Final Products - Conclusion

This concluding blog post will discuss my sound products from this module that are displayed below.

The first product is my interview and from the beginning of this module I knew that I wanted to create my interview around a topic that as affected me and that I am genuinely interested in. It took a bit of research to come up with my final idea as I spent a while looking through news articles to find something that I found interesting that is happening in Brighton. However, none of the news stories stood out to me so I started to look at ideas closer to home. I am very happy with how my interview turned out and the answers that I received. I tried to compose the questions in a way that would allow the interviewee to talk freely about the topic, however with given themes. 

I am also happy with the overall quality of the interview as the sound bed works well in the background in order to keep the clips sounding smooth and in sync with each other. I changed the volume of the background sound when there are gaps in the dialogue and I believe this works well in filling the needed silence. 

The second product of this module is my soundscape and is titled 'Brighton Seafront'. This needed to be 2-5 minutes, furthermore I decided to keep mine to the minimum time, at 2 minutes 11 seconds as it is quite a peaceful and quiet soundscape that would drag for the listeners if it was 5 minutes long. The idea for my soundscape came from being in Brighton on a busy Saturday and realising how bustling and loud it was compared to the beach and seafront. My idea developed from this, to looking at just the pier and the beach because they are connected and close, however have completely different vibes. 

My favourite bit of my soundscape is the transition from the pier sounds at the beginning to the beach sounds as the waves then last a long time, giving the listeners a chance to feel relaxed and listen to the waves up against the shingle. However, if I were to improve on my soundscape I would want to re-record some sounds to place at the start as it sounds a little jumpy, and I would like it to be smoother. The aim and intentions of my soundscape was to make the listener feel like they are on Brighton Seafront and make them feel two juxtaposing emotions whilst listening. I believe that I was successful in doing this as the sounds on the pier make me feel like I am surrounded by lots of people and lots of man made mechanics, however the sounds on the beach are very natural and are as if I am escaping from the busyness of Brighton. 

Soundscape - Final

Since my last editing blog post, I have further manipulated some of the sound files that I recorded and layered a lot more in order to create a more effective and smooth running soundscape. Here is my final product:

Editing Soundscape #2

Since looking at my rough cut, I have further edited my soundscape and have developed it through adding new clips and layering ones that were already edited. I didn't like the start of the soundscape and thought that it needed to sound smoother, so I overlapped a few different sound clips that I was using. I also made these clips louder in order to make it sound more busy to the listener.

I have also gone through all the clips on my1 timeline and softened the beginning and ends of them so that they blend into each other a lot more smoothly. This has improved the overall sound quality of the edit and I am a lot happier with it. 

Soundscape - Roughcut

Here is my rough cut of my soundscape. So far I am happy with how editing is going, however there are some things that I want to develop throughout the soundscape. I will need to make it slightly longer as it is just under two minutes, furthermore I already have planned to add more onto the end as I want it to fade back into relaxing beach sounds. I also want to change around the introduction as it is quite quiet and the sounds aren't layered enough. I am going to make the volume louder all the way through my soundscape as I planned it to be a bit louder and sounds busier. 

Editing Soundscape #1

Today was spent editing the rough cut of my soundscape on Adobe Audition. I started by sorting out my sound files after exporting them into a new project. I listened through the sound files and split them into sounds from the pier, and sounds from the beach. 

After I had done this on two different tracks I further manipulated different clips in order to cut them how I want them to be, as well as changing volumes and layering them. So far, my soundscape is 2 minutes long and it transfers from pier sounds, to beach sounds, back to pier sounds. As I further edit this I want it to go back to beach sounds so that it ends more peacefully for the viewer. 

I have purposely made the pier sections sound very busy and crowded in order to give the listener a feel of what it would be like on a busy day in Brighton. 

Recording Soundscape #2

Today I decided to record the more natural and peaceful sounds for my soundscape. For this, I went onto the beach with the Marantz audio recorder and a K6 microphone. I decided to use this larger microphone to record the peaceful sounds in order to pick up quieter ambient sounds from a distance. 

The sounds that I recorded include the seagulls around me, the sound of people walking along the pebbles, and the waves. The sounds of the waves were successful as your are able to hear these very clearly. When I come to editing, I want to keep these sounds quite quiet in order to contrast and compare them to the pier sounds. 

Recording Soundscape #1

Today I went into Brighton with a Marantz audio recorder and a Sannheiser dynamic handheld microphone to start recording my soundscape. I recorded sounds on the pier in order to achieve busy sounding recordings. I managed to gather some successful sound clips of the rides going, music playing and people screaming and talking. 

I also recorded a short sound walk whilst walking through the arcade to get the sounds of a variety of machines and will use these sounds in my final soundscape. 

After this recording day, my idea for my final soundscape has changed slightly and I am going to create it around comparing sounds between the pier and the beach. This is because these two places are so close to each other, however have a complete juxtaposition in the volume of sounds. Also, the sounds on the pier are mostly artificial, however the sounds on the beach are mostly natural. 

Interview - Final

Since completing my rough cut, I decided to re-record my own speech sections where I introduce, conclude and ask Ellen questions. I also edited the sound bed and changed the volume of the background ambient sound in order for it to fade in and out at different places. 

Editing this helped make the interview more clean and appear more natural and I am a lot happier with the final product. Here is it: