Jack in the Box Scene

After watching Abbie's blog post on the editing of the Jack in the Box scene, I wasn't quite happy with the non diegetic sound, as I felt like it didn't seem natural and it didn't fit with the hand movements. So, I decided to record the sound for the jack in the box, making it a diegetic sound.

  Click Here to watch Abbie's original edit: 

Here is the vlog, of how I recorded the sound:

Editing the sound

• The first thing I did, was to compress the sound and to raise the gain, so that the sound would be louder.

• I then created an auxiliary strip, where I labeled "reverb. This is so that the sound would have some delay, which makes it sound more natural.
• To create the reverb on the new auxiliary strip, I used the space designer and I chose the "nice hall" reverb.
• Back onto the audio strip, which contains the recording of the Jack in the Box, I sent the sound to the reverb auxiliary channel, which is also called "bus 1". 
• Where there is a circle, I could control, how much of the sound I wanted to send to the reverb auxiliary strip.

• The denoiser was used to cut out some of the frequency which is not in the threshold which I had manually set.

• I pitch shifted some of the sound so that it would sound more eerie, but I didn't make it too obvious so it would sound uncomfortable, as I had turned the output mix down.

Here is the finished sound:

  I think this sounds a lot more natural and it would suit the scene a lot more than the non diegetic sound that I made, just because it was painfully obvious that the sound of the jack in the box was a non diegetic rather than diegetic which it is meant to be.

Editing sound to Opening Sequence

When I had finished making all of the sound, I edited it into Final Cut Pro so that I could put it with the edited scenes

• The music wasn't quite in time with the opening sequence as we wanted to have the loud bass sounds where the credits came up, so we had to move around the credits a bit so that it would match up to the bass sounds.
• We used 3 pieces of sound, which was the jack in the box with the bass sounds but I removed the vocals to give the piece more suspense, the diegetic sound of the jack in the box and the chase scene music which I made for this opening sequence.
• I added some cross dissolve to the end of the sounds, so that it wouldn't end abruptly or start too abruptly.
• I also had to loop one of the tracks as it wasn't long enough to carry on the whole walking sequence. 

Chase Scene Music

• Whilst creating the sound, I wanted to keep it quite simple, so that there would be an element of tension and suspense within the sequence.
• At the top where you can see a blue line, that controls the tempo of the piece, which I have gradually increased and made faster throughout the piece, so that it resembles a heart starting to pump faster as they run. 
• The heart beat was made by using a drum kick, and EQing the lower frequencies to be quite high and adding a lot of reverb into it, so that it would resonate.

• I used mostly electronic sounds, as it would sound the most bassy.
• However, I did use a string bass section for the drone in the background as it gave a more eerie sound and it fitted with conventions, to use string instruments to create some suspense and tension.
• A lot of gated synths were used as they were fast paced, and would help to propel the music forward so that it would seem faster than it actually is. It would also give a sense of urgency to the piece.

Here is the finished piece:

Creating sound

• I decided to start making the non diegetic music for our opening sequence, and I wanted to incorporate some of the trials I did before, which was the loud bass sounds with a drone in the background.

• I also wanted to have some vocalisations, and I thought that the most effective vocalisations would be from indian classical music, so I downloaded one indian piece and sampled it in Logic pro.

• I didn't want the natural sounding of her voice, so I used the telephone EQ effect, by cutting out the higher frequencies and the lower frequencies, and I faded her voice in and then out.
• I only used a fraction of the piece, and I wanted some of the parts to sound weird and not from the original key with the drone.

Here is the sound:

  I still have lots of work to improve on this track, due to the editing of the sequence is not yet done, and we need to match the music to the editing. We also need to see whether the vocalisations actually fit with the sequence first.

Editing CCTV footage

I'm going to re-edit the CCTV scene, with the footage that we filmed for our opening sequence and include the ending scene aswell.

•  After placing all of the clips that I wanted into the right place, I started to add some effects onto the CCTV scene to make it seem like a CCTV.
•  I used the effect Bad TV, so that it would put a bit of noise into the clip, because in reality, CCTV camera qualities are not that good.
• A blue and green tinge was added to the clip from the effect cast, to also portray the CCTV.

•  The letterbox effect was also used, so that I could adjust black borders on the clip. CCTV's usually have a low resolution camera, so the screen wouldn't be as big.

•  I also put in a few non diegetic sounds, which I found in the Final Cut Pro sound presets. 
• A Radio short wave sound was put under some of the clips to build some suspense.

•  I wanted the camera shot to be a lot more closer than we had actually filmed it. So I croppped the camera angle, and to make it flow from the previous clip, I used Kens burns on the previous clip where it will gradually and subtly zoom in.

I also added the nursery rhyme "pop goes the weasel" at the end of the sequence, and left a black screen, so that we can edit in the film title.

Here is the finished clip:

• Where I have cut the parts of the clip where the young girl is turning around, I am not sure entirely whether it works or not yet, so I need to get the advice of the other group members.
• Next time, I wouldn't pixelate the CCTV camera as much, as a lot of the detail of their faces are lost.

Ending editing prototype

 I started to try and edit the ending, so we knew what parts we need to refilm and which parts we don't.

•  I started to cut the scenes into short parts, so that I could start stitching them together.
• I put a blackout at the end of the sequence, so that there is a background for our title to come up at the end.
• When we add the sound, we are going to overlay the scream over the blackout whilst the title comes up.

• There was a part, when the girl turns around, where the girl turns around to face the main characters. She turned too quickly, which meant that I had to retime it to be slower, but it looked very unnatural, so I undid the effect. 
• This probably means that we need to refilm this scene.

Here is the finished edit:

• After watching the final edit, I think that I could edit this better so that more suspense is built up. However, suspense may naturally build after I add some non diegetic sound to the sequence.

Chase Scene Staircase edit

 During filming, we once again found it difficult to film the staircase scene, with the whole scene being perfect. So, we decided to chop up the pieces, so we can add the good parts of every take that we did of the scene and we put it together to make it look good.

•  The first thing I noticed about the shot, was that the camera angle revealed too much of the little girl's leg, so I had to use the crop tool to crop that part of the shot out.

•  Here I cut up different parts of the chase scene, and put them all together. 
• There are different cuts because this is the scene with the most suspense, so a lot of fast straight cuts would make it more effective.

•  I added part of the CCTV footage into the sequence, and I used the 'Bad TV' effect to create some grain and noise into the shot, but I didn't kept the amount to a minimum as it would look too unrealistic if I added too much.
• I also added the cast effect, which would grey the colour, and I also changed the midtones of the effect to a dark green.

Here is the finished edit:

• Overall, I think that this flowed quite nicely. However, I feel that some of the transitions would've been better, if we had a better shot, because there were some parts I had to cut out because there was either someone in the shot, or the shot just didn't match with the previous clip.

Non Diegetic Sound for credits

 Here, I started to make the non diegetic sound, based on the practical that Rebecca did with the credits and the film clips.

•  Firstly, I uploaded the video into logic pro so that I can edit to the video, for more effect, and since the bass sounds need to be in a specific place.

•  Then, I marked out when the credits would appear, so I would know where the bass booms would go.

•  I then added the drum sounds and some very low string notes, so that it would give it an eerie sound. 
• I also automated the volume levels with the drums, so that it wasn't too loud, and that there would be some sort of crescendo to add some suspense.

•  I wanted the drum to sound like a heartbeat in some places, so I needed it to echo.
• So I used the space designer to add some reverb to the drum, and I ended up choosing the "echoing mountains" as the echo sounded very natural.

•  I then EQed the drum so that the higher and lower frequencies were cut off, so that it would have a muffled, telephone effect.

• I also used the pitch bender on the keyboard to pitch bend an extremely high pitch sound, which would happen periodically, which I need to fix up, when we have edited the final thing.

Here is the prototype finished:

Diegetic sound during filming day 3

 This was our third week of filming, and unfortunately this day was more windy than the other days.
It was so windy, that the microphone was picking a lot of the wind sounds, which meant that the audio that we needed were blocked out by the wind.
  To overcome this, I had to make do with my scarf acting as a microphone windshield, which actually helped to block out the wind a lot. However, due to my scarf having a lot of holes, there was still some wind coming through.

 During the day, we shot several scenes, and the most important scene for sound is the scene where the lift opens and the girl is standing there, and the main girl screams. So I took this sound, as we would definately be using it at the end of the opening sequence.

•  The first thing I did, was to upload the audio file onto Logic Pro, and then I cut out the part where the scream was and I put it into another track, as I needed to edit this part differently.
• I used the space designer to create some reverb onto the track and I put more onto the scream on the other track so that there would be more echo which would last after the scream, as this would then transition into the nursery rhyme as the title comes out.

• I then compressed the scream because it would very loud compared to the rest of the track. 
• I turned the compressor threshold down and turned the ratio up and I also turned up the attack.

• Throughout the track, you could hear a lot of background noise, which we don't want, so I used the denoiser to remove some of the noise, and only let the frequencies I want to pass through.
• I turned the threshold down and I turned the reduce down aswell.

Here is the finished sound:

Filming Day 2 Vlog

 During the filming, we were all very busy with seperate jobs, e.g. recording sound, filming, setting up the lair and painting the young girl, so we didn't have too much time and hands to film the filming. However, we did manage to get some shots.

The finished lair

This is the finished lair. We used lots of sheets of paper to cover the walls in drawings, each member of the group creating over 20 each. This worked really well because it looked cluttered and also brings in the Possesed element really well

The dolls and teddies look effect to show that the area belongs to a little girl straight away and the burnt, cut effect shows how something sweet and innocent is taken and destroyed. 

Making another Nursery Rhyme

  I made another arrangement of a nursery rhyme, so that we would have two nursery rhymes going on. This time, I chose the song "Pop! Goes the Weasel." Instead of the original lyrics, I used the american version which fitted our opening sequence as it had a darker meaning behind it.

"All around the Mulberry bush
The monkey chased the Weasel
The monkey thought twas all the fun
Pop goes the weasel"

• Once again, I used Logic pro 9 to make the sounds. I used a lot of the techniques I used when I made 'Ring O Roses' except, I didn't overlay a lot of voices, instead I only overlayed it twice, which created the overdub sound. I also took the high and low frequencies of the vocals off, to create a telephone effect.

• I mainly used a lot of bass sounds, so that it would create more suspense.
• I took the highest frequencies of the drums off, and then I heightened all the lower frequencies. Then I added a lot of reverb so that it echoed, and it would seem like the drum is in an extremely large open space.
• Synthesizers were used to make the buzzing sounds to give it an eerie feel.

Here is the final product:

Run through of events

Joe & Georgia walk towards car. - tracking shot

- Open boot - close up, with Tia far away at end of the car park- focuses on her 

- Then, they walk towards her- long shot 

Mid shot of Tia walking into staircase door 

- Then close up of her walking into door 

- Match on action of joe & Georgia going into staircase 

- Two shot of them looking at each other 

- Then, Chloe sitting at the bottom of the staircase filming joe & Georgia's feet descending the stairs 

- Close up on faces as they walk down the stairs 

- Mid shot of them descending stairs 

- Then, they walk through the door & see the lair. Close up on their faces as they see the lair 

- Mid shot of Tia with jack in the box 

Close ups of photos, beds, teddies 

- joe & Georgia running up stairs

- Point of view shot from Georgia running behind joe

- Georgia falls & glasses drop 

- high angle shot of Georgia getting up

- low angle shot of feet running passed glasses & road feet walking behind 

- running towards lift, over the shoulder from Georgia revealing joe is in the lift 

- match on action of Georgia going into lift & falling into joe 

- then CCTV shot of them in the lift 

- close up of hands pressing buttons 

- then, over the shoulder shot of joe & Georgia looking at the lift doors where Tia is standing with her back to them 

- she turns slowly, then the shot changes to an over the shoulder shot from Tia facing joe & Georgia. Georgia screams 

- close up of tias face 

End titles 

END 

We were getting a little confused about which shots were needed ad how many shots we would need for each scene, although the storyboard was helpful as a group we found it beneficial to sit down and actually say all of the scenes out loud and write them down for future reference.

Mastering Ring a Roses

 After adapting the nursery rhyme "Ring a Roses" into a scary version, we thought that the vocals were not loud enough in comparison to the rest of the instrumentation and that it still needed a few more tweaks to some of the parts and it also needed to be mastered.

•   I used Logic Pro 9 again to open up the track before it was bounced into an mp3.
• I then put all the vocal tracks into a seperate auxiliary channel, which was bus 1, so that I could edit all of them and apply the same effects to all of the selected vocal tracks in one go.
• I opened up the compressor in the bus 1 auxiliary so that I could adjust the gain to be higher, which would make the vocals louder.

• Then once I've finished the mixing, I bounce the track into an mp3 and then insert it into a new project on Logic pro where I can start to master the track.
• I get up 4 channels on the track for mastering, the EQ Channel, Adaptive Limiter, Multipressor and finally the Multimeter.
• I put the track on the loop and I replay the track hundreds of times so that you can tweak each individual part.
• I needed to compress the loud parts down and the low parts up, so that it would become one level line or something close to it.
• There can't be any clipping of the sound, so I had to make sure that none of the meters were going into the red zone, or was going over 0db, so I put a limiter on the sound so that it did not go over -0.1db.
• After an hour or so of trying to get the sound right, I finally adjusted the gain to the overall piece and then bounced the track.

 As you can see, the top one was the original version of Ring O Roses, and the bottom is the mastered track, you can see that in the bottom track, it is a lot more level than the top after all the compressing and it will sound a lot louder too after bringing up the gain.

Here is the mastered track:

Non Diegetic Sound During Filming

 During the day we were filming, I managed to borrow my brother's sound recorder so that I could sample some of the sounds as it would be really hard to recreate some of the sounds.

The sound recorder that I used, was the Zoom Handy Recorder H4N

Here is one of the sounds that I recorded on the day.

• This is the sound of the lift. I went into a lift by myself as I didn't want too many people in one lift as their clothes would either ruffle as the microphone was very sensitive or absorb some of the echo which the lift creates in the tunnel.
• The recorded sound wasn't loud enough, so I put the audio file into Logic Pro so that I could adjust the gain of the sound and make it louder.
• I also changed the EQ a bit so that more of the bass was coming through rather than the higher frequencies.

After compressing the audio file and adjusting the EQ, you can see a significant different in the file.

Here is the finished sound:

Deconstruction: Sound in a Scene

 I decided to use a scene from the horror movie "Silent Hill 3D Revelation," and deconstruct the use of sound.

•  The use of non diegetic sound is very minimal, up to the climax of the scene where the nurses start moving at 1:07.
• There is a lot of diegetic sound of the shackles tapping against the metal bars where the man is trapped. This is louder than it should be due to it being the focal point of the scene. The first time you hear it is at 0:05.
• When the women start to move, there are very feminine female voices, and this juxtaposes to how their faces look even though their bodies are very feminine. 
• When the knives are slashing, there is a knife sound edited into it, so that it creates more of an impact and shows how fast the knives are moving. 
• When the non diegetic sound comes in at 1:07, the music is extremely fast paced, with a lot of bass to create suspense and tension. 
• Horns then come in at 1:20 which sounds a long slide, and this sounds like a siren which shows the danger that the characters are facing. It also mirrors the bed falling to the side after being slashed.
• At 1:22 where the bed is crashing, there is a long metallic drone sound which makes the bed sound like it is crashing, but it is a very unnatural sound as this wouldn't usually happen.

Practical: Starting on the Non Diegetic Music.

  I decided to start on the non diegetic music for our opening sequence film. I just created the base of the piece, because once we have finished the filming, I will have to add or adjust the piece, so that it will fit with the film.

• First, I wanted to create something that won't be too chaotic, so I decided to start off with a drone.
• I used an AU plugin called alchemy to get the drone sound, and whilst I was inputting the notes, I used the pitch bender to bend the pitch up and down at the end of each phrase.

• Then, I wanted to add a heartbeat with the drums so that it would build up some suspense in the scene.
• To make it sound less "drummy," I used the EQ, and I lowered the high frequencies and some of the low frequencies so it would sound less punchy and some of the high pitched sounds would be gone.
• I also automated the volume, so that it would start off very quietly and it would gradually get louder before softening again.
• I then added a bit of echo to the beat, so it seemed like it was inside a large room.

• For the scene, where the girl starts to turn her head towards the main character, I wrote on the storyboard that I wanted a really loud, dramatic bass sound. So I used the human bass sound that was really low on the keyboard to create this.

Research on Flipbooks

Research on Flipbooks

•   This was the flipbook animation of the viral Gangnam Style. 
•   The drawings on this flipbook was very precise and consistent, because the lines stay in the same place without fluctuating.
• They only coloured certain parts of the scene, so that they stand out more and gives a splash of colour.
• As you can see, there are lots of drawings which depict the miniscule movements of the people, and using a lot of drawings means that the movement will be very smooth.
• This style of drawing is very haunting as it is cute, but there is also something very different about it.
• There isn't that many frames for this flipbook, which doesn't really make it smooth. It could also be down to the way they they flipped the book, as they didn't flip it very smoothly either.
• This animation was quite simple, and the lines are not always in the exact place as it was in the previous frame.

• In this flipbook, there is no flipping, instead she takes lots of still and then edits them together.
• This way of editing means that the animation will not be smooth and it looks extremely glitchy
• The drawings are also very simplistic, with stick men instead of actual figurines.
• However the drawings are quite precise.

After looking at these very different styles of flipbook, I think that the second one is the most appropriate one for us, as stickmen are too simplistic, but then the Gangnam Style one is too complex. We also don't want it as long as the Gangnam style flip book, so only a small booklet worth of drawings.

Deconstruction - Editing

Deconstruction: Editing

  I looked at the different editing techniques used within an opening sequence to a movie and how they use them.

The Woman in Black

  The first opening sequence I looked at, was the opening sequence for the movie, "The Woman in Black."

•     In this opening sequence, only straight cuts are used, except from the ending, where they use a flash into a cross dissolve.
•    The straight cuts are used sparingly, as there isn't too much as it reflects on the situation, where everything is slow paced.
•   I also noticed that there is a yellow hue to the camera, which is probably done during editing, where you increase the emphasis of the colour yellow, so that it seems more olden.
• The aspect ratio is at 16:9

Jaws

  The next one I looked at, was the movie "Jaws"

•    Again, this opening sequence only uses straight cuts, so that it can cleanly switch to different angles of the scene.
•   The cuts are actually very slow, even during the climax where the woman drowns. The camera just stays in one place whilst filming the action.

  The majority of the editing used in films and opening scenes are generally straight cuts, rather than having something really fancy e.g. cross dissolve unless they want to create an effect.
  For our final piece, we could take inspiration from "The Woman in Black" and put a blue hue or brown hue to the clips, so that it gives a more scary feel to it. We should also stick to straight cut edits like the other films.
  We could also make the aspect ratio 16:9 to give it a more cinematic feel, and sometimes scenes look better in the 16:9 ratio. To make the borders, we should use the letterbox edit and change the width in Final Cut Pro.
  

VLOG

VLOG: First day of Shooting.

       We started off the day by shooting the first scene, where they walk towards the car and they put their belongings away, and they see the girl. We also shot this at other angles.
  We then went to the scene where they run into the lift, and when the lift travels downwards. We had to shoot this a lot of times, so we could get the timing right.

      Then we went to set up the girl's lair to see whether we had enough of the props to make it look good. However, we forgot to bring some sellotape, but luckily there was a Sainsbury's close by, which we made a quick trip to, to purchase some sellotape.