Unit 16: The Creation and Use of Sound in Media

LO4: Evaluation

With my short film carrying the genre of mystery, I wanted the sound elements that I created/ added in to reflect this. Furthermore, more generally following the uses of sound in film, I used sound effect (most notably the heartbeat and heavy breathing) in order to represent how the different characters are feeling.

Techniques Used

Foley:

In creating my foley, I ended up using a lot of everyday household items and stationary. For example, for a scene where a character wearing handcuffs slams his hands down on the table, I recorded the sound of a box of paperclips slamming onto a table. Once I had recorded all of the foley, the main post-production I did on them was setting the volume levels to reflect how impactful and heavy the action should feel and whether the foley comes from off screen. I also found that it help to capture multiple similar sounds and layer them to create the desired sound.

Sound Effects:

The sound effects that I created (heartbeats, heavy breathing) mainly consisted of breathing heavily into a microphone and tapping my chest through thick clothing. The bulk of the sound effects effectiveness was created in post-production. To make these sound effects how I wanted them, I tended to apply the reverb effect, and I sometimes slowed them down in order to have them reflect the characters' emotions and mindsets in the scene.

Audience Feedback

To improve my short film I hosted a focus group and an online survey. Doing this allowed me to get new perspectives on my creation and suggestions on how to improve it. Once I had gained this feedback, I worked on making those improvements, how I responded to each is listed below.

Loud, Unbalanced Dialogue

There were multiple scenes containing Ava that had some loud and overly unbalanced dialogue. To fix this, I went through all the dialogue and set each one to a reasonable volume. I then selected all of the dialogue and opened the audio workspace.

In the audio workspace, in the Essential Sound panel I assigned it as 'dialogue' and pressed auto balance. This feature brings all of the audio levels of the selected tracks to a balanced level which can be finetuned to preference afterwards.

Gunshot Is Too Loud

This was a simple issue to fix, all I needed to do was right click on the sound effect in the timeline and select 'Audio Gain.' From there, I lowered the audio gain making the sound effect quieter.

Very Quiet Dialogue in End Scene

This was a similar fix to the gunshot sound effect, I simply right clicked on the dialogue clip in the timeline and selected 'Audio Gain.' From there, I increased the audio gain to make the dialogue louder.

Reflection

I found that the elements I recorded turned out quite effective and realistic while still reflecting the mood and tone of each scene. One thing I am especially proud of is that the pre-edited audio of the different foley and sound effects were quite clear and without static, and those that did have static in the background I was able to cleanly filter out. However, I struggled a lot with footsteps, and those that I had to add in sound a bit too much like clicking. This is most-likely a result of recording the footsteps on a wooden floor, in future I would record footsteps on different floor types in order to get a better sounding footstep.

LO4: Audience Feedback (Focus Group and Survey)

Focus Group

Loud, unbalanced dialogue during Living Room scene and Ava's Interrogation scenes
Gunshot is far too loud
Very quiet dialogue in end scene

Online Questionnaire/ Survey

During the feedbacking and improving stage of creating my short film, I ran a focus group and online questionnaire. The reason I ran both is not only so I could get more feedback, but also because running a focus group allowed the audience to hear the foley, sound effects and music in a higher quality than they would be able to on their phones or laptop while answering a questionnaire. I wanted to gain audience feedback and suggestions, because throughout the post-production of this short film, I spent multiple hours editing and re-editing the same sequences, and having an audience watch and listen to my short film helped me to pick up on different flaws and get suggestions relating to how I could improve the short film. For example, as visible in the questionnaire results and my focus group notes above, I was told numerous times that there is unbalanced audio where it goes from really quiet to really loud. I have detailed below the methods I used to respond to the constructive criticism that arose in my focus group and online questionnaire.