Testing

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General Photographs #1

Unit 24 report #1

Reasons for digital audio editing task 1

To achieve the highest quality digital audio has to offer, it must be edited from large chucks of raw audio to smaller and heavily edited pieces before distribution to the general public. In this report I shall be covering the reasons why digital audio is edited and the numerous benefits these edits have.  While also going over the importance of schedules in most media artefacts.

Firstly the reason why digital sound files are edited to keep the original understanding of the product there without it getting lost. If the original meaning is lost the product would become confused and look far less professional. Also By losing the original meaning the product would stand out far less and be lost to a sea of boring and repetitive media artefacts that are distributed daily across the world. Having meaning makes the product more appealing, because it’s unique.

The second reason why digital sound files are edited is to remove any foul language or offensive that might have been said during the original recording. This type of editing is referred to as ethical editing, to fully understand this editing was have to cover what being ethical means and why it’s so important. Being ethical means; dealing with morals or principles. For audio editing this means making sure content produced is appropriate to be aired to the public.

Audio must be edited before it’s distributed to the public is to keep it ethical. Because it’s important that the product that is being edited isn’t misleading the public. This could lead to a downfall for the distributing company or airing station because consumers wouldn’t want to listen to the station because they aired this offensive material.

Another reason ethical editing is so important is because the station would want to keep their family friendly image. If they were to lose this less people would tune in and the station would lose listeners and various companies wouldn’t pay for their adverts to be aired on that station. 

Ethical editing is also important in the prevention of offending any social groups. Because if a product did offend, the distributor would suffer from large backlash from the public and gain a bad reputation. There are a number of ways an advert could be considered offensive for example; if the product used shock humour in bad taste or said something considered racist it would be labelled offensive and pulled of the air.     

My third reason why digital audio editing is required is, to create an impact with music or any extra SFX (sound effects). Scenes can simply just have the audio of actors talking but that would leave a weaker impact of the viewer. By adding music that fits the overall tone of the scene and perhaps sound SFX’s the scene would become more realistic in tone and it would be easier for the consumer to discern what kind of emotional response they are going for. Adding foley is also important in getting a reaction from the audience.  

My final reason is to remove any unwanted foley or repetitive material from the original audio. By keeping repetitive material the audio becomes less desirable and sounds unprofessional and boring. Plus having any unwanted foley (for example cars, harsh wind or people talking) could severally damage the original meaning or purpose behind the audio. This is why most foley sounds heard in various media artefacts are created in a studio by a foley artist. In order to create the sound the artist first finds the objects that will create that certain sound, then approach the microphone (most likely a). After preparations are complete they must turn towards a screen and replicate once an orange bar hits a blue bar. The blue bar is called a streamer.

To fully understand the importance of editing and how it can change a product, I’ve chosen two examples to demonstrate audio editing after distribution.

 My first example focuses on how diegetic and non-diegetic sound have been edited to create meaning and cause a stronger impact on the consumer. This example is the season 3 ending of the Netflix original animated show Bojack Horseman. The scene starts of with dialogue between the title character and a young girl, naturally dialogue is a key piece of audio that needs to be heard otherwise the consumer would become confused and wouldn’t understand what the characters are saying. After the title character runs out of the studio a melancholic song called ‘’Stars’’ begins to play and continues throughout the duration of the clip. The scene than transitions and we hear wind blow as a trap blows away, then the scene cuts to two different characters talking about how to spend money. During this scene we hear cutlery and dishes in the background, fitting giving the location of the scene. We then hear two glasses clack together before we hear even more dialogue, but than the consumer hear some non-diegetic sound from one of the characters of screen. The narrative then changes back towards the title character, we some diegetic sound of the car engine then a small click as he puts his foot on the gas break, then the sound of the engine becomes more present in order to show the car is getting faster and faster. Until it screeches to a stop. A lot of the diegetic and non-diegetic sounds have been edited together in order for the audience to understand how the characters feel and to relate to them more. For example when BoJack (the title character) is on screen we hear the wind blowing in one scene and the car engine in another. These foley sounds combined with the ambient music in the background help the audience understand how alone and depressed he feels. The audio is helping connote how depressed how feels, without it the scene lacks that strong impact.  

For my second example to display where audio sound has been edited I chose an interview With Orion Acaba who voices the video game character Apollo Justice from the Phoenix Wright series. The editor must have been given the entire interview raw and told to select, and then edit together all the soundbites from the interview. Soundbites are the more exciting and informative parts of the interview that get edited together in order to appeal to the target audience while still giving them information about the product. Another piece of sound that has been edited in this interview is that ambient music that plays throughout; all three tracks come from the game this voice actor is in. They were edited in because so the interview would be more exciting and it would get fans hyped for the game’s distribution. This product was compressed to a shorter run time. Because if the voice actor kept talking or got of subject the consumer would become less engaged and lose interest.  This product is factual because its goal is to educate the audience about the character and game over simply entertaining them.

However not all digital audio falls into the same category. Two of these categories are; fictional and factual, both have their own different goals but they both require heavy amounts of editing. I shall start with the reasons why fictional audio needs editing and what purpose fictional entertainment has.

Fictional editing

Fictional content needs to be edited for a number of reasons. The first reason why it has to be edited to ensure the scene leaves a strong emotional impact on the consumer. If the scene lacked any sort of emotional response, the consumer would become far less engaged in the product and forget about it quickly. Thankfully creating a response can be done with any of the following techniques; adding fitting music that captures the emotions of the characters on screen, having SFX’s that keep the continuity flowing throughout the scene and finally having the audio in the background and foreground at an even balance so neither overtake the other.

Another reason why fictional content needs editing is to help the narrative of the product. Because if there wasn’t any editing or cut audio the product would look disastrous. Cut audio means having the audio of the product cut to better fit the narrative and helps compress the running time of the audio.

Examples of fictional products

Fictional content focuses on surreal content that can’t happen in real life, or takes place in real life but is exaggerated to an extreme.

My first example of fictional content is the popular children’s cartoon Gravity Falls, which aired on Disney XD. We know this content is fictional because it’s an animated cartoon that doesn’t tackle any real life issues and instead focuses on two twins saving the world from a one eyed demon with a top hat. Despite this product being fictional it’s clear it has been edited in a professional manner. For example this is a scene that belongs to the show (video link https://youtu.be/p3eKbKHcP1U). In the first few seconds while one of the characters is talking we hear non-diegetic sound of the switch’s countdown, this helps the consumer understand that the threat is still there and keeps the suspense building. The background music is also tense and continues and gets louder until it suddenly stops after the portal is shut down. This was also to build tension because it would engage the consumer more than it just being random pieces of SFX’s and foley.

My second example is a radio show aired on BBC Radio 4 called afternoon reading. This radio show has presenters talk about fictional books and then give an abridged review of sorts afterwards. This type of content of fictional because it also focuses much more on entertainment and engaging the audience with light hearted jokes and humour rather than educating. If it was meant to be educational the presenter would read the storey word for word than give an honest, well thought out review, but this show has the presenter make jokes about some of the dialogue in said stories and aims to give the consumer a laugh with their humour. This radio show is also something called a media artefact.

My third and final example is the superhero film Captain America Civil War. We can tell this content is fictional because it has superheros and that its goal is to entertain rather than educate. Like the Gravity Falls example I shall being giving a brief analysis of some of the audio editing techniques used in a short clip from the product. (Video link; https://youtu.be/LMdfj62iC_g), we hear the music first that steps up the scene and tells the audience that a fight is about to start. Then we hear the diegetic sound of the three men fighting; they’re grunting and being hit by a baton. These bits of foley choreograph the action more because the audience can’t see the fighting clearly. The sounds are help the audience understand who’s getting hit and by what.

How to tell the content is fictional

Fictional content was created as an escape from reality for the general public. Having show’s ranging from the famous British science-fiction show Doctor Who to the slightly less well known Steven Universe, these shows have all the typical conventions of fiction; having realistic characters and immersive worlds for the audience to get lost into so they could forget the problems they face in real life. So unlike factual content (which is more to inform and educate the audience about the world around us) fictional content is solely for entertainment purposes. Because as mentioned above most people need some sort of escape for the challenges they have to face in their real lives.     

Factual editing

Factual audio is edited because it needs to remain interesting and engage the consumer while also educating the consumer about the topic of discussion. For example if a star form an upcoming move was to be interviewed on a radio station, it can’t go on forever talking about every single detail otherwise the interview would be dragged on and get far less engaging causing the listener to switch channel. However the interview must still contain some basic facts about the movie like when it comes out and how the star felt about shooting the film. These are called sound bites; these are the interesting parts of the interview that have all the details the consumer wants to hear. Most interviews would last for much longer if they had not been compressed to a shorter running time. 

Similarly factual audio content requires editing to ensure presenter dialogue and the news stories of the day have been edited correctly. The presenter’s dialogue would be subject to editing to keep things legal and ethical. They might end up saying something unintentionally offensive or might get to opinionated on a subject, getting the distributing station into trouble, or their dialogue might need to be compressed to fit the run time of the show.

In particular the biggest problem with factual editing is that most factual products are aired live and have no proper time for audio editing. For example this interview (video link https://youtu.be/WRyZhZkaDks ), in the first few seconds we hear background foley of a truck. This becomes a problem because it’s louder than the man speaking; it also distracts the consumer from what he is talking about. It also hasn’t been edited to only include soundbites, toward the end of the interview there are pauses and the interviewer asks question to the people behind him rather than the person he is interviewing. Factual products have to be edited to only include soundbites in order to make the product engaging and to keep the consumer interest.  

The importance of time tables/schedules in audio media products

The main purpose of a broadcasting schedule is to organize programs for a certain channel in an easy to read format. For example the BBC Radio Live schedule for Kent is sorted by; days, time that the program will be aired and date. It’s laid out in this format because it’s far easier for the consumer to find the program they are after. So if the consumer wanted to listen to a radio program like BBC Radio Kent Breakfast they would search for the program on the airings list, they would get information like what time it’s being aired and who is hosting it. Then all the consumer has to do is tune in at that time.

In addition the relationship between these schedules and audio editing is the audio has to transition the shows or music. The audio has to be seamless in its editing because if it wasn’t people would get distracted by the transitions and the station would look unprofessional. To counter this some stations might have a jingle that plays before a song gets played or when there is a news update during airtime. Content aired also has to be compressed to fit the run time of most programs. Otherwise the schedule will become unbalanced and look unprofessional.

However there is a problem with having an airing schedule. It isn’t very flexible at all. Because the distributor has set a time and date for the program to be aired, if it wasn’t that could be seen as false advertising, unless the station gives a solid reason why to program isn’t being aired or is being delayed. For example breaking news, this audio always has top priority because the information is usually very important and could affect loads of people. However an organized schedule has to be in place, not only for the convenience of the consumer but to also protect the younger audiences from more adult content. If there wasn’t any time table for content being aired, the station could get into major legal difficulty because minors would be exposed to more mature content. Hence something called the watershed, once its past 9p.m more adult content will be put onto the schedule.    

Having a schedule also gives the creators of the content being aired a deadline for completion. One important thing during production is to use ADR (automated dialogue replacement) before distribution. Using ADR allows for the quality of the audio to be improved by removing any unwanted foley in the background. Because having the wrong foley in a scene would remove the realism of the product. Losing realism makes the consumer less engaged in the product, even fictional content needs some sort of realism to leave an impact to the consumer.

ADR is also used to add effects and mix different pieces of foley to create a more fitting sound design. For most fictional products cartoon sound effects are edited in and mixed together to over exaggerate and to humour the consumer. The best example I found was in a home made movie that had two men fighting in a cartoonish way. One of these men punch’s the other and sends him flying, it was called a jet punch and was mixed with the other sounds to connote how fast the punch was and how strong it was. The same sound effect could have been easily found online, but with ADR two sounds were mixed to achieve the effect the creator wanted.  

Overall audio editing plays a key factor in; creating the right atmosphere, engaging the consumer with the product with inventive and creative sounds and finally improving the overall quality of the product. The different ways of editing audio have both pros and cons, for example having the right foley establishes mood and allows the consumer to fully engage with the product, but having the wrong foley destroys the mood and lowers the quality of the product. 

Photo Edits

The above photo's are digitally edited photographs I took for coursework. They were first edited in Adobe Lightroom before being edited in Adobe PhotoShop. Photo #1 is a fine example of light photography which involves turning a camera's shutter speed down, then using lights to draw objects before the photo is taken.