Editing session №4

 Today we dedicated a session for editing the sound and thinking about the titles in our sequence. In the beginning of the lesson we divided three roles between me, Isi and Zoe. We had to, first, edit the sound of each clip in Adobe, second, come up with a list of names (credits) to put in our sequence and, third, pick a song (diegetic) as background music Juls is listening to. I was responsible for working in Adobe, Zoe - for finding a song and Isi - for creating the names/credits. Reflecting on the process so far, I realised we didn't think the production process thoroughly enough, as we knew we needed a song for the sequence, but we didn't choose it on the pre-production stage. As a result, we were stressed about not finding a soundtrack and Zoe spent time looking for non - copyright music available in the internet. 

For me the process was new, as I've never edited the sound before, however this challenge helped me gain valuable knowledge in terms of film production and using Adobe Premier. Applying crossfades almost on every audio of the videos, I made sure the transition between the shots is smooth and natural in terms of sound. Moreover, I was precisely listening and comparing the audio lines of different shots in order to adjust the pitch and volume for sound and make it continuous. I was paying attention to details, which is why I didn't have time to add all the desired sound effects by the end of the lesson. However, I still managed to apply a high pitched suspenseful sound effect on the moment, where Juls gets the flashback to emphasise the tension in this part. Isi successfully came up with an A4 list full of names for our sequence and Zoe found a few songs that could potentially match the ambiance of our sequence. However, when we started trying to apply it, it didn't sound right, which is why we spend at least a quarter of the lesson trying to come up with a solution for this. I do realise now that this part should have been thought through in advance, as we had important tasks to complete other than picking the soundtrack. At the end we decided to take the first 20 seconds of a track, created by one of the current Hurtwood students, doing music technology (we did get his consent!!) and loop it out. We didn't want to use the whole of it solely due to the fact that it had lyrics in it and we thought it would distract the viewers from the narrative.

Hence, we took the first 20 seconds (the opening of the song), looped it out and adjusted the pitch and beat on every transition part to make it sound like one continuous tune. Finally, we started discussing the title of our sequence and are now thinking of something connected to "system default" or "consciousness glitch". My team also did great job picking multiple fonts for our future titles, that would potentially be a fit for our sequence. Next session we are planning to finish the sound editing, add all the desired sound effects and hopefully, start inserting titles and credits.