- Sound editing involves adding or removing sounds to make scenes more realistic, intense, or dramatic for viewers. Foley sounds are often used to recreate sounds that were difficult to capture during filming.
- Documentaries and nature shows frequently edit sounds to focus on specific animals or noises and remove unwanted background sounds. Scripted shows may add punches or impact sounds to action scenes.
- Star Wars famously used creative foley work to develop Chewbacca's distinctive vocalizations by combining animal sounds. Foley artists strive to make fictional sounds believable through experimentation.
- Editing sounds requires specialized software and removing extra noise at the start or end of audio clips to focus on dialogue. Adjusting levels ensures all audio
2. Sound Editing / Factual
The clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5V6gdu5ih8
Planet Earth use lots of sound effects for safety reasons because they cant really capture the sound of animals fighting or
making interesting noises so most of the time they will have to add different sounds to the edit to make it more realistic. For
example if two lions were fighting they couldn't really capture the sound properly so they would just add foly sounds to
make it match with the lions. The reason why this type of sound needs to be edited is because the producers won’t want
noises that are unnecessary because it will just spoil the scene. Such as if there are birds tweeting in the background but
they don’t want to hear the birds they want to hear the elephants they would have to edit the tweeting out or add there
own sounds. Some sounds in programme’s and documentaries needs to be cleaned up to make them sound more professional
and more presentable for the listeners. Most documentaries use their own sounds and just erase the actual sound to make
the scene more intense and dramatic so its not boring for the viewers.
SAS Who Dares Wins uses a lot of different sounds for action scenes, for example when they need to make the scene more
striking and appealing for the audience. An example of this is when two people are sparring each other and the sound isn't
very good because you can hear people talking in the background or you just cant hear the punches the editors and the
producers will add sounds of punches to match the scene. Sometimes they might keep some of the original sounds and then
just add the extra sound effects over the top to make the scene more striking A lot of shows just clean and edit their sound
because it sounds more professional and it makes the viewers enjoy the show more. Most of the time they will add sound
effects to make the scene more intense and dramatic for the audience.
3. Sound Editing / Fictional
Star Wars uses foly sounds to capture the perfect sound, for sounds that haven't been recorded. The Star Wars
producer said most of the sounds in Star Wars are foly sounds because when they record the real sound when shooting
the film they can never capture the perfect, intense sound they want from the final cut. For example Chewbacca out
of Star Wars never had a sound because he was just a made up creature so the director went up to the sound editor
who did all the foley for the film and said ”we need an unusual sound for Chewbacca”. So the editor went and looked
everywhere for the perfect sound and in the end he ended up recording different animal noises and combining them
altogether to create the perfect sound. I seen this example in a documentary called ”sound matters” it showed that
the foly artist wanted the audience to connect with Chewbacca and they wanted Chewbacca to have emotional sounds
as well. The foly artist was called Ben Burt. To achieve this they recorded bears and lions and other animals eating and
drinking. Ben wanted people to connect with Chewbacca and to sympathize for him so that’s why he wanted to get the
sounds as realistic a possible. Ben had to think of creative ways to achieve the perfect sound for the film so the sound
would match with what was going on and how Chewbacca was feeling at the time. Even though the character is a
made up character George Lucas wanted to bring him to life through sounds so it would engage the audience and
viewers. This shows that foly artists use anything to make the sounds sound believable and realistic.
How Chewbacca’s sound is made - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iEm7gW2I38
4. Sound Editing Equipment
When I edited sound I used a mac and the apps I used were premier pro and logic pro x. the ancillary
equipment that is used within the mac workstation is the magic keyboard and magic mouse. The model is
an IMac 21.5, the graphics are Intel Iris Plus 640 graphics. When editing sounds on logic pro, there are
different commands and shortcuts you can use to make the editing much easier, here is some
R – Record
M – Mute Track
S – Solo Track
These are just a few of many shortcuts and demands you can use on logic pro. When I edited sound I used
2 studios to capture the sound and then I used a classroom Mac to edit it. When we were in the studios
there was different background noises such as, fans, air con and sometimes we would have to record the
lines a few times because someone would either laugh or cough/sneeze. Whilst editing I used headphones
so I could hear every little sound in the clip.
Control H – Hide Tracks
Shift R – Capture Midi Recording
L - Loop
X – Mixer
K – Click
Z - Zoom
Y – Library
O – Loop Library
C - Cycle
5. Sound Editing Techniques
When looking back through all the footage I had to choose the best audio files for the final cut because we recorded each line at least 3 or 4 times. So listening
to every file took some time but in the end I picked the best clips for the final cut. Once I had chosen the perfect audio clip for the cut I had to edit each
individual clip because at the beginning of the clip might have been a long pause before the person started to talk and at the end of the clip you might of heard
people talking. So I needed to cut the beginning and ends off all of them so in the edit was just the person talking. Each clip was reordered separately so each
voice actor were different distances away from the mic so when I was listening to the audio clips you could tell because on some of them the audio was louder
than others. So when on logic I had to go on each individual clip and change ”audio gain” so that they all sounded the same. This took a long time because every
clip was different and I had to find the right level of audio to have them all on so they all sounded the same. Here are some keyboard shortcuts for audio editing:
Ctrl + X – Strip Silence
Ctrl + E – Convert Region to sample track
Ctrl + Shift + T – trim Audio in Audio File Editor
These are just a few of the shortcuts for audio editing in Logic Pro. However, there are many more but these are just the 3 basic ones. This is a picture of a
piece of audio so at the beginning and end the line is just straight you don’t need any of that because no one is peaking there so you would need to use the cut
tool to crop the audio clip down to just the person talking or else there would be a long pause before they started talking.
This is a screenshot of the first couple of audio files, this is when I had put them all together.
This is when I listened back through the audio whilst following the script and realized that
most of it wasn’t in order and had to be re-done. It was hard pulling them all together and
making sure each one sounded perfect for the edit. After I listened to it through for the first
time I realized that they all had different volumes so this is when I had to change the audio
gain on them all to match each other.
6. Sound Editing Procedures
When I went through each clip I noticed that there was some faults and errors so we had to go back in the
studio to record the line again. The faults and errors insisted of: giggles, background noise or I even came
across missing audio files. We had to go back to the studio 3 times to record the lines again. When we
recorded we didn’t record in order so when I went to edit and bring it altogether it was all out of place and it
was a pain because I had to listen each one and put them in order then when I finally had the scene put
together I listened to it through whilst following the script and it still wasn’t in order. So I had to undo
everything and start again and I put them all back in order again whilst I was following the script and it still
wasn’t in order so I came to a conclusion that we were missing lines from the script. Then we went back in
the studio to record the missing lines, finally everything was recorded and in order. I named each individual
clip and stored them all on my computer and my memory stick so I wouldn’t loose anything and I always had
a back up plan. We recorded so much audio the majority of it went in the trash because it was either faulty
or had an error in.
Here is a screenshot of a piece of audio where there
Was background noise or giggles at the end of the audio
So I had to cut and crop the audio. Most of the audio
files were like this so it took me some time to edit them all.
