Panning

These screen grabs are an example of the panning that we added to our piece, we included this on not only the clips where she would be walking past the noise and so it would go from her left to right ear, but also on the noises that she was making, such as sweeping from left to center and then right to center to give a sense of movement and action around the cleaner and bring her presence more into focus.

Typing Error

The above is a screen shot of making the typing error sound effect. We used layers to create the sound effect and just carefully lined up the error noise with each tap of the key. This took a little longer than we first suspected because of making sure the gaps were all consistent and that we had covered every keyboard tap. Once we were happy, we exported this so that it made it into one sound and is therefore easier to edit into place on the final assembly.

Editing

Since our rough cut tutorial, we've done some rerecording and have put together a fine cut of our piece. I'm quite happy with the outcome, I feel that we've acted on Esther's advice a lot and that it's turned out very well. The only thing that I'm a little uncertain about, even now, is the sound levels. As a result of them being way too high and peaking, we've adjusted them but I'm a little concerned we may have over-corrected and it may be too quiet now! It's probably just that I've been listening to it for so long I've lost the concept of volume but the meters are looking good so I think the piece will be fine.

Some screen grabs of editing will follow soon!

Feedback from our Second Tutorial

Today we had our second tutorial with Esther and I was pleased with the feedback and direction she gave us. A positive that she noted was the panning in our piece, she said that this was good and that we needed to add more of this in the overall track. Unfortunately, the levels were a bit too loud when she was listening to the piece and I could see them peaking which I hadn't noticed during the rough edit so we'll need to fix that.

Something we all agreed on as a definite change was the voice of the cleaner. We were already unhappy with the recordings but Esther's input cemented the idea to rerecord in our plans. The voice was too much for the piece and I agree that maybe by rerecording we can get a lot more out of the overall work. For one thing, Hannah and I have decided to record the voice in a more monotonous tone to indicate an internal voice rather than the more emotive dialogue we'd gotten to begin with.

Esther suggested we should separate the cleaner and the workers more, that they were too integrated at present. I think that with more panning and sorting out our levels, once we've reintroduced the new voice recordings that this will be a lot clearer between where she is in relation to them. The panning to create the sense of her movement through the space should also help a lot in creating those boundaries.

Flying In Tokyo

Another song that I can't stop listening to and seems like I always have this on repeat at the moment is Flying In Tokyo by Magnetic Man. Using tonal sounds to begin the track and then strings accompaniment, manages to somehow evoke a sense of the oriental despite not really having any of the characteristic sounds one would associate with oriental music. It is also something that I like to imagine rain whilst listening to - the tone of the music just makes the image much more vivid. Sometimes I just like to observe passers by when I listen to it and for some reason, whenever I listen to this track, I seem to notice the little things that are in every day life we mostly overlook and to me they seem more beautiful than ever.

Air Freshener

Recording some sounds that you expect to make an obvious sound of what they are and then wondering what the sound is when you're listening back to it!
That happened with a recording of air freshener being sprayed, it's so difficult to tell what it is, we probably won't get to use it in our final piece but it's an interesting sound to add to my sound library.

Islands

Islands by The XX

This song builds from an instrumental, to one voice, to the other and finally to two joint voices. I find that, even though it's quite upbeat, the nature of the voices make the track quite relaxing. The melody of the joint voices is so aurally pleasing that I find myself listening to this track repeatedly, as if I can't get it out of my head.