OUAN406 - Audio

When I did the video piece for the COP module, my friend offered some some of the music he had made that was quite experimental and ambient sounding. It worked well last time and there was a good selection of music that I could use, that I like and fitted well. It also meant there would be no issue with copyright or using someone else's work without permission. With this project, I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to collaborate with him again, and get something that really worked. It was easier this time however, because only 30 seconds of sound was needed as oppose to the two and a half minutes of audio that I used last time. However, this was quite restricting as it meant there couldn't really be any long build ups within the audio which I do like as it allows the audience to be immersed in the gradually increasing music rather than noticing it's there from the beginning.

There were two routes I wanted to take with the music that I thought would be best. One was a more classical approach, piano would have gone well with the type of scenes that I shot as it could have been a dramatic and emotive combined with the slow panning shot and the fading transitions. The other route I thought of taking was with more ambient music, setting an eerie and also dramatic tone like with the piano. After the music was produced I synced the two pieces of audio with the footage I had sequenced together and thought that both worked quite well. I turned to my friends and peers in order to choose which overall suited the most, and everyone agreed that the more ambient piece worked better. So that's what I went with. Once the audio was in place I added a few transitions that faded in and out the audio to make the transitions seem more seamless and less sharp. Finally, I cut up smaller sections of the unnecessary audio and removed to make it so the audio perfectly synced up with the footage. At this point the piece was finally coming together with the audio and the video complimenting each other quite well.

Below shows the way the audio was cut to fit in with the onscreen footage, as well as the transitions I used to make the sound feel more natural and less sharp in the transitions between clips and at the beginning and end of the piece.