Cereal Offenders: Final Evaluation

Here is my final evaluation of our Major Project: Cereal Offenders Comedy Drama.

After reading the script, I honestly didn't now how we were going to translate some of the outlandish ideas onto film. The script contained sequences were there would be a giant penguin and people transforming into plants, conversing with other sunflowers. However, thanks to some great planning, we were able to successfully convey this script and its ideas in ways which felt achievable and din't push the barriers of imagination over achievable goals and the strict budget.

The filming process was thankfully mostly stress free. Our actors, while professional, were also able to communicate well with us and shared ideas and different interpretations between the crew in order to get the best performances out of them. I've mentioned in earlier posts that I had some difficulty concerning how the sound should be recorded (as sound operator and editor this was my primary concern) with some of crew repeatedly insisting that I should use the Tascam recording equipment, instead of recording the sound with the boom microphone directly connected to the camera. After some research I had eventually given in and used the Tascam, though this did cause several problems for the edit like I had predicted. despite these problems, most of the crew were very professional and there was good communication between all of our roles, often meaning we were finished shooting early than expected on most of the shoot days due to efficiency. This did perhaps come at a cost as I will explain.

It was during the editing process that I started to notice a few problems with the recorded footage. First of all, feedback from our Tutor indicated that the footage itself was shot more like a serious drama than a comedy meaning that, beyond reshooting the entire production, we had to try and bring some more energy into a blandly shot edit. However, this did admittedly give me more of a chance to try and experiment with the sound and show that my sound editing could elevate an otherwise boring production. 

There was also some criticism given to my recorded sound however, with comments that I might have been too far away from the actors when recording the sound, causing an echo. This was mostly down to trying to stay out of the way of the cameraman within relatively cramped space. Perhaps we should have filmed in a location that had larger space. Despite this, I could have still found some way to bring the microphone closer to the actors.

The next problem arose when editing the sound into the project itself. More often than not, every time a small edit was made, the sound would either be taken completely out of sync with the footage or deleted entirely. This meant that there were many editing sessions where I was re-doing a lot of what I had already completed before, effectively consuming more time which I could have been using to concentrate on something else. I felt that if I had been allowed to record with the boom microphone connected directly to the camera (which as sound operator should have ultimately been my decision anyway) this problem could have been avoided. Another minor problem I found was the editing of the footage itself. Sometimes matching the sound to the footage became difficult because of the way the footage had been edited, cutting off a character's speech or breaking continuity between shots. This wasn't helped by the fact that Will, our Director, always said cut far too early, not letting the shot continue long enough without hearing his voice suddenly come in for ease of editing and continuity. However, due to successful communication with the Aimee and I, were were mostly able to work around this issue.

One thing I'd also like to note is the rather noticeable absence of our Producer during the entire editing process. While i appreciate the work they had put in when preparing the shoot and the monetary management (which unfortunately did have some noticeable inconsistencies within the budget), it would have been better to the Producer be more involved in the edit. On the very few times they were there, their contributions were very little if there were any at all.

Here is the final exported version of Cereal Offenders uploaded onto YouTube by Aimee, our editor:

I am mostly happy with this final edit, though I do still think there are a few problems sound-wise:

Positives:

- The edit itself is of a good level and was energetic which shows we were able to overcome the stale and boring way in which the footage was shot. Some very minor reshoots also helped with this.

- My sound editing with aspects such as the sound effects and the music helped to contribute towards the more energetic elements of the edit and also helped to elevate the production to a more professional level.

- We were able to move past the usual conventional techniques of film editing and chose to be more experimental which suited the script and hopefully makes our production stand out from others.

- I was able to incorporate my research into shows such as The Mighty Boosh for the overall tone of the sound, sound effects and music that I had created and used for this edit. My research into music producers such as Trevor Horn also helped me to professionally produce the music for this project. 

Improvements:

- Despite being able to bring more energy into this edit, the remnants of the rather boringly shot footage still remain and it seems quite obvious that we were trying to force the edit into making the footage much more interesting. Therefore, the pacing is sometimes a bit uneven.

- The actors did not give the most energetic of performances. We did do some reshoots of certain scenes but they are sometimes inconsistent which does hurt the pacing slightly.

- Due to not properly starting the creation of the music until later on in the editing process, I do feel that the soundtrack itself does sound a bit rushed. I feel it could have used much more development had I given myself more time. This also counts for some of the sound effects as well, particularly when the characters have taken drugs and lead into their hallucinations.

- I never got around to fixing certain parts of the recorded audio from the shoot days. I had planned on taking all of the sound into a program such as Audacity or Adobe Audition in order to get rid of some of the echo and white noise. My original plan for this was to do this right at the very end of the edit once all of the sound was in place. However, I did not get the time to do this as the final edit was not finished until the last minute. I feel I should have instead done this at the very start of the editing process before editing the sound into the project. Therefore, the audio does have some inconsistencies with the level of white noise between certain parts of audio

Here is also the final poster Aimee created for our project, which I also did happen to give some advise and help with the creation of:

Overall I am happy with this final version of the project despite some of the problems which I have outlined. It was somewhat difficult try to help improve on footage that was not very good in the first place but I feel that the rest of the production crew and I were able to surpass this and make something which stands out. I feel we could have even taken it further in order to create an een more memorable production.

Cereal Offenders: Annotated Script For Sound

Here are parts of the annotated script I used for the sound design. I made these annotations to give me a clear idea on where I should place certain sound effects and pieces of music. I haven't included the entire script due to space but picked out certain key scenes which had more annotations on the page.

Doing this helped quite a lot as I could slowly work through the edit and follow what I had written on the script. Some parts are crossed out due to not being used for the final edit such as cut scenes.

Cereal Offenders Music

Here is all the music that I had created for the Cereal Offenders Project. Sound Effects are not included:

I am overall happy with the music that has been made and I feel that work well within the edit itself. The style of music was very much inspired from different types of media such as 'The Mighty Boosh' with the title sequence. The opening music is purposely reminiscent of the opening of 'The Breakfast Club' which starts with a similar compressed drum beat which I wanted to emulate as I felt it automatically grabs the viewer's attention.

My improvement for these would be that they could have been more developed. Due to not creating the music until a much later stage in the edit, I did not give myself as much time as I perhaps needed to create a wider range and be much more experimental to suit the script which Cereal Offenders is based on. Therefore I've ended up re-using some pieces of music throughout the edit.

However, I am happy overall with this and think it works well in the project edit.

Cereal Offenders: Fine Cut 3

Here is yet another version of the fine cut which includes some of the amendment I had made to the sound.

Unfortunately, due to some small edits, the sound has gone out of sync with the footage again in certain areas of the edit. This will be an easy fix. I did also notice that some of the music had been moved again and some unnecessary sound effects been added in once more. I will make amendments to these again. I feel I might have to ask that no-one else touches the audio edit from now despite their good intentions as I keep having to fix things again, wasting time that I could be using concentrating on other aspects of the sound edit.

Some of the dialogue still has some echo parts of it have some issues with the consistency of the sound quality. I shall need to take the dialogue track directly from the edit and edit it in a separate audio editing software such as such as Adobe Audition or Audacity (the latter of which I am more familiar).

Cereal Offenders: Fine Cut 2 & Group Screening Feedback

Here is the second fine cut of our Cereal Offenders project:

I have now managed to put all of the Tascam audio into the edit. I have also added rough ideas as to the music and sound effects that would be included. I was thankfully given an entire day with the edit to independently work on the music, sound effects and also changing the audio levels so that the dialogue is louder and the music and sound effects are quieter and better suit the scenes. I am happy with what I was able to achieve in regards to the sound for this edit and personally feel that it helps to bring some energy into a project which desperately needs it. I did take some personal creative liberties with this, to later see if the rest of the group would agree with these and see if they worked for a wider audience. These included instances such as the music that plays at the start and in various other parts of the edits and sound effects such as an alarm clock going off just before the drugs take effect.

There are a few sound effects present in this particular version of the edit which have been added in by Aimee after I had worked on it as there were one or two sound effects which I had forgotten to include. These were the sound of a phone ringing and a glass lamp smashing. However, she did also add some sound effects which weren't needed as they were already present in the Tascam audio. These extra sound effects are also quite loud in this version as I had not got around to tweaking the sound levels for them. I also noticed that some of the music I'd put into the edit had been moved out of place. Her contributions overall were helpful, however.

I have made some amendment to these, putting some of the music back were it was after some discussion with Aimee whilst tweaking the sound effects audio levels and removing the unnecessary ones that had been added.


We were given the chance to show the entire year group the current state of our edit to see what works and what improvements can be made. However, due to some rendering problems, we were unable to use the very latest version where I had made the amendments to the sound. Therefore we ended up showing this previous version without the sound fixes.

The feedback from the year group were as follows:

Positives:
- The addition of sound, sound effects and the soundtrack, brings more energy to the edit than previously.
- Some of the visual jokes and humour presented through the audio were met with the right reaction from our peers that we had hoped for.

What To Improve:
- The edit is still being treated like a drama and is not experimental enough for the type of script that had been presented before. We need to break a few standard conventions and rules of film editing in order to better show this.
- There needs to be more added in terms of the soundtrack to further bring some energy into the edit.
- The latter third of the edit was still a little bit hard to follow ( I found that, where some of the dialogue had been cut out for pacing reasons, we had lost some explanation as to what was actually happening within these scenes that had been in the script ).

Another piece of feedback that was given by the Tutor was that the project was far too quiet and they'd had to turn the sound up to almost maximum to hear the edit properly. However, it later turned out that Aimee's laptop (which the edit had been playing from) was actually turned down so this became a non-issue.

Upon taking this feedback, I am hoping to act on it as soon as possible. This will include working on a more finalised version of the soundtrack and adding more pieces of audio to help bring more energy into the scenes that need them.

Sixth Sound Editing Update:

Before breaking up for Easter Break, I found that some of the new footage from the reshoots sound had not been recorded properly. This was due to no boom microphone being booked out along with the rest of the equipment, meaning that sound was being recorded straight from the Tascam with all of the raw sound included. Due to attending a funeral, I was not at the shoot to record the sound with Aimee taking my place for that day. The poor quality of the sound is not Aimee's fault however, but the fault of whoever failed to book any sort of microphone out along with the rest of the equipment. As sound operator it is technically my responsibility to make sure equipment like microphones are taken out but the equipment had already been taken out before I'd even had knowledge of the reshoots taking place. I should have made sure the microphone had been put on the list when whoever it was booked the equipment, though it should have been obvious to them to put a microphone on the list regardless.

However, after coming in during the Easter Break, we found that we could take the sound captured from the camera's in-built microphone and quickly eliminate some of the background noise within the audio, clearing the sound quality. I had done this previously for one of the scenes where the Tascam audio had been lost through a long process using the Audacity software, but this was a quick way of doing the same thing via a simple command in Premiere Pro. This has save me a lot of time and I wish I had found out about this trick sooner for some of the other footage I was having trouble with.

It came to a point where there was only a small 15 second segment where there was no audio at all from one of the pieces of footage that was not labelled but thankfully Aimee and I were able to finally find the right piece of audio. So now at least the entire run-time has the clearer audio, I just need to fix certain parts of it and then add in all of the other sound effects, sound beds and music which I am currently starting work on.

Cereal Offenders: Fine Cut 1

Here is the first fine cut which has been uploaded onto Youtube:

As shown here, I have now put the majority of the Tascam sound into the project edit. I feel that the edit is now much easier to watch and follow now that the quality of the sound is more consistent throughout. However, I have noticed that, due to having to remain out of the way of the camera, the distance the microphone sometimes ends up being from the actors sometimes has an effect on the sound. This produces some echoes which makes the voices not sound as clear as I would like. I will need to take the audio track directly from the edit and try to tweak parts of the sound to help clear the sound to its best possible quality.

I have also added in a few basic sound effects which will need to be edited further. Tweaks made to the audio levels will also be required from me as the actors often sound too quiet and the sound effects are unnaturally loud for the scenes.

I also noticed that some of the audio has gone out of sync with the footage again. However, After looking at the actual edit in the editing software, the sound did appear to be in sync. This has led me to think this might be to do with problems during the rendering process which I will have to look into the cause and try to fix.