OUAN505 - Sequencing Work

After all the scenes were completed I went through the script and made sure that everything we needed in terms of narration and visuals was ready to be sequenced together into a final order. This was a much more relaxed task than the work leading up to it so it was good to be able to start really putting all the work we had done together. For me there were several elements that needed to be included in the final sequencing which was the scenes we had created and then the narration to match up with the visuals, and finally the music we had chosen to use. Some of the scenes were already linked together with others such as the outro scene and some of the first scenes in the documentary because they are sequenced together by a page turn transition that was done earlier in the production process. So this stage was all about making sure everything fitted together in a cohesive way and with a nice pacing. In total there were around seven clips to arrange and about seven pieces of narration to sequence together. I found that despite we did have some exact timings set up for the documentary in practice and due to the way some elements of the visuals ended up, I had to make some small adjustments to make the flow of the animation much better. There was also the limitation of time, and fitting everything under the two minute limit that we were allocated. I think the animation ended up being around 2 minutes and 8 seconds without the credits included so I had to go back and take out small pauses where I could to fit it just within the 2 minute time frame. I actually think this improved the pacing a little as the pace was marginally quicker and I removed a section in the middle of the animation that was unnecessary in hind sight.

Once the narration and the visuals were completed and I didn't think anything could be improved I exported the file and then imported it back into Premiere Pro to add in the music we had chosen. Out of the eight tracks we liked from the playlist we were given, 'Into The Wild' was in my opinion the most appropriate and also fitted rather well with the tone of Callum's narration. It was also a reasonable length at around 1:40, meaning that it fitted quite well within the length of our animation and it wouldn't have to be cut short. I did have to stretch the track out by around 15-20% so that it was a better match to the length but fortunately it wasn't detrimental to the quality of the music and still had the same effect as the track playing at normal speed.

One minor set back that occurred during this process is when attempting to export the file for the first time with the clips of narration in the sequence Premiere Pro was only exporting around half the audio, and on the exported file the audio would cut off randomly. I realised that this was due to either a RAM or a storage problem on the college computers, so I closed down all of the open programs I was using and cleared as many of my home folders as I could before it eventually exported correctly and I could continue with the post-production process. Apart from this the sequencing process went as well as it could and I'm pleased with the variety and number of scenes that we were able to create as a group. My concern in the project before this stage was that we wouldn't have enough of a variety of scenes to compliment the amount of information that is conveyed in the narration and that there would be a number of points within the animation where a scene was paced too slowly to 'fill gaps'. This wasn't the case however, and now that the animation has been put together there is a great range of visuals and scenes for the audience to view in conjunction with the music and narration. In addition, and this always seems to be the case - the addition of music to the animation brought the quality up a huge amount from what it was without the music. The narration by itself without sound effects and a soundtrack sounded bland and uninteresting, but once the use of sound effects and the beginning and the music was added the documentary had a whole new feel to it. I would consider this stage of the project a success and my team supplied everything I needed to complete the production/early post-production stages of the project.