12. march 16-19

Monday, March 16

Although we are a lot closer to finishing than we were since the last class, there is still a lot to be done. As far as I can see, we are the last group left that still needs to film things for the documentary, and we really have to start getting organized and working hard. We are generally quite a hardworking group, but we occasionally are sidetracked and start joking around and chatting rather than putting all our energy and concentration into our film work. This has to be stopped if we want to finish on time. Also, many of our recorded parts have gone missing for some reason, showing us that we have to be more organized. I had really thought we had a good, oragnized and efficient system of separating our tapes: one tape for the soundtrack and the other for the documentary, but apparently, I was wrong, or we would not have so many parts (that I am sure we recorded) missing.
We came in again at lunch and after school. I tried editing the voices of the characters, as they sound too much like us. The tones need to be altered, in some cases, quite drastically in order to suit the character. For example, because Jerald is acting as the ‘Daemon King’, I thought he should have a deeper sounding voice to match his character. My sound editing was a bit of a failure as I have never used the sound editing tools on Final Cut Pro before, but with a bit of time and experimenting, I should be able to get a satisfactory result.

Thursday, March 19
Our film is finished! Not to very good quality, but it is finished. I think we have a good soundtrack; there are many layers of sound and they accurately portray the storyline and set up atmospheres matching our interpretation of the atmosphere in the comic. However, we had a lot of difficulty today. Our documentary is quite disorganized, but there is nothing we can do about it now, since the film is due. We spent the first few minutes of class trying to organize the rather misplaced, random clips. Our soundtrack, which was on another hard drive, came up as ‘unrendered’ when put into Final Cut Pro, and came up as a bunch of beeping sounds, without the actual soundtrack in it.
Luckily for us, the screening of the other groups’ projects took a long time, so that it did not get to us, and we now have until Monday to render the file. We watched Group 1 and 2’s projects, as well as Group 3’s soundtrack. I think Group 1 did not really capture the mood of the comic well through the dialogue, but their use of sound effects was good. There were many layers of sound used to create the setting of the story. Their documentary was really good – it was well organized so that I had a clear idea of exactly what was going on, and there were examples to illustrate every step. It was surprising to learn how many of the foley effects were created, such as the sound of walking in mud.
Group 2 had an amazing project – both the soundtrack and the documentary were outstanding. Their section of the comic was very action-packed, and this could be reflected in their soundtrack. Every movement was highlighted by sound, and although there were no visuals to help me, I could understand exactly what was going on. The choice of music was also appropriate and really accentuated the mood of the comic. All in all, they really made good use of sound to produce a vivid portrayal of a fighting scene. Their documentary was a very thorough, step-by-step record of how they created their soundtrack. It also made use of many creative ways of showing their work, for example filming the camera screen to show how they recorded sound.
We only had time to watch the soundtrack for Group 3. It wasn’t that impressive after watching Group 2’s, but I think it was pretty good overall. There could have been times where more dramatic music could have been played, but I think that the sounds were well chosen, suitable to the action portrayed, and their foley effects were very good.
My group has been staying after school since Monday, and working through lunch periods, so it is quite a disappointment that our soundtrack is unavailable now. However, as we have until next Monday to export it and put it into the Drop Box, hopefully everything will be fine by then.
As an overall judgement on this project, I think that our group could have worked together more. During this project, we were more or less split into two groups: Michele and I doing the documentary, and the other three doing the soundtrack. This meant that I had only a vague idea of the progress we made with the soundtrack. We also should have kept a tighter schedule, made a plan to follow, so that we didn’t wander around as much wondering what to do, wasting time by arguing over what comes next. I also think that a plan would have kept us from getting sidetracked so much.