Category: Editing

This project has been very enjoyable. Being able to create a soundscape of anything we wanted was a freedom that I had not anticipated we would enjoy right at the start of the course, and I thoroughly enjoyed this module as a result. I had an idea for a soundscape during the presentation on the assessment, and as I thought about it I liked it more and more. I caught Ross, James and Declan as they left the lecture and asked if I could work in their group, and then pitched my idea. By the time we got downstairs we had agreed to use it, and arranged to meet up a few days after to talk more in depth about what we wanted to create. Group work is something I have never particularly enjoyed, but working within a group that I was comfortable with, who were all motivated to make something good, was a really nice experience. When we delivered our presentation, I felt confident about our idea, and aside from running over and being unable to play the test sounds we had recorded with a H4N Zoom a few weeks prior, the presentation went well.

When it came to recording in Skegness we had several problems concerning closed attractions that were to be in our soundscape, so we were forced to focus on the town rather than the funfair. This was due to us as a group not organising our time effectively. We also had problems with some of the recordings that had unwanted sounds within them, and should have been recorded better. Having a list of all the sounds we wanted to capture would have been a great help here.

Unfortunately we left the editing of the soundscape a little close to the wire, and next time I will be sure to being work on projects far sooner, both when recording (see above) and editing. Editing did go rather smoothly though, and I was able to put many of the techniques I had learnt in David’s workshops to practical use. I particularly enjoyed experimenting with the automation of panning clips, and gradually seeing the soundscape come to life was a very rewarding feeling. Ross, Dec and I all met up on Tuesday 16^th Dec to work on the soundscape, and Ross began editing the arcade scene. We decided to share the editing between us, giving each member creative control, whilst remaining open to feedback. Dec and I wrote some blog entries, and then Dec and Ross swapped, and Dec worked on the seaside scene. I then worked on the town scene, and ended up re-organising a lot of Ross and Dec’s work. I cleaned up the walking track, and automated the panning and volume of certain tracks in the town and arcade scenes, as well as adding the small section at the end with the subject walking onto the pier. I’ve learned that editing and producing a piece of audio of this complexity takes a lot longer than I thought, so proper planning is definitely something I need to focus on improving.

I feel far more confident using Pro Tools as a result of this project, and am happy with how the soundscape has turned out. I’m aware that it no longer fits the brief perfectly, but that is due to our inexperience in project planning, and next time I do a project like this, I will endeavour to be better prepared.

The group convened in the edit suite to begin putting the soundscape together. With the soundscape being split into three distinct sections, or locations, I place markers on the edit window so that everyone working on it would know when each section started and finish. I also placed a marker at the end, dead on 2 minutes. I started editing and decided to focus on the “arcade” section of the soundscape. One of the difficulties I faced was the naming of the recordings. Dan had noted down descriptions for some of the files but not all of them. On the day off the recording I listened through and renamed the files that I had recorded individually, but I wrongly assumed that the rest of the group had done the same for theirs. This made locating the sounds I needed for editing more difficult and time consuming. Nonetheless I was able to put the section together and I passed the project on to the rest of the group. After listening back to what the others did, I added a few effects to enhance the atmosphere in some places and tweaked some of the panning to emphasise the sense of movement. At some point Dan noticed that I had neglected to allow for time set aside for ending the soundscape on the pier and the preceding sections had to be altered to allow for this.

A timeline for the soundscape had already been agreed upon, but it had not yet been set in stone. After all the sound clips were in place and the group were happy with the way it sounded I created the timing script, showing a second by second account of what was occurring and when.