Sound: skills.

Using 'Soundtrack pro software' i explored how to insert music and sound effects to our bag swap sequence. Over hundreds of sounds from orchestral, natural sounds from home/work, nature sounds, vocal sounds like breathing, singing and talking, drums, violins and heavy beats, all allowing you to create a dramatic or on the other hand, a soft soundtrack backing to your video.

As our bag swap started with Valeza fastly running down the stairs with the mise en scene being at college, we decided to add a school bell at the beginning, then slowly breaking out into a dark orchestral peice. The to add drama as the bag drops, we added a 'bang' sound, and then re-added the orchestral sound. As Valeza realises her bag has been swapped she looks at it, so we inserted heavy breathing noise to emphasis her fustration. The beat gets louder near to the end to increase her anxiety and worry. Below is a screen shot of my first first using the Soundtrack pro software.

The software allowed us to put many different sounds over eachother to create a confusing yet effective sound. We could drag the green bars to make the sound go on for longer, increase the volume of certain bits, and change the timing. We wanted to create a 'thriller' like atmosphere which is why we went for heavy breathing to show anxiety, high pitched string instrumental sounds to create tension and heavy beats to indicate that something dangerous will happen. When experimenting i found that the timing really matters between each different sound, as it needs to flow nicely without awkward pauses or incorrect gaps. It took a long time to go through each of the sounds making sure which would be suitable for our video, a trail and error method was carried out. The audio editing mode is where individual clips can be edited. The waveform, as well as a frequency spectrum, can be viewed for the clip. The audio can be analyzed for common audio problems such as clicks and pops, power line hum and clipped signals, and then any discovered problems can be fixed. Audio can be faded in and out, the amplitude can be altered for a selection, noise can be removed and silence, waveforms and ambient noise can be inserted. There is also a selection history tool that cycles between previous selections. After zooming in on the individual samples in the audio waveform, the pen tool can be used to edit the wave directly.