Moving Image: Sound

For my moving image the original video contains sound, however because it was a windy day, the sound is purely wind going past the camera and the waves of the water can barely be heard. There for, I have decided to record my sound separately, a separate recording for the waves and for the footsteps, so that I can layer the sound in post production and therefore have more control over each sound. The sounds I needed were diegetic sounds from the waves of the water, and the footprints on the rocks and Rowan and Jack walked into the frame. I considered recoding a bit of wind to add to the video quietly, however decided that this would not be necessary and I feel would be distracting; I wanted the sounds to be as simple as possible, to replicated the simplicity of the video. I spoke with Anneliese Paul and told her about the project, she suggested a list of equipment and a few different ways that I could record the sound of my piece. She put me in contact with Michele Caruso who sent a list of video tutorials informing me how to use the UWE sound equipment to achieve what I needed.

TUTORIAL LINKS:

https://app.nearpod.com/presentation?pin=F4553E4B4A55F4A5D3EBE1CB944A2E6C-1

https://app.nearpod.com/presentation?pin=C37CF8688548FE866940471862B03CCA-1

https://app.nearpod.com/presentation?pin=B453BA0B55FA289292EA8528B8AC5C1C-1

I then had to take a test to see how much about the equipment I had learnt, so that I could prove that I can use the recording equipment and would then be given access to it on Connect2.

EQUPMENT BOOKING:

I decided to book out all of the microphones from Connect2 so that I had the freedom to experiment with each one, in order to see which would record the sound on the beach best. I was also interested to see which recorded to waves better, and whether I needed to use a different microphone for the footsteps. Before shooting on the beach, I tested out the Zoom recorder with each mic, and recorded myself speaking with the headphones on to see what the sound was like, how much it picks up, and how distance effected the quality of the sound. When recording on the beach, I went in the early morning, and I was lucky as there was very little wind, which would have been very hard to record in. I brought an umbrella with me, so that if there was any wind I could shield the microphone from it. The mic that worked the best was the Small Shot Gun Mic with the Zoom recorder, as the fibres around the microphone also helped to shield the mic from the wind. I used this mic for both the waves recording, and the foot steps.

When recording the water, I made sure that I recorded much more that I needed so that I would have more flexibility in post production. When recording the foot steps, I recorded myself walking on different part of the beach, as the size and wetness of the stones made a difference to the audio. I also took the microphone close to my feet and further from my feet, so that I got a lot of audio detail and also some recordings where the feet sound further away. I was unsure as to which would end up being more successful as I needed to see what happened in post production. Recording multiple forms of the two sounds would give me a lot more flexibility and therefore help with making the diegetic sounds seam more natural to the moving image.