Night Journey - Rough Cut

Over the course of this week we have been building on the assembly for the Night Journey brief to progress it into the rough cut stage. We started by reviewing the assembly we did and identifying bits that felt untidy or out of place. Near the start of the sequence when we are syncing the images to the audio, there was a gap in one of the beats which made the whole sequence seem a bit jagged and didn't flow smoothly. To get around this, we composited an image over the previous one in time with the music which worked effectively with the voiceover.

Using the Superimpose effect to composite images onto one another for music syncing.

After going through the whole sequence and doing these kinds of 'touch ups' on the video tracks as well as rearranging some voiceover, we started to move the music tracks around and fade them in and out to create dramatic tension and build on making the narration more powerful. To accomplish this successfully, we used audio keyframing to make the fades out more controlled, as well as allowing us to dip the music out slightly to hear the narration more clearly.

Using Audio Keyframes to hear narration more clearly.

Whilst looking at the audio, we also decided that it would be a good idea to sort out the levels of the narration as well as following Chris' advice when dealing with mono sound. This was to duplicate the mono track and using the Audio Mixer on Media Composer, have one track playing out fully in the left speaker, and the other playing out in the right speaker. This is to make the audio more clear and sound better from a surround sound/stereo mix.

Adjusting the narration tracks.

Next, we started to add in folley sounds from the Audio Rushes files we were given with the project brief, as well as adding in some of our own from copyright free websites. This made the film seem a lot more smooth and tight as there were no longer any pauses of just no sound or just simply music. This was also really key to the pacing within the film, as it allowed us to get away with having gaps in the narration and music to once again build up tension but also to release it as well.

Finding folley sounds online for Night Journey.

Adding folley sounds into the timeline.

After adding in these sounds throughout the whole sequence we had a respectable Rough Cut that we would show to Chris and the rest of the group in the next seminar.

Final Rough Cut sequence.

The project is going quite well so far and both of us are happy with our progress, however, we are still having trouble building up empathy for the male character that isn't the cannibal, and trying to find a very clear and concise narrative to show. This may be due to our focus on the sound and voice over too much and potentially over using these two things, but we will take on feedback given in the next seminar too help us get around these issues in our Fine Cut.