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.
Tuesday, 19 March 2019
Friday, 15 March 2019
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, 12 March 2019
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.
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.
Wednesday, 6 March 2019
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.
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.
Saturday, 2 March 2019
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.
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.
Tuesday, 26 February 2019
Cereal Offenders: Lost Sound
After reviewing the footage and sound taken from the last shoot day, I found that unfortunately something had gone wrong during the digitising of the footage and sound on the last day. Thus the footage survived but the sound did not.
I do have a few plans on how to tackle these problems. Luckily, the SWAT raid scene didn't contain too much dialogue so I might be able to use the sound taken from the camera's in-built microphone and clean it up to make it sound better quality as if recorded with a boom microphone.
Another idea would be to record ADR with the actors, particularly for the flower scene and match it up with the footage. This working would depend on how accurately the ADR footage would match the footage presented. I feel that this option could work and would be easy for me to do in order to fix the problem.
The other option would be to completely re-film the scenes which none of us would particularly want to do due to budgetary constraints. I'm sure I can hopefully fix the sound for these scenes without resorting to filming the scenes again.
I do have a few plans on how to tackle these problems. Luckily, the SWAT raid scene didn't contain too much dialogue so I might be able to use the sound taken from the camera's in-built microphone and clean it up to make it sound better quality as if recorded with a boom microphone.
Another idea would be to record ADR with the actors, particularly for the flower scene and match it up with the footage. This working would depend on how accurately the ADR footage would match the footage presented. I feel that this option could work and would be easy for me to do in order to fix the problem.
The other option would be to completely re-film the scenes which none of us would particularly want to do due to budgetary constraints. I'm sure I can hopefully fix the sound for these scenes without resorting to filming the scenes again.
Saturday, 23 February 2019
Shoot Day 5- Saturday 23/2/2019
Today was the final and longest shoot day, due to filming having enough time to film what we had originally planned to film tomorrow after having already shot what was planned today.
The scene planned for today involved a group of SWAT police breaking into the house where the production is set and apprehending our three main characters for accidentally revealing government secret via webcam whilst still in a hungover state. Aimee's brother and his two friends were brought in as the SWAT team. Their equipment consisted of paintball guns that looked very much like the real thing and multiple sets of combat armour which suited the Swat team look that we were looking for.
This scene was filmed from various different cameras, including go-pros attached to the SWAT members showing them approaching the house with the main character's inside. The main camera was used for inside the house, taken from multiple angles. I used the boom microphone as usual to record these through multiple takes. The first few takes produced a rather distorted sound due to the chaotic nature of the scene, therefore I had to turn the recording level down in order to capture clear sound. This scene was successful and ran relatively smoothly, with the only problem being Callum needlessly complaining despite the filming process going well.
It was after this that we realised that we had plenty of time to film the field scenes that we were planning to film tomorrow. The field scene involves the character, Ralph's, hallucination where he has turned into a sunflower and two other sunflowers are berating him. After reaching the field, I immediately set up before everyone else and recording a sound bed for the setting. This captured the light wind and the birds chirping which suited the scene perfectly. The actor portraying Ralph wore a sunflower costume while two fake sunflowers were put into the ground. A voice over will be recorded for their lines at a later date. The sound quality taken from the boom microphone was of good quality despite the outdoor setting. The only real problem was that it was starting to get late in the afternoon and the sun was starting to go down, so filming had to progress more quickly in order to catch up.
Overall, the filming of these scenes today were very successful considering the scale of the events with these scenes and I am happy with the quality of the sound that I was able to capture. That can be said of the filming progress overall with only the slight problems with disagreements between members of the production crew. Hopefully the use of the Tascam wont prove too much trouble during the editing process though I still have some doubts. As long as communication between all of the production crew members is good, the editing process should hopefully go relatively smooth.
The scene planned for today involved a group of SWAT police breaking into the house where the production is set and apprehending our three main characters for accidentally revealing government secret via webcam whilst still in a hungover state. Aimee's brother and his two friends were brought in as the SWAT team. Their equipment consisted of paintball guns that looked very much like the real thing and multiple sets of combat armour which suited the Swat team look that we were looking for.
This scene was filmed from various different cameras, including go-pros attached to the SWAT members showing them approaching the house with the main character's inside. The main camera was used for inside the house, taken from multiple angles. I used the boom microphone as usual to record these through multiple takes. The first few takes produced a rather distorted sound due to the chaotic nature of the scene, therefore I had to turn the recording level down in order to capture clear sound. This scene was successful and ran relatively smoothly, with the only problem being Callum needlessly complaining despite the filming process going well.
It was after this that we realised that we had plenty of time to film the field scenes that we were planning to film tomorrow. The field scene involves the character, Ralph's, hallucination where he has turned into a sunflower and two other sunflowers are berating him. After reaching the field, I immediately set up before everyone else and recording a sound bed for the setting. This captured the light wind and the birds chirping which suited the scene perfectly. The actor portraying Ralph wore a sunflower costume while two fake sunflowers were put into the ground. A voice over will be recorded for their lines at a later date. The sound quality taken from the boom microphone was of good quality despite the outdoor setting. The only real problem was that it was starting to get late in the afternoon and the sun was starting to go down, so filming had to progress more quickly in order to catch up.
Overall, the filming of these scenes today were very successful considering the scale of the events with these scenes and I am happy with the quality of the sound that I was able to capture. That can be said of the filming progress overall with only the slight problems with disagreements between members of the production crew. Hopefully the use of the Tascam wont prove too much trouble during the editing process though I still have some doubts. As long as communication between all of the production crew members is good, the editing process should hopefully go relatively smooth.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)