Sound Journey Project - 18th-22nd November - Week 2

18th & 20th November

Both of these days were spent compiling sounds and editing our final pieces. I struggled quite a lot with finding sounds for mine, but ended up being happy with the sounds I ended up with. Other things that were included at this time was researching sound in film, by watching sounds. An example of one of the films I watched was Mulholland Drive directed by David Lynch.

22nd November - Crit

My final piece was a soundscape, that was based in a space station before an attack. Although I was happy technically with my piece, I found the actual idea disappointing as a final piece. It didn't quite fit the brief with the fact that the idea of Sound Journey wasn't portrayed dramatically enough in my opinion. After talking with Kat, I decided that a good route of choice, instead of completely starting again, would be to start the piece with a more serene feel to it, so that the change in tone is much more sudden and startling. Using this feedback I plan to develop my idea further, before finally accepting it as my final piece.

Sound Journey Project - 11th-15th November - Week 1

11th November

I was away for this class, however, through doing catch up, I found that we learnt about diegetic and non-diegetic sounds and their roles in visual media.

Diegetic sound is sound that is present in the scene, that is created by something you can see. Examples of this include:

• Dialogue
• Music from instruments seen in the visuals
• Sounds created by objects in the scene

Non-diegetic sounds are things like:

• Background music, to create a certain mood perhaps
• Narrators commentary
• Extra sound effects added for dramatic effect.

The project was then briefed, we had to create a sound journey as a soundscape, or create a sound design to fit with our own animation or an existing video clip. This sound design has to be around 1 minute in length.

13th November

During this class we learnt about the technical aspects of the project. We learnt about audio principles, and other things such as commonly used microphones and common polar patterns. This is also the first class that we were able to get to know how to use recorders. Throughout the class we were asked to go and find sounds to record, either to be used as sounds of what they are, or to be used to represent different objects or situations.

I found this exercise really interesting, as it led me to think about how sounds could be changed, to represent something else entirely when you hear it.

15th November

When we first arrived, we started by working on development of ideas for our soundscapes. I ended up choosing to do mine without visuals, within a space station. 

This class was also the introduction class to using Audition. I have previous experience with using Ableton Live as sound software, so I found getting to grips with Audition was nice and simple. This was predominantly due to finding it much more user friendly and intuitive then Ableton.

The rest of the class was spent using recorders to continue finding sound for our ideas, and starting to compile sounds for our final pieces.

Animation- Week Two - 4th November-8th November

4th & 6th November

During these days I worked on creating my background images for my final animation.

This was a longer process than I had hoped, due to me trying to get everything to look how I wanted it to, and then using the fineliners to complete the images. 

7th November/50 word review

Today I spent the day working on and finishing my animation.

The first thing I created was the animation itself, which I made in After Effects. After using After Effects for a while I started to get used to how to use it and found it quite simple after a while to completely finish it. Some of the timings are not quite right, as my PC was not running the footage in completely real time, which I'm not too happy with, but overall, I am happy with how it turned out, considering it was my first time using the software. After I had completed the animation part of the video, I exported it and put it into Premiere, so that I could add sound, as I couldn't work out how to input sound properly in After Effects. I found this project really interesting, as I got to work with new software, and think more into story worlds and developing ideas than I have before. 

8th November

During this class I worked on finalising my animation, and making sure it played correctly, and then made sure all my files had been kept in the correct places and were all in the same place.

Overall I am happy with this project, even with the animation being so simple, as it enabled me to grasp the basics of After Effects, something I would like to work with more in the future. Unfortunately, during the crit, I received no feedback on my piece, apart from that people enjoyed it, especially how the end was ridiculous. Personally I think that the narrative if expressed well, through the simplicity of the images and the story itself. The images get the point across and the sound enables you to follow the story easily.

Animation - Week 1 - 28th October-1st November

28th October

Today we focused on learning the basics of stop motion animation, and for this we were using iStopMotion. I had already used the software previously, so it was good to get reacquainted with it and the concept of stop motion. I worked with Julia and Joey to create a short title sequence using it.

Throughout the video we messed around with more and less frames for each name, which shows in the way the names appear faster each time.

30th October

During this class we were taught the basics of After Effects, which would enable us to be able to use the software for our final piece, using the concepts involved. We, again, made a simple title sequence using our names.

1st November

During this session I worked on brainstorming my idea fully, and then translating this into a storyboard for my final idea. I had a lot of trouble picking the style I wanted to use, as I liked the different ones I had in my head for the idea. The inspiration for two of my concepts can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25SP4ftxklg which is The Adventures of Prince Achmed, an animation that looks like shadow puppets, and here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3j_A1s2NDU which is Bloom, a stop motion 3D animation, with the entire world created in the real world.