Fourth Sound Editing Update- Cereal Offenders

After my previous suggestions, it was agreed that we would work on the edit exclusively via Aimee's laptop to avoid the loss of any of our work when transferring from one device to another. We would then take it in turns to complete our respective tasks.

I was able to work via Aimee's laptop straight away seeing as the fine cut for the footage itself had been completed. I was able to get much more of the sound edited into the project while also fixing some of the deleted sound from previous versions of the edit. I had trouble finding the files required to add into the edit at first due to the different layout used for this project but I was able to find my way around it.

By the end of the day, I feel that I had been able to edit the sound for at least half of the overall run-time which I was happy with. Hopefully this kind of progress can continue over the rest of the editing process.

Sound Editing Suggestion- Cereal Offenders

Due to the problems mentioned in the previous post, I felt like I should try and make some suggestions in order to alleviate the problems we have been experiencing. I suggested to the group that I should wait until there is a solid edit that we know would not need to be changed dramatically and would only have minor tweaks. That way there would be less chance of my own work and the work of the colour grading to be lost in the process. I also suggested we work via Aimee's laptop only seeing as it is the only device that can actually run the editing software properly and has the full edit project on it, meaning we wont have to keep transferring the scenes between different systems and not potentially lose parts of the edit in the process. Work on the edit would also be completed a lot faster via Aimee's laptop.

After suggesting this to the group, it was met with agreement and, as luck would have it, the fine edit itself was in its final stages (for the footage anyway) meaning that I can get to work completing the sound much sooner than expected.

Third Sound Editing Update- Cereal Offenders

Again, I did much the same as before when editing a few more of the scenes that I had now given. However, I started to become annoyed as I found some of my sound editing had been shifted way out of sync or completely wiped due to the changing of the edit itself. I knew that this may have been a possibility when editing the audio but this was more than I had expected. It just meant that I was then wasting time re-editing the sound for those scenes when I could have been getting on with other parts.

We also had more feedback from the tutor who felt that the audio as it was at this stage was detrimental to the edit due to the lack of consistency created by the problems stated above. This put much more pressure on me as I am trying desperately to get as much done as I can with the given circumstances but there are plenty of barriers such as I've already outlined that have made it much harder for me to deliver the work needed at this point in the editing process.

By the end of the day, I had fixed what had been previously taken out of sync or deleted plus editing the sound into some new scenes. I just feel there is a better way of doing the sound edit, particularly as the computers at the television studios cause problems of their own with the lag slowing the entire process down.

Cereal Offenders Music Production Research: Trevor Horn

Trevor Horn was born 15th July 1949 and is a singer, song writer, composer and music producer. He is known for various different works, though probably best known for producing various chart topping songs from the early 1980s up until the 2010s.

Trevor Horn (with fellow 'Buggles' member, Geoff Downes) in the late 1970s.

Trevor Horn was originally one of a duo (previously a trio) known as The Buggles a band that were thematically supposed to resemble an alternative version of The Beatles. The Buggles came to fame after the ground-breaking creation of the music for their hit single 'Video Killed The Radio Star'. This was the first music video to be shown on MTV and popularised music videos, effectively 'killing the radio star' as the song had appeared to have predicted. Their album 'The Age Of Plastic' gained a few more less successful hits.

The Buggles then teamed up with the progressive rock band, Yes, in 1980 who had lost their lead vocalist Jon Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman. The duo filled in these rolls with Horn taking vocals and the band released the album 'Drama' which was a moderate success. After some backlash from Yes fans, Horn left the band and The Buggles made one more album which did not perform well.

After disbanding The Buggles, Trevor Horn turned to producing music. This started a successful career in producing hit records for various artists, some of which include:

-'Owner Of A Lonely Heart' by Yes (1983)
-'Relax' by Frankie Goes To Hollywood (1984)
-'Kiss From A Rose' by Seal (1995)

I felt is was important to look at a music producer such as Trevor Horn in order to gain a better understanding as to how to create a professional soundtrack for a production that we are trying to make as professional as possible. As many of my ideas for the soundtrack involve rock orientated instrumentals, I wanted to look at how these were produced by someone in the music industry in the hopes of emulating them and integrating this into the production itself.

Trevor Horn's music production involves much experimentation with sound, something which our own production can do with to a great degree. Here is a video of Trevor Horn explaining the art of sound production, his techniques and his incorporation of experimentation (with some history as to how it was done several years ago):

The instrumentation always feels clean and in rhythm. He uses compression on the drums in many of the songs he has produced, with a gated reverb that had become popular during the 1980s. This reverberated sound makes the production of the music sound much bigger. Ive already spoken in a previous research post how the opening to The Breakfast Club features instrumentation which automatically lifts the scale of the entire production from the very start which also happens to use a gated reverb. This is the kind of production I want to include the soundtrack along with the experimentation used in order to help lift our production from its current state and also make it stand out from other projects to help give the production its own identity.

Second Sound Edit Update- Cereal Offenders

I was able to continue more sound editing as I was given the rest of the scenes to work with for now. I did very much the same as previously when editing the sound, doing my best to work around some of the minor problems found during the still rough edit. I did make some amendments to the actual edit of the footage in order to help the continuity slightly, though i didn't do this too much as not to compromise the edit altogether. By the end of the day, I had successfully edited the audio into the individual scenes. Unfortunately there were a few clips that hadn't been properly labelled. These were the ones that were captured on the first day of the shoot week where the camera had not recorded any sound, making it much more difficult for us to work out and match the audio and footage for those scenes. I left these for now in order to concentrate on the scenes where I could match the audio and will come back to those scenes at a later date.

The only problem I can foresee with this way of working is the projects might get confused when transferring from them from one system to another, making me worry that some of my work might get lost. We just need to take care to clearly communicate which projects contains the latest version of the edited scenes.

On another note, I was able to successfully match the ADR that had been previously captured for Ralph's hallucination with the footage, editing the entire scene myself from scratch. The ADR matched with the footage, particularly a close-up of Ralph, surprisingly well and worked well with the flower voices recorded by myself and the other fellow student. After showing this to Will, the director, he was happy with how it had turned out, meaning we no longer have to reshoot that scene.

First Sound Edit Update- Cereal Offenders

After being given some individual scenes from the rough cut, I was finally able to start editing the audio into the project. The first thing I noticed was that I had only been given half the scenes due to a mix up when transferring the projects onto a hard drive. We also had to change the settings on Premiere Pro, the editing software, so save the project on an older version of the software as the computers in the TV Studios are out of date and the projects would not open otherwise.

I found that the footage still lagged but I was able to still match up the actor's mouth movements with the Tascam audio, even if it was more tedious than it would have been. The process of matching the Tascam audio involved temporarily taking the footage out of the edit, finding the part where Will, our director, used the clapperboard and then synced the clap of the clapperboard in the audio with the footage on screen. I'd then restore the footage back into the edit along with the now matched audio. The labelling of the footage and audio carried out by Aimee and I paid off as the audio and footage were made easier to match.

I was able to successfully to sync all of the audio to the footage I was given, with the end result producing much clearer audio than the camera's in-built microphone that was previously in its place. The only real problem I had here was some minor problems with the edit itself such as some jumps in the footage or breaks in continuity that sometimes meant characters saying the same thing twice but I was able to partly overcome these. I also understand the edit is still in a rough state so I didn't see it as too much of a problem at this point.

Problems with the Edit- Cereal Offenders

While looking over the editing process, we noticed how the computers we were using seemed to struggle with editing software and the edit project itself. Whenever I tried opening it up on my own laptop, it would immediately crash and the computers at the university and television studios would also either freeze or lag to such an extent that we could no make any progress.

The only computer that could run the edit progress relatively smoothly was Aimee's laptop which was a more up to date model. After enquiring with others as to what might be wrong, it turns out that Jason, our cameraman, had accidentally filmed the entire production in 4K, though it was only intended to be filmed in standard HD as we knew filming in 4K would cause many problems during the edit such as those we have been experiencing. This was apparently because choosing to the option to film in V-log automatically set the camera to record in 4K (something I thought the cameraman should have been aware of). The use of 4K footage also means that anything that sues this footage takes up much more space than HD footage would have, which will cause problems in terms of memory space.

A temporary solution we have thought of was to export each scene individually so that I can try and edit the sound on another computer for each individual scene without the computer crashing or lagging too much. This still makes me wish that the sound wasn't recorded via the Tascam as the process of the editing the sound appears to have become a lot more challenging and tedious than it should have been.

Cereal Offenders Sound/ Music Research: Composer- Julian Barratt

Julian Barratt is an actor, writer and composer born 4th May 1968 and is best known for his multiple comedy collaborations with fellow actor and comedy writer, Noel Fielding. Their best known collaboration was the creation of The Mighty Boosh which starred both of the actors.

Along with multiple writing credits for comedies, Julian Barratt has also obtained several music composing credits for series such as Unnatural Acts (1998) as well as the The Mighty Boosh (2004-2007) of which the latter had his compositions compiled into a short film titled Boosh Music (2005). 

Barratt's music for The Mighty Boosh is greatly reminiscent of the type of music found throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, to reflect the often mystical and whimsical themes of the show itself, the music features a psychedelic feel with distortion on certain instruments such as synthesizers and and guitars reminiscent of that found on later albums by The Beatles such as 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'. This kind of music helps to give the show its own kind of identity amongst the other comedy drama shows at the time.

I've already talked about the music found in The Mighty Boosh in my research on the show itself (where an example of the opening sequence is featured) but I do feel this kind of direction I want to take the sound overall. I feel that the intended style of our script for Cereal Offenders greatly reflects the style of this show and I personally think it will work well.

I've already created music for the title sequence which had taken some inspiration from The Mighty Boosh and I feel I need to keep this consistent throughout the rest of the soundtrack. However, I shall try and include the more experimental elements with instrumentation that reflects a more hallucinatory state which would be suitable for our production.

Recording Voice Overs and ADR for Cereal Offenders

In order to make up for the lost sound, it was decided that we would bring the actors into the tv studios in order to record ADR for their in the scenes with missing audio. We used the sound booth and I was in charge of setting up the sound equipment. This was relatively easy as I had already researched how to use the equipment in preparation for this. I simply had to connect the microphone to my own laptop and make sure the microphone was being picked up via the switchboard. I then used a program called audacity to record the audio itself. I oversaw the recording with Will. Callum was also supposedly 'supervising' us, which I found impressive considering he was in a completely different room not doing much at all. He then left anyway to no-one's surprise.

We first recorded the ADR for Ralph's hallucination. The actor watched the footage previously captured during the shoot week and attempted to perform the lines in sync with the footage. After a few attempts we got the audio we were happy with and we proceeded to get voice over work for when the characters are having conversations in their head.

The last voice overs we captured were for the voices of the flowers that appear to talk to Ralph during his hallucination. We had already got these but they were lost along with the other audio. Therefore we got one of our fellow students to be provide the voice for one of the two flowers. As there were not many people around, I ended up filling the role of the second flower. Both of us but on over the top accents which will hopefully add to the comedy of the scene.

Now it will be a case of trying to match the ADR to the scenes with the missing audio to see if we can avoid having to reshoot the scenes. This will be my responsibility when I am eventually given the opportunity to work on the audio overall once there is a rough edit available.

Cereal Offenders Titles Music and First Feedback:

Before getting some initial feedback of the footage captured during the shoot week from the tutor, I decided that I should also provide an example of the type of music would be present within the production.

I immediately got to work using the software, GarageBand, which I have become quite proficient in using and is a surprisingly good tool for producing good quality music. All of the instruments are previously synthesized versions made to sound like their respective instruments such as guitars and drums. This is helpful seeing as I cannot actually play drums or guitar but can play piano which is all is really needed as the software responds using a keyboard as the input instrument. I can then apply certain filters and mess around with various settings to make the other instruments sound more convincing such as reverb and playing a bass through a selection of amplifiers to make it sound like a distorted guitar.

Going through a phase of listening to the band 'Simple Minds' at the time (after researching music used in other comedy dramas such as The Breakfast Club), I made a tune based off the opening of their song, 'The American' with a similar riff. I then sped it up, changed the drum pattern and added more distorted guitars. This worked surprisingly well when I played it alongside the title sequence which had already been created by Aimee. Reaction to it from the other members of the group were positive. I'm not sure if this will be the final version of this piece of music due to my worries this might get a copyright claim though I feel it sounds different enough, taking more of an inspiration from music reminiscent of bands like Blur and the subsequent style of music found in The Mighty Boosh . Response from the tutor to this was also positive. This is the sort of style I'd want to use throughout the production after some discussion with the rest of the group except for scenes such as when the characters have taken drugs. I'd like to be more experimental in terms of the overall sound for those types of scenes.

The title sequence and this music will be seen in later blogs where I will talk about various stages of the edit that will have been uploaded to YouTube.

Responses from the tutor towards some examples of footage that we had shown were also mostly positive. However, it was noted that the handling cinematography caused some of the footage to look a bit flat, almost like a serious drama, rather than a comedy drama. This might be something we'll have to try and rectify through possible reshoots to inject more energy into the camera work or through my own sound design.

Cereal Offenders Sound Research: The Breakfast Club

The Breakfast Club is a film from 1985 and is a comedy-drama about a group of students caught in Saturday detention. The film stars Judd Nelson, Holly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy among others and follows the exploits of the individual students, building upon their various differing wild personalities working together to survive under a power-hungry head teacher.

I chose to look at this film primarily due to the choice of music prevalent throughout the film as well as the comedy drama conventions young adult target audience used which our project would hope to emulate.

The music, of which was my primary focus, is very much a product of the time in which the film was made. The style consists of synthesizer heavy rock-pop which reached high popularity during the 1980s and is often considered nostalgic for modern audiences. However, the main song that is often remembered from this film is the opening and ending track 'Don't You (Forget About Me)' written and performed by Simple Minds.

The film opens and the drum beat of this song suddenly starts. This immediately grabs the attention of the viewer as the song eventually leads into the opening instrumental over the film titles.

Here is the opening to The Breakfast Club for reference (from 0:00 to 0:30):

It is this in particular that I feel I want to try and emulate for the opening of Cereal Offenders. This kind of opening makes the production feel much bigger and makes it stand out from other films of the same genre. A drum beat such as this would also help in initially grabbing the attention of our viewers, though this will need to remain consistent throughout the production. This style would also help to immediately let audiences know the intended genre that our project is trying to create due to familiarity of this kind of style of opening.

The nostalgic elements from this can also be found in other productions that share the genre of comedy drama such as Pitch Perfect which specifically references The Breakfast Club and how it uses this kind of music as a theme within the film itself.