LO4

SOUND

Learning Outcome 4

Evaluation

When evaluating my work there are various factors I have to think about one of these is the asset management with importing and organising. I made sure that all my files were the equal timeframe by each frame per second across the board this meant that as my flash player would play there wouldn’t be any sounds out of synchronisation with continuous plays. I made sure that all the files were of .mp3 format and the video .mp4 as the coding with the flash player made this so, any other file types did not work so that was important in the importing side. I imported the files into other programs such as the music and the sound effects in Cubase and Adobe Soundbooth before producing the finished final interactive media sound product and those went smoothly. Commentary not so much. I found some issues getting it to play in the flash player at the start and even at the end of the process, no matter how much I tinkered with it it didn’t seem to work and if I imported it into another program, the program would either freeze or no respond, it was a painful experience but I did have the source file in there, it just seemed to work every now and then. Just like all the units of my Creative and Media Diploma, I made an index folder and made a folder for each unit. Each unit had a folder for each Learning Outcome and the essay criteria. If I felt a certain piece went into both I would copy and paste the file and put it into each, that is the way I organised my work. I made sure that all the sound files in the flash player were sound001 up to sound003 and that the video was video001. This meant the coding in the flash player would work correctly and has for file storage; I made sure any files that were unnecessarily big were cut down to a good length. Editing the audio left me some delight. I found it to be a fun process and I produced the music in Reason, the Sound Effects in Adobe Soundbooth and the commentary such a ZOOM microphone and Cubase. Cubase helped bring everything together and the audio library material was a great inspiration for the sound effects. All the sound effects were very well suited to the car advert and of high quality and provided by Adobe Soundbooth. The music was a mixture of 5 different loops constructed together with various different uses of treble, bass effects, pitch effects and more in order to make them feel more relatable to what is on screen and the various time periods. Transitions were something I wanted in this piece. Synchronising the sounds with the actions on the screen went very well and I very much enjoyed, most of this came into the sound effects department and making sure audio levels were correctly suited with the onscreen movement whether that be a car alarm of a person running.  There was not lip synching unless you can count that of a low breath laugh towards the end but it was a fun process, music played it’s part in the synchronisation too with small abrupt fade ins properly placed in order to make it keep up with the pace of what son screen. When I reflect back on the whole finished product however, it did meet my original intentions even if they weren’t by much and I felt it would meet the industries intentions. All the sounds, sounded suitable and realistic to what they were and even though I felt doing a car advert as a product would be a little cliché it was a fun experience. It fitted its purpose nicely by providing something fun to watch but also sounding very convincing. The feedback I got from the product was that it was high quality, very well made and certainly seemed convincing. I put in my personal skills of doing synchronising on videos into this tasks and my production skills. These production skills were hit and miss. I felt the ideas I came up with could have been very enjoyable but either they were a little cliché or they borrowed heavily on the commentary side. I didn’t feel I met time management too well, spending a lot of time producing my product making it very high quality and not enough research but I felt the workflow was quite even. Each unit felt quite placed with some elements in depth, more so than others and with a slightly help of some teamwork in the earlier stages before the actual production of my product, I felt it helped bring me a bigger understanding on the various components that make a successful interaction media product and it’s use of sound such as the waveforms, herts, analogue versus digital, legal considerations and other consideration that followed. It gave me a glimpse into it and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I felt the project as a whole went very well with only a few hiccups not making it as successful as it could have been but if I would have done this next time is try and come up with more idea generation and be more aware of my time to produce something that wasn’t so cliché to myself but to the audience but also be a high quality product.