recording Foley Audio//, and //Production Tip 20: Digital Audio Editing//. I think these three sources are extremely useful because each teaches some tips and tricks that would be beneficial to know while I’m in the post-production sound designing process.
 * Journal 3:**

The article //The Art of Foley// focuses on fun facts and creative ways to create realistic and convincing foley sounds. I especially like in the beginning of the article where it provides a list of commonly used props and objects to create foley sounds. For example, it lists gloves, wet balloon, metal rakes and more common daily objects that is easy to get. I think I will use this list as a reference of what materials to use to design the foley sounds. Another aspect that I think is helpful in this resource is that it gives specific tips on how to place the microphone while recording sounds. It says that the microphone should be about three feet away from the Foley Artist and face to prevent picking up breathing sounds.

The second article, //Tips for Recording Foley Audio//, is also helpful in that it provides some more tips for recording foley audio. It suggests in this article that when recording foley, I should be in an isolated and closed room to prevent picking up extra noises that are undesired. I think this serves as a great reminder because I might be temped to record my room, which doesn’t block exterior sounds properly. After reading this article, I think I will choose to record in a music room in school to isolate the audio to the foley sound I want.

//Production Tip 20: Digital Audio Editing// is also a helpful resource by giving tips on how to edit waveforms. I think this resource is great in that it includes specific diagrams of waveforms explaining the technique it recommends. For example after it explains what compiling, taking the best audio of several takes, is, it attaches diagrams of the waveform and how to edit parts of different takes together. I think this is very useful in that I can always refer back to the diagrams when I have questions regarding how to compile audio tracks.

After reading these three sources, I've learned a lot more about how sound editing technique can affect the sound and moreover the entire film which will aid me in my job in this film. I will use the tips provided to create the foley sounds and the editing techniques to edit the dialogue together of our three characters.

As a sound designer, my main role during our filming day was to take control of the microphone and record the dialogues between our three characters. The first thing I did when we started filming was record 30 seconds of the ambient room tone. This is crucial in our film, as I want to create a sense of disparity and hollowness of the room to show the distant relationship between the superhero couple, which is inspired by the use of ambient tone in the last scene of Chen Kai Ge’s Farewell, My Concubine. Although this is a film set in another time period, the use of ambient tone is very similar, which is to create the feeling of space.
 * Journal 5:**

The first challenge that came up was that in the three microphones we took, two were broken, so instead of giving each character a microphone, all three had to share one. Therefore I put the only microphone on the desk in between the three characters and below the frame so that it doesn’t come into frame. This solution worked pretty well because we filmed the shots along with the characters one side at a time. So I could point the microphone towards the characters who were speaking and didn’t have to worry about not being able to record the voice of the other who was sitting on the opposite side.

Another problem that we had was that our shots were all overexposed due to our choice of location. Our film is set in a very modern marriage counselor’s office, and due to the plot of having an explosion in a nearby building in the middle, we an office located on the 23rd floor showing an excellent view of many buildings. However because this office is in the corner of the building and two sides of the wall were glass windows. In addition, we were filming from 8am – 2pm, when the sun is at its brightest. Therefore the overexposion was a very severe issue we have to deal with. However I anticipate our editor fixing this problem through final cut pro or another program. Also, we had to pull down the curtain in the middle of the glass wall because the cinematographer and director’s reflection could be seen. Although this may affect the image of our film, it was the best decision that we had.

We also had to plan another date to re film because after we filmed the first time, we realized that in all the close-up shots of the marriage counselor, there were phones and coffee cups placed on the table behind her, creating discontinuity. We may also try to re film the overexposed shots because our editor said that it was very difficult to edit out the exposure, since the sun was way too bright and the mass of the window was the entire wall.

I was unable to attend the filming next Monday because I was very sick. However I heard from the rest of the crew that although these two problems were fixed, a new issue was raised. Because they had to go film afterschool, the filming time was forced from 5pm – 8pm, the sunset hours. Therefore making it very obvious that the time has changed because the lighting outside changed from sunset orange and blue to complete darkness with sparkles of light by the end. Also, because it was dark outside, we had to turn on the indoor lights to film. This made the reflections of our crew very obvious as it can be seen in the window behind the superhero couple. Hopefully our editor can pick the shots without the reflections or we may need to re film once again.

Now that we have completed filing shots for our rough cut, I feel like I am clear of what to do in my postproduction. I jotted down notes of when foley sounds were needed, for example when diamond man stood up and walked towards the window, and other background sounds, including explosion and sounds of people screaming in the background. I am also going to compose a office music to play in the background to enhance the soothing atmosphere that a marriage counselor’s office is suppose to have.


 * Journal 6: **