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.

Planned Reshoots and Green Screen Filming- Cereal Offenders

Some minor reshoots have been planned, mostly involving close-ups on the actor's hands, certain specific lines of dialogue and more cutaways. These are in order to get a more lively performance on certain lines of dialogue from the actors after the somewhat stale delivery of certain parts of the script.

Plans were also made to capture some green-screen shots in order to better present the idea that the characters have taken drugs and are hallucinating. I helped to set up the green screen in preparation for the shoot days.We tested out certain shots that would be used, including a dolly shot zooming in on each character's face (though we used a chair in place of our lack of equipment). From what we saw, the shots should work and some examples were edited to see what they could potentially look like. I personally feel that they work well.

I will unfortunately not be able to attend the filming of these as I will be attending a funeral on the planned day of the shoot. However, Aimee has thankfully stepped in and offered to take over as sound operator for that day. Aimee has a large amount of knowledge of sound operating as well so the sound is in safe hands. I will then proceed to edit this into the project afterwards.

Fifth Sound Edit Update- Cereal Offenders

After a full week of editing the sound, including adding certain sound effects and sound beds, I feel that I have successfully edited two-thirds of the total run-time of the project with certain exceptions such as the scenes that were not labelled.

There has been some good communication between the group and everyone appears to know what position the current edit is in. The only real problems involved certain parts where I had to fix some syncing issues where very minor changes had been made to the edited footage. These were easy enough to fix however, if a little time consuming.

Cereal Offenders Rough Cut 1

Here is the first rough cut to contain sound which Aimee has uploaded onto Youtube:

At this stage you can tell this is still in a very rough state. The proper audio from the Tascam has only been partially integrated into the edit at this point, therefore the audio keep switching between the rough sound and the Tascam audio. This version of the edit was also shown to the Tutor who felt that the lack of consistency with the audio at this point makes for a difficult watch which I agree with. However this is a very rough version anyway so we expected it not to represent the finished project.

A lot of the sound is also out of sync with the footage, even in the parts where I have edited the sound in. This is due to parts of the footage being edited slightly, meaning the the audio has been taken out of its place.

I feel the edit of the footage itself is good for this rough state but needs much more tightening in order to help with pacing and also to give more energy to the scenes where the three characters are hallucinating. A piece of feedback that was given to us in regards to the footage itself was that the lack of energy can be attributed the fact that the whole thing was shot and directed ore like a serious drama which does not suit the kind of story presented in the script. I have to agree with this as the edit seems to struggle to keep the energy going with such stilted shots. The edit needs to be more experimental and perhaps try to break some of the conventional rules of editing film in oder to make the edit much more interesting.

I think my priority now is to make sure that all of the Tascam audio has been put into the edit, then the sound quality should have improved and will be consistent. Then I will be able to focus on the sound effects and music which should help in order to add more energy to the project which at the moment is still looking admittedly dull.