Soundscape Project

Two other students and I were assigned the creation of a soundscape. We had to edit together a 1-2 minute scene using only sound (from databases and Foley) with a limit of 7 words.

There were 3 main steps to this project:

1) Planning

2) Collecting and organizing sounds

3) Editing + Exporting

1) Planning - The first step of any project with creative freedom is to brainstorm an idea. This assignment explicitly said to pick an event that would happen in a short timespan. We decided on a girl ordering in a McDonald's drive-through. We created a general outline with 10 primary sounds and 10 secondary sounds we would use in our final project. Then, once that was approved by our teacher, we created an in depth plan of every single sound we would use in our soundscape. We did this by dividing the sequence into "scenes" or groups and splitting the work up.

Detailed Outline (with links to sounds): Outline

2) Collecting and organizing sounds- Once our planning was complete, we had to search sound databases and organize the sound effects we would use for each list we had written. All three of us worked together on this and split it up pretty evenly. One of the group members would record the Foleys while my other partner and I would divide editing. 

3) Editing - Once we had all of our sounds including Foleys, we layered them and ordered the scenes in chronological order. 

Our final project:  Soundscape

 

One Word Film

My most recent assignment in AICE MEDIA AS was to create a 1:00-30 film based off of a single word. 

In class, we got to pick our partners and then each selective group was assigned a word. My partner and I were assigned the word 'fanciful'. This word means to be delusional or over imaginative. After brainstorming, we decided on the idea of a girl who thinks she is in a happy relationship with a boy, but in reality, she is not and instead comes off as a stalker.

The first steps of the assignment were to create a "Brainstorm" sheet and Storyboard. The Brainstorm sheet was essentially a shot list (15 total) while the storyboard helped us solidify the order of our production. My partner and I have experience using storyboards and shot-lists so this part came easy and helped us get organized before filming.

We picked our school as the setting (we used a classroom, hallway, stairs, and the courtyard) and then were ready to film. I acted as the girl and my friend played the boy while my partner filmed, it took us a bit under an hour and we used a Ronin and a Canon t8i rebel to film. This part was the most fun for our group as we experimented with many shots and even decided to include a screen recording of a selfie.

As my partner did the "filming" aspect of the project, I did the editing. I have used Adobe Premiere before so I wasn't intimidated by this. The project turned out to be a lot longer than I expected, and ended up being exactly 1:30, as we had to include all our various shots. Prior to filming, we had decided to dull the colors of the "reality" the girl lives in, I did so by lowering the saturation of the first "real" shot (62%; I just adjusted until it looked right) and then matched it on the other real shots. Some shots didn't turn out as we had planned but overall it wasn't bad. I enjoyed working with my partner on this project.