samajbarker-blog

[samajbarker-blog]

The finished project of my film, after all the work i guess i don't mind it. if i had to redo it i would definitely redo some shots like the house as that was rushed and it could've been better if that had movement with the banging sound effect on the door as well as making it more professional and less shaky or at least something with a bit more planning before filming.

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Conclusion

This project has been very tough for me, a simple idea grew into a nice image that propelled itself into a dream that i didn't think i could pull off, technical difficulties on showcase day, problems with it not going onto the dvd so i could play it through the old Crt tv dvd player and the sound on my project completely corrupting for no reason causing a complete halt in my production. I will be honest and say that i do not like my project in its finished state. Is it finished? well that is arguable, something can be finished to the viewer and never finished in the eyes of the person working on it and i think that's why i struggle. Not that i cant create the work i set out to make but that i expect too much of myself, but if i didnt i wouldnt be happy!. The journey i have enjoyed, research about Asmr and triggers within sound have all been very interesting for me, the filming wasn't challenging but it was effective in what it had to represent as the majority of my attention went onto the sound anyways. Editing was a nightmare and i'm glad i don't have to open that project again (hopefully) but i have learnt an absolute load of useful information and what my strengths are, i set out to test myself and if everything fails i feel i have accomplished that at least. 

Narrative: I am not the best story teller in real life, my stories often meander and go veering off the course and i sadly feel the same way about my work, i fear it brushes onto what i make and despite the story having good intentions with some moments i'm happy with i feel as if it doesn't quite break through as such, it just needs to be a bit more focused and probably have a little more time and focus put on it.

Editing: Despite it being my least favourite part of filming I am surprisingly good  with my editing skills, time efficient?, maybe not but i am getting there and working to a deadline is slowly getting better. The piece as a whole i feel is tight at the start, cuts to the chase, wasting no time in throwing you in the deep end with long cuts met with snappy shots of what were being told about. I feel that it does move smoothly and nothing jitters or feels sloppy (unless intended in parts where i wanted it) however one place i'm not so happy with is the end. I definitely could've shorten the end and some shots drag on far too long, if i was to go back and change things i would cut that more heavily and spend more time deciding what was necessary as none of it really adds much to the narrative and to me feels lazy dragging the rest of the project down on a poor end.

Sound: Being the main draw and focus of my attention (and hopefully the audiences) i wanted this to be high quality and surprisingly it turned out better than i thought it was going to be. the shotgun mic i was using helped to not catch any unwanted sound that would have made my life hell when editing and my skills with audio software like audacity is quite knowledgeable and with the help of youtube i was able to recreate some sounds i thought i wouldn't of been able to. With some sounding rather professional and blend right into the soundscape i was hoping to paint. It became more like editing music than film, i had to get the right pitch to match the rest of the project and scenes like the ghost scene had me searching for weird and funky solutions to problems that were appearing. for example the fact the echo sounded too close and i had to use multiple audio editing software to create a better reverb and so on.

Hardest Task:

What I found hardest in the creation of this project was the writing that is supposed to accompany the work. The project itself was my main concern and I pretty much left no time for writing up, much of it left till the last minute which caused a bottleneck in my workflow. This was very bad for productivity and caused a lot of stress. If i was to redo the project i would make sure work load was shared between paper work and practical.

In conclusion i am happy with my project because i have finished and learnt from it, I wanted to challenge myself and i think its safe to say i did so. I will continue to work with the same ethic as i have done with this one as depsite it not being to the standard i wanted, i will never truly be happy with what i make and there will always be room for improvement.

[samajbarker-blog]

One video that helped me majorly in the production of this short film was this dream like island deep relaxation video. 

I copied elements of worded queues she uses to create imagery and twisted it for use in my own much darker version of a audio journey and it helped me to fill parts of the script. I looked at many videos from audio journeys and this one had the right stuff in. the voice was deep and mellow, there was sound effects acting as queues for imagery as well as poetic lines that i recreated in my own style.

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The ghost sequence was much harder, calling for the use of distortion and a lot of delay to create a echoey voice that was shrill and weightless, i achieved that by removing the bass from the vocal recording and adding reverb of a much larger room than the one of the garage, still coming through the tape machine i had to make sure that the ghosts voice still carried the tape hiss and crackle as if it was coming straight off the tape. The voice is of a child's, which is implied to be the man at a much younger age asking his mother if he can be let out of the basement “i recorded over an old tape for you to listen to that”. 

Again like i said in an earlier post i took heavy inspiration from the ghost voice in poltergeist which i will reference here (poltergeist girl speaks to family scene; https://youtu.be/zGkfzaMNINc?t=1m36s). I felt that this was the right sound for my voice in my much lower budget film, it sounds isolated and distant yet shrill and close at the same time.

To imitate the echo around the hollowed old house i added pan onto the vocals to make it ”bounce” from ear to ear around the viewers head as its coming from the real world.

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For scenes where the man is speaking like this scene where the man leaves a tape recording of himself running so that we arent left alone called for more editing to the sound. Use of compression to remove the treble and some of the top end of the sound allowed me to make the voice flat. this combined with delay, pitch shift, Equalisation, and noise gate added with the sound effect of a pushed button and tape motor sfx, let me create a voice that sounds like its coming from a tape machine, poor in quality and sharp in tone. 

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For the narration when we first meet the man, i left it simple, adding reverb i felt resembled a small boxed room and saved the preset once i was happy to add it to all the others. The pitch shifter allowed me to compress my vocals and mask my voice to allow for the characters identity to be left a mystery. My aim by masking both voice and visual of the man was to allow the viewer to come up with someone much worse than i could've shown. It also allowed for the theme that the man has no identity and therefore cannot be targeted (you can't mentally pick him apart to comfort yourself) whereas he can see you and hear you fine, creating for an “exposing” emotion to be present when watching.

The only identity droppers the man leaves behind are his obsession and devotion to his mother as a child and other small verbal queues he drops throughout the film which can be interpreted as playful or inquisitive. His character in whole is quite childlike.

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Scrolling down the page i have 4 tracks for sound effects, one for extra sounds that were added in near the end of editing, the narration, and the ghosts voices that speak in the house scene.

All the sound effects have received some sort of editing to make the sfx sound less fake or added, i wanted them to seem as real as possible in the scenes where the man is present and very intimate and intrusive in the dream sequences.

Narration was a tricky one, i wrote a script for all the lines i spoke in the project but it took me quite a few takes for some lines as i felt uncomfortable or i was laughing at how bad my raw unedited voice sounded saying some of those things. Narration received a lot of special treatment and ill follow that all up in the following post.

The ghost sequence was heavily edited, so much so the voicing doesn't even resemble my voice (which is a good thing). It took a lot of time and worry which i would rather not get into, but i was basically struggling to make it sound remotely creepy or authentic, i took inspiration from the scene in poltergeist where the girls voice sounds like shes being pulled and twisted and she speaks (ill leave the link here :  https://youtu.be/zGkfzaMNINc?t=1m36s ) and i felt it worked quite well, would’ve been better with an actual child but i did my best.

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Here you can see i've added another two tracks for sound below; one being a continuous sound which was for ambience (extractor or fan of some kind in the garage room) this sound waves in and out to create a focus on other sounds when not in the room but continues throughout the project due to the viewer never actually leaving the garage, it's all in their mind so they can still hear it.

The one below that is the track for the first set of sound effects, these are the sounds that draw the most attention from the visual and so i placed that at the top for easy access and to remind myself of their importance.

You can also see on the tracks the blue lines, these show the level and the volume of the sound and how i've raised the gain or lowered it at certain points, the red line at the bottom is the pan, which for majority of the sounds remains centered.

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Ontop of the visual timeline, I have 5 other tracks for visual which allow me to have things play over the top whether that be a quick cut or a blend, masking was also used to reveal only part of a shot that i wanted the viewer to focus on, this was used at the end for the lamp scene.

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Here i'm showcasing what the project would have looked like in day two of editing, 4 tracks most likely. Visual, being the main project and what the viewer normally sees. Raw, being the raw sound from the camera built in mic which was poor quality but used as a mark for me to know where the shot/sound would start/end.

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A similar screen shot showing all the “narration” sound effects i had to layer and use for the main characters voice, i didn't use all of the sounds shown but i used a definite majority. 

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One of the screenshots of the project in early form, all my video and sound placed top right in folders for easy access as they slowly got added to the timeline (bottom) this allowed me to grab what i needed fast and efficiently and the software i used (sony vegas 14) despite not being the best, worked best with the little amount of time i had to edit as i know the software very well. This allowed for fast, productive sessions of 9/10 hours a day in the 10 days i had left before the deadline.

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In my journey to editing and piecing together something out of the mess that was my last minute idea change (awful idea may I add) I began to look through all my files and create a narrative that would still be achieving my brief.

The breakdown:

What I had was 5/6 locations that were just going to blend together with a soundscape to decorate the stable shots, ( I wanted the audio to be the driving point of the film.) I felt however, that this approach was lazy and I found my self achieving my goal in under 4 days as shooting was simple and after tweaking, found myself only needing one or two takes as i understood my camera and the lighting I was working with. I set out to challenge myself, and challenge myself i did.

The plan: 

I spent two nights thinking on how I could link what id recorded and what I had planned, I decided to use the idea of sound and how relaxation/ meditation journey videos on youtube use sound and thought provoking words to create imagery in the listeners mind.  After countless hours of research and reading up on ASMR I had a rough idea to use these relaxation tips to create a thriller that would do the opposite and take the viewer on a journey they don't want to be on at all. I soon had a rough script and started to perfect it, next was the parts between locations that i needed to film.

The Reshoots: 

I had plenty of Stock footage Id recorded in case of corruption and fillers, and I had a fair amount of variety in what i shot to make things interesting but I had nothing to link the start to the middle, the middle to the end and so on, I decided to use one of the locations I had originally planned as stationary (baghead) to become the introduction as the kidnapper drags you hands tied and “bagged” into a garage of some kind. The rest of the film either takes place in the imaginary world the man thinks up for the viewer or the room where the man sits face and hands all in silhouette from the large light behind him. 

I filmed both of these on my own, both setting up the camera and using my dad as a model for the shoot.

first shot: dragging into garage

second shot: light is switched on to reveal man

third: man leans forward

fourth: man sits next to Crt tv ( the one the film was displayed on for added effect)

fifth: static shot of light as man has gone.

i filmed this all in the best part of a day and with the help of my dad being the model I got the shots i needed and with some to spare incase i wanted more.

the churchyard was also added so i could have the man walk towards the viewer in silhouette, a personal favourite.

I also had to reshoot the forest scene as i needed the walking to be faster and the footage less shaky.

Back to editing: 

After receiving all this footage I created a rough edit of where i wanted things to be, appear and started creating some form of timeline on where things would or wouldn't fit, at this point i was using trial and error, a technique i have relied on heavily this year and so far it hasn't failed me. I used the raw sound recorded from the camera (poor quality) while i edited and created the first draft, it gave me a better idea of what sounds i wanted and how they were going to sound.

Recording sound:

I bought a sound recorder off amazon and grabbed my rode mic, heading off into the wilderness to record, bird tweets, twig snaps, breathing, walking and general ambience for my project, i used some copyright free music that i felt would add a little edge and left that low in the mix as it wasnt a focus, more of a bedding for the main sfx. This was tedious, getting the sound right without the mic peaking if it was too loud (peaking sounds like crackled distorted sound when the sound is too loud for the mic to register) and getting it the right pitch and length, for such a small sfx like the bang of a garage door i probably spent the best part of an hour for something that plays for 1.3 seconds.

The final cut and Mixing:

After finishing the final cut and making it a comfortable length with an end i had in mind i finally colour graded the greyish film and added a little contrast to the image while bringing up the brightness which let the sepia orange lighting i had chosen to use bleed across the screen.  Mixing the audio was much harder and i only just finished tweaking that, still not happy with the end result i decided to leave it where i felt it was at least level to some degree.

The exhibition and reflection:

I displayed it on a Crt Tv in a seperate room to give the project a isolated space for the viewer to truly be immersed, and the Crt Tv to match the one in the film just for extra scare factor, im currently reflecting and concluded now.

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Editing throughout the night. Here you can see the multiple layered tracks of audio it took me to create a soundscape I was happy with. I often work best this late at night as I dont get distracted surprisingly. But yeah. Organised folders too. Showing the 10 hours of raw footage I recorded. Half of which wasn't used, but oh well, id of rather it be like that then having to reshoot. Which i had to do anyways due to missing shots or feeling like there were shots still missing. Also I'm listening to dolce vita by Ryan paris. Absolute tune. Gets those creativity juices flowing.

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My home for the next few days, inbetween editing I've been recording sound effects in my garden and my room with my shotgun mic and a sound recorder to make it more portable. I have put orange markers for where certain sounds are needed and cuts that I think would be appropriate so when i come back to editing I know what im doing from the off

[samajbarker-blog]

My home for the next few days, inbetween editing I've been recording sound effects in my garden and my room with my shotgun mic and a sound recorder to make it more portable. I have put orange markers for where certain sounds are needed and cuts that I think would be appropriate so when i come back to editing I know what im doing from the off

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For the first continous shot in my short i had to recreate the effect of someone being dragged. I didn't want to damage equipment so I created this. Allowing there to still be friction with the floor enough so it didn't look like you were gliding anyways.