Video and Sound Production: Project 1

on

8.4.2022 - 17.6.2022 (Week 2 - Week 12)
Chung Yi Ki / 0345014 / BDCM
Video and Sound Production
Project 1: Audio Editing Exercises

Quick Links

Lecture

Week 3 / Film Sound
Sound elements
The three sound elements found in films are speech, sound effects and music. Mixing these sound elements help to support the action in the film and engage the audience. 

Speech
Speech is the most important aspect in sound for audience to understand the story of the film, it consists of dialogues and/or voice overs.

Sound effects
Sound effects consist of ambience and hard or "cut" effects. Ambience refers to the background noise present in a location in the scene while hard or "cut" effects refers to all the sound in a scene that isn't speech or music, e.g: door closing, footsteps etc.

Music
The goal of adding music in a scene is to enhance the dramatic effect and the emotional impact. 

Dubbing
Also called as automated Dialog Replacement (ADR). It is the process of re-recording dialogues after the filming process to enhance the audio quality or to make dialogue changes.

Foley
A sound effect technique where various sound effects are produced by materials that aren't directly related to what audience see on screen. For example, fluttering a piece of cloth to make the sound of crashing waves.

Week 6 / Audio Editing - EQ

Frequency range 
Uses the unit Hertz (Hz). Frequency ranges from 20Hz to 20000Hz. There are 7 subsets of frequency used to define the ranges

Dynamic range
Uses the unit decibles (dB). Basically, the volume of an audio. The threshold of pain is 130dB SPL.

Space
Mono- Recorded using a single audio channel 
Stereo- Recording using two audio channels

Phone call sound effect 
Bring down bass, treble, increase the mid range between 500Hz to 2kHz

Muffled sound effect
Bring up bass, decrease treble to the lowest part of the eq graph, increase mid range to the highest part of the EQ graph

Reverb effect 
Apply an echoing effect to an audio clip 

Decay time - Specifies the length of time of the echoing trail
Pre-delay time - Specifies the length of time for the reverb to reach its peak 
Perception - Gives an irregular echoing effect 
Dry - A high percentage gives a subtle spacious feeling to the audio, a low
percentage gives the audio a special effect
Wet - Keep the percentage lower than the dry percentage to add a subtle spaciousness to an audio track

Week 12 / Sound Design
4 important sound design techniques:
Time stretching / compression 
Changing the length of an audio track without altering its pitch. 

Fig 2.1 Stretch and Pitch effect window in Adobe Audition
Source: Sound design demonstration video

This can be done in Adobe Audition by using the stretch and pitch effect. The stretch slider changes the
length of the audio track while the pitch shift slider can be maintained at the original position to keep the original pitch. 

Pitch shifting 
Changing the pitch of an audio track to be in higher or lower pitch. It's done for corrective purposes such as getting a vocal to be perfectly in tune, or for purely creative reasons such as increasing the pitch of a vocal to make it sound like a chipmunk. 

This can be done in Adobe Audition by using the pitch shift slider in the stretch and pitch effect window, or by using the pitch shifter effect and adjust the semi-tones and cents sliders. (Higher semitones =higher pitch)

Reversing 
Changing the audio track where the end will be played first and the beginning will be played last. Reversing an audio track can change the feeling and rhythm of a sound. 

Fig 2.2 Pitch Shifter effect window in Adobe Audition
Source: Sound design demonstration video

This can be done in Adobe Audition by clicking the reverse option under the effects menu.

Layering
Arranging several audio tracks to overlay each other and in a way that the overall sound effect is a single complete sound rather than several separated sound tracks. 

Fig 2.3 Layering audio in Adobe Audition using the multitrack window
Source: Sound design demonstration video

This can be done in Adobe Audition by layering multiple audio tracks in the multitrack window workspace.

Instructions

Tasks

Week 3 (15/4/2022)
Exercise 1: Audio dubbing
To start of Project 1, we are given our first exercise which is to sync audio to a silent video. We are given a script to follow where we need to record the speech ourselves and find the sound effects needed online. We are also given the video that we need to sync the audio to, which is a clip from the movie "Soul". 

Fig 1.1 Given video clip

Fig 1.2 Given script

I recorded the dialogues (including the meowing) using a microphone plugged into my smartphone so I could get a clearer recording. I recorded the speed of my speeches in accordance with the characters' timing in the video. I then went to freesound.org to find the sound effects I needed and edited all the audios in Adobe Premiere Pro with attention paid on the timing in the video. 

Fig 1.3 Adobe Premiere Pro timeline

I layered some audios together so that they don't start off abruptly and add to the ambient sound. I also added an exponential fade audio transition to some audio clips so they would start and end gradually. 

Fig 1.4 Audio dubbing video - First attempt

Week 8 (20/5/2022)

After receiving feedbacks from Mr. Martin, I added an ambience sound of people talking in the street and a subtle thump sound when the leaves fall on the character's hand. I adjusted the volume for the people talking ambience sound according what the scene is showing. The video starts with the ambience sound in normal volume and then it goes more silent when the scene shows the character is deep in his thoughts, and the volume goes back to normal again when the cat snaps the character back to reality. 

Final Exercise 1: Audio dubbing

Fig 2.1 Final audio dubbing video

Sound effects sources (according to order of appearance in the video):
Week 6 (6/5/2022) 
Exercise 2: Sound shaping 
For this week, we continued with the second task for our project 1, which is manipulating an audio recording to a certain effect. The audio track was given to us and we need to edit the audio to suit 5 scenarios, which is: a phone call, voice from a closet, in a big stadium, in a toilet, and in a big cave.
Fig 2.1 Original given audio

Fig 2.2 Equalizer graph of phone call and closet edit

Fig 2.3 Reverb settings for cave edit

Fig 2.4 Reverb settings for stadium edit

Fig 2.5 Reverb settings for toilet edit

I edited the audio in Adobe Audition by adjusting the equalizer and applying the full reverb effect. After that, I exported the audio in mp3 format for submission. The phone call audio edit was exported in mono channel mode while all the other edits are exported in stereo. 


Final Exercise 2: Sound shaping 

Fig 3.1 Final phone call audio edit

Fig 3.2 Final closet audio edit

Fig 3.3 Final stadium audio edit

Fig 3.4 Final big cave audio edit

Fig 3.5 Final toilet audio edit

Week 11 (10/6/2022)
Exercise 3: Sound Design 
For this week, we are given our third task for project 1 which is manipulating and layering a sound to enhance it and adding effects to a vocal sound. We are provided with 3 audio tracks which is the sound of an explosion, a punch and a sample voice track. Our task is to magnify the explosion sound, create variations of triple punches from the punch sound and manipulate one part from the sample voice track to sound like either a monster or an alien. 

Fig 4.1 Original explosion sound

Fig 4.2 Original punch sound

Fig 4.3 Original sample voice track
Fig 4.4 Multitrack window of explosion sound track edit

Fig 4.5 Mixer window for explosion sound track edit

Fig 4.6 Pitch shifter used on one of the explosion track

Fig 4.7 Stretch and pitch effect used on one of the explosion track

Fig 4.8 Multitrack window of punch sound track edit - Part 1

Fig 4.9 Multitrack window of punch sound track edit - Part 2

Fig 4.10 Multitrack window of monster voice edit

Fig 4.11 Stretch and pitch effect and other effects used for monster voice edit

Fig 4.12 Pitch shifter for monster voice edit

Fig 4.13 Parametric equalizer for monster voice edit

For the explosion sound, I created different sound tracks with different effects from the same sound file. Parametric equalizer, full reverb, stretch and pitch, pitch shifter, hard limiter are used to edit the sound to be either have more bass or treble, and some subtle reverberation. For the triple punch edit, the aforementioned effects are also used plus some modulation effects to create sound tracks of different pitch and effects. All the sound tracks are layered for the explosion and triple punch edit to finish up the edit. 

As for the sample voice track, I chose the part that says "About their father's salary, let us listen to their conversation" to edit it to sound like a monster voice. Stretch and pitch effect, pitch shifter and parametric equalizer were used to make the voice slower and deeper. Hard limiter, flanger, full reverb and vocal enhancer is to enhance the voice to make it sound more monstrous by adding some more bass, reverberation and subtle growling sound. The sound track is then trimmed by removing the inhalation sounds heard from the original track. 

Final Exercise 3: Sound Design 

Fig 5.1 Final explosion magnification sound edit

Fig 5.2 Final monster voice sound edit

Fig 5.3 Final triple punches sound edit

Feedbacks

Week 7 - Exercise 1: Audio dubbing
Add some ambience sound of people talking in the street, then the video would sound more in touch with the scene. 

Reflection

The exercises in this project were interesting to do. I’m no stranger to syncing audio but it is my first time recording myself dubbing and using Adobe Audition. I won’t lie that I felt awkward when recording myself somewhat voice acting, but still glad that it turned out okay. Recording myself also gave me the opportunity to try and match my talking speed to the actual scene, and this in a way let me practice my timing. 

For the Adobe Audition exercises, it was interesting to get to learn how to use the workspace and the tools there. I found that Adobe Audition gives a more flexible workspace to manipulate audio and with precise editing, doing those exercises also helped me learn the technical side of audio and sound so that I’d know what to edit to achieve a specific effect. It’s especially useful knowing how the parametric equalizer works as I found that it’s a powerful tool in audio editing and I often use it at the start of the process to set the overall effect and at the end to refine the audio edit. Though, one thing I often notice in the outcome of vocal edits is that the vocal will sound a bit robotic when it is heavily edited, perhaps more practice on using the tools in Adobe Audition would help me in solving this or avoid it as much as possible by lowering the use of effects. All in all, these exercises taught me a lot on how to edit and enhance an audio file effectively which would be useful whenever there’s video editing involved. 

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