Sound & Image Project.
Posted by VanessaTam on Thursday, December 15, 2011
Under: sound and image
For this project, I have to produce a 3 minutes long video based on sound accompanied with moving or still images. My initial idea was to record sound creates by daily objects or something people may hear in everyday life. I started to drop down the objects that make a particular sound or noise and sounds from the microwave, kettle, washing machine..etc came to mind so I decided to use those sound to develop my idea for the project.
The theme i chosen for this video is about waiting, we spend time on waiting things everyday, and some with sounds, some don't. I found this quotes before "Waiting hurts. Forgetting hurts. But not knowing which decision to take is the worst of suffering." - Paulo Coelho. I do believe waiting can be hurtful sometimes, especial when waiting comes with silent.
So for the project I created a narrative, a story showing a girl waiting for things like food getting cooked in a microwave, water boiling with a kettle, waiting for the lift, clothes getting washed in a washing machine, but at the same time she's waiting for a boy, waiting to see him someday, waiting for him to come back.
I started off recording sounds I need for this video. I then plan the "memories" of the boy and the girl and began getting video and photos done, I recorded the sounds and the videos separately for better control of editing afterwards.
I have used zoom H1 24-bit Stereo MP3/WAV Audio Handy Recorder to record all the sounds. I have experimented using it to record sounds in different distances as I found putting the recorder too close to an object that I wanted to record sounds from, the sounds are not as clear.
For the sounds editing, I have used the software - Audacity, which allows easy edit and manipulation.
with the video editing, I have used iMove which is in my Mac, it allows to put videos, still images and audio together, and create effects between each frames. I have first edit the video and added still images in between the videos to show the girl is thinking and day dreaming when she's waiting. I have arranged the videos and photos to create a better sense of the story. I then began to add sounds onto the arranged video to create a background noise, however, I found out that it wasn't that straight forward, as the duration of the sound and each scene of the video may not match, so I had to edit either the video to fit the duration of the sound or the other way round.
I then used iDVD which also comes with my Mac to burn my video into a dvd.
here's a youtube link for my video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxZxtcnKbE
The video started with a girl who's waiting food to be cooked in a microwave and then as she waits, memories began flashing through her head and that's when I added in the blurry effect and the photos I took of her and a boy started playing and when the microwave starts beeping, memories flashing stopped and she gets back to what she was doing.
I added a clock ticking sound between each scene she "waits", I see clock ticking sound as time passing by, and the reason I added this sound is to show that time is passing and so it's not like she do all these "waiting" on a same day.
for some bits of the "memories", I added some sounds to create more of a atmosphere such as raining sound for the "walking in the rain" scene.
For the last scene of the video, I had the girl sitting in the dark in silent, doing nothing and tears dropping to show she's not waiting for things but just the boy, which I think creates a contrast, where there's time she's waiting with sounds at the background and there's time she don't, and waiting hurts when it's in silent.
I am quite happy for the outcome of the video, it's kind of how I wanted it to be, however, I believe it still can be done better, as I think I can improve it with better layers of more kinds of sounds. I have learnt new things with this sound and image project, such as editing audio and videos and putting them together to create a final video, even though problems occurs in the editing process, I am sure I have learnt more when solving them.
The theme i chosen for this video is about waiting, we spend time on waiting things everyday, and some with sounds, some don't. I found this quotes before "Waiting hurts. Forgetting hurts. But not knowing which decision to take is the worst of suffering." - Paulo Coelho. I do believe waiting can be hurtful sometimes, especial when waiting comes with silent.
So for the project I created a narrative, a story showing a girl waiting for things like food getting cooked in a microwave, water boiling with a kettle, waiting for the lift, clothes getting washed in a washing machine, but at the same time she's waiting for a boy, waiting to see him someday, waiting for him to come back.
I started off recording sounds I need for this video. I then plan the "memories" of the boy and the girl and began getting video and photos done, I recorded the sounds and the videos separately for better control of editing afterwards.
I have used zoom H1 24-bit Stereo MP3/WAV Audio Handy Recorder to record all the sounds. I have experimented using it to record sounds in different distances as I found putting the recorder too close to an object that I wanted to record sounds from, the sounds are not as clear.
For the sounds editing, I have used the software - Audacity, which allows easy edit and manipulation.
with the video editing, I have used iMove which is in my Mac, it allows to put videos, still images and audio together, and create effects between each frames. I have first edit the video and added still images in between the videos to show the girl is thinking and day dreaming when she's waiting. I have arranged the videos and photos to create a better sense of the story. I then began to add sounds onto the arranged video to create a background noise, however, I found out that it wasn't that straight forward, as the duration of the sound and each scene of the video may not match, so I had to edit either the video to fit the duration of the sound or the other way round.
I then used iDVD which also comes with my Mac to burn my video into a dvd.
here's a youtube link for my video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxZxtcnKbE
The video started with a girl who's waiting food to be cooked in a microwave and then as she waits, memories began flashing through her head and that's when I added in the blurry effect and the photos I took of her and a boy started playing and when the microwave starts beeping, memories flashing stopped and she gets back to what she was doing.
I added a clock ticking sound between each scene she "waits", I see clock ticking sound as time passing by, and the reason I added this sound is to show that time is passing and so it's not like she do all these "waiting" on a same day.
for some bits of the "memories", I added some sounds to create more of a atmosphere such as raining sound for the "walking in the rain" scene.
For the last scene of the video, I had the girl sitting in the dark in silent, doing nothing and tears dropping to show she's not waiting for things but just the boy, which I think creates a contrast, where there's time she's waiting with sounds at the background and there's time she don't, and waiting hurts when it's in silent.
I am quite happy for the outcome of the video, it's kind of how I wanted it to be, however, I believe it still can be done better, as I think I can improve it with better layers of more kinds of sounds. I have learnt new things with this sound and image project, such as editing audio and videos and putting them together to create a final video, even though problems occurs in the editing process, I am sure I have learnt more when solving them.
In : sound and image
