13.1

Today we used Foley to create a lot of our sound effects. What I found most interesting was that you can actually use a lot of different objects to recreate certain effects, and these objects can be ordinary objects or objects for a specific purpose say, like a mannequin. I think what makes Foley a lot of fun and a huge creative process for us, not to mention a key factor in sound designing for animation films or even in action movies, is you don't have to be limited to using certain sounds to represent another sound.

By definition, Foley is to create sound in a different method; rather than merely slamming the door to create the sound or slapping someone to create that sound. Foley is used to replace the sound recorded on set at the time, like the slap or the slam of the door, which is called field recording. I think the most common example I know is that in action movies the fight scenes are usually staged by stunt doubles so no noise actually is recorded when filming as they are only acting like they're hitting each other when reality they haven't even touched each other. So Foley needs to be used to add the sound effects to show and make the audience feel that they're hitting each other. The whole point is to emphasize the visual effect or action, to heighten the tension and to create a dramatic feeling as well. Another benefit to adding sounds to the scene after all the filming has been finished is that the sound designers can have complete control over how each sound will be heard by the audience, so the sound quality is improved from the original sound that was captured during the filming process. These sounds can also be altered to suit what the director wants, so the diagetic sounds don't have to be limited to what is actually heard when filming.

For the sound effect of Jerry knocking on the Bulldog's eye, Cara recorded her knocking on a mirror. I never would have thought the mirror would be an option, I was thinking perhaps a wooden table. The sound had to be clear and light so I think the mirror was a good choice. For the sound effect of the Bulldog walking, we walked around hitting things to see what would fit. The Bulldog was big and heavy so the sound had to be low and reverberate slightly. In the end we decided on the glass because it echoed when we hit it, gave a louder sound than hitting on the floor and a lower sound than hitting on the wood (but we were very careful when making the sound!). I think the best sound effect we created today was our idea of using velcro to represent the sound of Jerry getting stuck on the cactus and Tom trying hard to pull him away. It had that resistance when you pulled the velcro, and the great thing about this was that we could change the speed in which we pulled the velcro in order to fit the scene.

I spent the lesson editing the clips Marshall and Cara made and trying to fit them in order to be in sync with the actions in the film. I find I enjoy this process a lot more than going out in the "field" and doing the "making". I am a perfectionist so I think that's an advantage here, where I don't mind paying attention to the smallest details, trying to cut those down, to make them flow smoothly from one section to the other. It's a lot of work trying to make everything fit because most of the time they sound recorders will record a series of sounds in one go, and you have to go in and cut the sections in between each action and place them on the timeline or have a space between them to make the sounds come out at the same time as it happens on screen. Sometimes you might not have the right sound you're looking for at that specific moment, but the rest of it will sound very good. Then I have to cut that clip into different sections, duplicate some other clip, insert that in between the two and cut out the extra silence in between to make everything fit again. I like this because I like the satisfaction of putting everything together and being able to manipulate the sound, and also because I find it very rewarding after you've worked so hard you are able to see your result when you play the film.

"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again." - Gone With the Wind

11.1

Today we continued to work on collecting sounds, downloading the ones we've already found and putting them into the timeline. Marshall suggested that I change the beginning of our film; he felt that if we just rearranged the timeline to make the intro to the episode in the movie they watch in the film and just start off the actual film fading into a scene it would be a lot more interesting. It would also alter our film from the typical Tom and Jerry episode, which goes into the intro right from the beginning. We had some trouble with the effects because we only wanted a fade in, not a fade out. I said you could just delete the fade out part, but that shortened the clip and thus ended up changing the timing of the following clip. This meant the music we added would be a little bit off and we didn't want that; we thought it was perfect the way we had arranged it. In the end we decided just to keep both fade in and fade out because it didn't affect the overall viewing of our film, it probably even made the transition between clips smoother!

The sounds we added today were both Tom and Jerry's laughs, background music for when Jerry is running away and Tom uses the rope to catch him. I was really happy about editing that section. I played the clip, trying to find one part that would fit with the sound of Jerry running. It had to be light because Jerry's a mouse, a small creature, which would probably be pretty agile. He was also running fast, so it had to represent that. Once I found it, I dragged it down to the timeline. Without even having to move it into the right place, I had already got the timing between the music and the video perfect because when the music paused, that was when Jerry got caught by the rope and fell face flat on the floor. We also added in a clip of an old movie countdown that comes in right before the movie plays. We extended that sound to when Tom and Jerry go into the movie theatre and sit down, because I had this impression of olden days when they had movie reels and there would be that sound playing right before the movie started. I thought that would give a vintage feel to the film.

We still need to record some of the sound effects from our long list so we spent the last part of the lesson figuring out how we would go about making those sounds because some were quite odd.

"Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." - Forrest Gump

5.1

Today we worked on completely finishing the visual timeline, adding to the list of sounds we needed to make/get and even started to look for some tunes/songs that we thought would go well with a particular section of our film.

There wasn't much to do with editing for the timeline, I only had to rearrange some clips and delete a few quick cuts to make everything flow better. I also added a new clip into the film, which included more pranks done by Jerry to Tom. I learned that it's always good to change the scale of the timeline from when you're watching it to when you need to edit something; you need to be able to see the whole timeline when watching, and you need to be able to get into the details when editing. After we went through the film a couple of times, pointing out to each other where we thought could be cut better (if there was), we went through it another time to pick out all the sound effects we needed to make. I had already deleted the soundtrack from the original clip so that we could be more original in our sound design, making it completely our own. Although this was the case I think it still helps that we're able to get inspiration from the cartoon and other cartoons and be able to imagine all the sounds, play them out in our heads so that we know exactly what we need to look for.

We've now got a complete sound list. We decided to go on Youtube to search up some of the effects to see if we could find some, and get a head start on collecting sounds. Marshall got really excited about one song he thought would really fit the opening scene with the peace treaty and where Tom and Jerry are walking to the movies. It's a cheerful scene so we wanted something upbeat but something that was appropriate and Marshall immediately thought of his grade 8 piano piece, which was a modern jazz piece and when we played that scene alongside the music it turned out to fit quite well. We all felt very happy that we had "made a big discovery"!

"They call me Mister Tibbs!" - In the Heat of the Night

12.12

Last week we worked quickly and really started to try to get things going so we didn't have to do too much over the holiday. Today we moved forward from what we had finished last class. We downloaded the clips and started to organize them onto the timeline and we even started cutting and doing some fine editing in terms of the sequence and how they were going to play out in order. We didn't have much difficulty or trouble downloding the files becuse we all knew how to do that. We really didn't need everyone doing something because we didn't have lot of files to download and we only needed one computer to lay out and get all the clips down on the entire timeline. Once we downloaded all the clips I started to cut out the specific parts we needed from those clips and dragged them down into the timeline in the correct order. After that I went in for some fine editing and I started separating those clips and adding new parts in between the original clips because we were aiming for a mashup effect. I thought it worked pretty well because the clips we found flowed pretty well together: the clip with the pranks was set in a grassy background, and the main clip was lso set in a grassy background so that worked well when fitted together. So far the film doesn't seem to be jumping around randomly, which is my main concern when cutting two different clips and putting them together. We alwys referred back to the main clip and used that as our base, like the basic storyline and I think having that worked to our advantage in structuring the whole story.

There was one chllenge we faced, which was the quality of the different video clips. Since they were all different, when we imported those files into Final Cut Pro, the result was that some of the clips were very pixelated while others looked quite good. This caused the entire sequence to be very unbalanced and look a little strange when we were playing it through because you notice the differences in quality immediately. We asked for help, and we managed to find a solution to the problem. The solution was that after importing all the clips we needed into Final Cut Pro and dragging what we needed onto the timeline, we should export the film, then open a new project and import that exported file. We have yet to do that because we said we would do it once we had done a little more editing (we also need to see if we might have to add some more clips), but hopefully that will balance out the video qualities of all the clips and turn it into one complete film.

"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night." - All About Eve

8.12

Today we officially started the second unit on making the soundtrack for a chosen comic strip or animation. We broke into our groups and started brainstorming ideas for the visuals. There was lots of choices we could go with; taking pictures (stills) of people and turning that into an animation, drawing and turning that into animation, doing flash animation or taking a comic strip or cartoon and making our own soundtrack to that.

We wanted to make it easy for us to get the visuals, nothing too complicated because we were only focusing on the sound design after all. We wanted to be able to spend the most time on the sound design; but we also wanted something interesting for the visuals to be able to experiment with many sounds. We originally thought of doing a parody of a cartoon or a short video clip, but that was too broad. We narrowed our thoughts and started thinking of our favorite cartoons. I said Pink Panther, Marshall and Cara both said Tom and Jerry. I was fine with that because I love Tom and Jerry as well! We thought about taking clips or even sounds from different episodes and mash them up into one, creating a completely new story (this way we would have made it our own original idea). It would be like creating a remix with the cartoon, which is pretty neat. We also considered making stop-motion as I've always wanted to do something like that, but we couldn't think of any story that really intrigued any of us so we decided to stick with Tom and Jerry.

Our basic structure of the storyline is that in the beginning Tom and Jerry are friends, but in the middle something happens, there's a betrayal of some sort and the truce is broken. This way there are different dynamics, and we would also be able to add in clips of them 'pranking' each other which is the most fun to add sounds to and it also picks up the pace of the film making it more lively. We went on Youtube and started looking for clips that was of them being friends, but because of something unexpected they get mad at each other and are back to being enemies. We weren't really sure if we were going to add in another character, the bull dog, because he comes up in some of the episodes (in particular the one we found of Tom and Jerry establishing a truce) but we thought that if we added him in the film would get a little too complicated. He would have been quite random, because sometimes in the clips we want to use he doesn't appear. By the end of the class we were already going into the details and looking out for specifics, like Tom or Jerry's laughs, for us to add in as sound.

We worked quite efficiently and got a lot done in this class, so that's a good sign. I think it really helped that everybody contributed in the brainstorming and we all agreed with each other when someone thought of a good idea. I'm excited!

"Go ahead, make my day." - Sudden Impact

2.12

We finished watching Billy Elliot in class, continuing to pay attention to the sound design of the film, how it affects our emotions and especially the layering of different sounds, non-diagetic and diagetic.

There were a couple of things I noticed when I was watching the film. The first thing was when Billy and his dance teacher were dancing by themselves in that gym, the music was loud and funky and cheerful. It's very upbeat and it makes you feel like dancing as well, especially because at first all you hear is the tapping of the cymbals. The music is part of the soundtrack, and the film cuts from clips of Billy dancing to shots of what his family members are doing, with that funky music going on in the background. It makes you feel like Billy is completely oblivious to the other world and although those worlds exist parallel to each other, they're not really connected. Billy's family members can't understand his feelings and don't want to. The music goes on while they go on with their daily lives, so it's as if they're ignoring it.

Another thing I noticed is that there's a lot of moments where the music suddenly cuts off, and where it cuts off is usually when the music is the loudest or after reaching the climax. The piano starts, builds up, then when the door opens back at his house the music cuts off again. This reminds me again of the symbolism of jumping up against a wall; this wall of reality that he can't get out of, he cannot escape from. Every time the music cuts off is when he "comes back to reality", and the music in his fantasy world hits that wall and cuts off abruptly as the wall is hard and impenetrable. Another good example of that same symbolism is when his dance teacher is arguing with his brother in the house, he runs outside and the film shows him trying to jump up on the wall, trying to get out. Then he's stuck in between the two walls, like being stuck in a box; although he can see the way out, but he just can't reach it. He finally 'escapes', and the tapping sounds he makes with his shoes overlap with the music (diagetic and non-diagetic) and it's almost as if he's trying to let out all the frustration out through his dancing.

There's another moment in the film which I really liked; it's when he's dancing up the street and he keeps turning and turning and turning until he reaches the end. The important thing about this is that when you spin you have to focus on one point, so that when you spin around you won't lose balance. To me this was like he had what he wanted in mind, he had a dream of dancing, and the spinning symbolizes him trying not to lose sight of that in the face of everything. He really wants to achieve that dream, he really wants to hold onto it despite his circumstances. But at the end, he still hits the wall (that was at the end of the street), which again goes back to the symbolism of hitting against the wall of reality.

"There's no place like home." - The Wizard of Oz

24.11

Today we watched the last group's film. I really liked their documentary, about a domestic helper's dream in Hong Kong. I thought the quality of the film and especially the sound was very good compared to the others because there wasn't a lot of wind noise and it was balanced quite well. While watching the film I noticed they only interviewed one helper, and kept going back between that helper and the mom, showing both sides of the story and both opinions. I originally thought they could have interviewed more helpers, as their topic was about domestic helpers so they could have a gotten a range of interviews to get more information and thoughts from that side of the story. But I think in this case it was okay that only one helper was interviewed because the switching back and forth between the mom and helper, the way the footage was cut that way created really nice tension between the two. That pieced the film together and sort of weaved it along, because we can tell there's a whole other side to the story that someone is probably not telling the viewer directly, but that we can assume and guess.

The rest of the class was spent watching the movie Billy Elliot. The movie was directed by Stephen Daldry. It was later adapted into a musical and opened on Broadway in 2008. It was set during the 1984-1985 miners' strike which happened in the UK. The reason being that coal had been nationalized, and although some mines remained profitable, many mines ended up being shut down, resulting in tens of thousands of job losses. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) called for a national strike. It greatly affected the coal industry in the UK at the time. This is the background for the movie. Billy is a young boy who loves to dance. Billy's dad and older brother Tony are both on strike, no money is coming in, so Billy's dad is very upset that he's wasting his money sending him to learn boxing while Billy is off somewhere else dancing.

While watching we had to pay attention to the sound design of the film. Sometimes it's hard to pick out the specifics because usually when you watch a movie you don't really pay attention to the sound. It comes very naturally and you expect it to be there; it plays a huge role in creating and stimulating emotions but you don't realize that. I have to focus and really try to notice the change in sound and the tone of the music. Sometimes it's easy to pick out the details such as the contrast between the music of the ballet and the noise from outside (workers on strike, protesting), which shows the two complete opposite worlds. One of childhood innocence, and the other of this hard-core reality. There was also the scene where Billy's dad is confronting Billy about the dancing. While this was happening there was no music, just the sound of their voices. This was to instill the sense of tension between the two people, especially with the invalid grandma sitting almost in the middle of them. But as soon as they get up from the table, the music starts and you notice the strong bass in the music to show the anger that's being let out and the frustration in the two people. I like the movie, but there's a lot of profanity and sometimes the accents make it really hard to understand!

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Jaws