Experience about sound recording

We have done two projects so far in this semester for our film production class. The first time I was a director and the second time I was doing my job as a producer. I have not had a chance to have hands-on in recording equipment for projects yet. However, by working with other people, I also learned some tips for future reference. First, keeping the microphone at a distance away from characters (for example: shot/reverse shot) will decrease the differences of voices’ tones and qualities from different characters.  After editing the actor’s lines together into a conversation, their voices will maintain around the same level, making the audio smooth. Secondly, it is very important to shout out the scene number and the take number clearly and loudly, in order to make sure the sound guy to catch them, also it helps the sound editor to sync the audios.

Editing experience on the Master Shot Project

We finished shooting for the master shot project on Sunday. Jacob, the director of our group, has been working on editing videos. We met up today as a group and discussed details about the videos. We realized that some shots were not connected together well and looked hoppy. We are trying to fill in cut away to make the video sequence smoother.  Some clips are shot nicely but couldn’t match the context due to unmatched blocking. Event though I am not working on the audio for this project, by talking to our sound person, Adam, I learned that syncing audios with the video is quite hard. Since the camera and the H4N stopped recording at different times on shooting day, it is necessary to go through every audio file that we are using, and edit them second by second.

After facing these challenges from this project, I think an easier why for matching audio and video could be picking out all the clips we will be using first. Then, syncing the audio for all of them, and then editing these clips together.