Major Project: Editing Process - From Rough to Fine

During the process of turning my rough-cut into a somewhat fine cut, I used all of the feedback received from Simon to make sure I was targeting the correct things to make my story better. One of the main criticisms was the sound and how I should now be trying to really hone in all the synched sounds and really start on the Sound design. 

My main area of concern was the art corridor scene. I've been having trouble with this ever since I received the footage so I decided to try and get rid of the background humming noise by adding a Classroom/hallway sound in the background in place of the humming noise that can be heard from the air-conditioning. I then went into the levelling of the dialogue, and tried to adjust the level of the to get rid of the air-conditioning sound in between the dialogue gaps.

That didn't work so well as you can hear it dipping in and out from the air-conditioning to the dialogue call, it is clear that I would really struggle with this scene so I took to the Internet to do a little bit of research and what I can do.


After having conversations with ferg and searching the Internet, I came across a technique called ADR which stands for Automated Dialog Replacement. This is essentially when you recreate the acoustic space as the film and re record the sound so that it is clear.  

it's interesting to understand how the industry professionals combat these issues although I may not have the skill set I can still try and implement some of the techniques within mine. Since I still have a little bit of time I will do what I can with this sound and as it gets closer to the final cuts, I will really try and fix it even more. My aim for that is to get together with my characters and replace the audio with ADR. But for now, I will try my best to combat this by learning more of what I can do in post production. 

I have also tightened the cuts and shortened the Summerhouse introductory scene as instructed by Simon. 

This scene was difficult to edit due to the fact that the sound operator did not capture satisfactory sound. For some of the takes I wanted to use, the lapel mike was scraping against clothing, had the gain set too high, or either in audible. This is unacceptable as it it's now causing me to really scrummage for an edit in this process. It's for infuriating to look at because the stabiliser is not as smooth as it should be and the sound is not as it should be, it makes me doubt the ability of some of the team sometimes because in my eyes these are simple recommendations. I believe you should not be able to claim you are a sound operator if you're not able to capture sound in one room with two people. I also don't think you should claim to be able to use a Dji Ronin if you're not able to create stable shots. Because what this means for me, is that I have to work extremely hard to try and hide these cuts  when this could have easily been avoided.

Here is an example of the current state of the summer house scene.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to export the current version of the entire film as it was ever changing the whole time however, I have managed to select many segments throughout the reviewing process. 

Next steps
Think about ways to sync audio

Schedule a reshoot day to fix inconsistencies within the film

Prepare the preproduction needed for re-shoots if needed.

Major changes to story