P6

Post Production Edits

The rushes and unedited audio files can be found in P5. This post will breakdown the steps I took to finalise my recordings for my animation and how they differ to the raw unedited tracks.

After I had finished recording my sounds, I imported them into Adobe Audition: I chose to use this software because of its variety with sound effects and ease to control multiple audio tracks in a multitrack. As well as this, Audition is the most viable software to use above the other Adobe software.

The first thing I decided to edit was the gate foley sound, so I began with importing it into Adobe Audition. Before I moved the file into the multitrack, I moved the file to the waveform editor and split/cut the file down where it was necessary. I then began to edit the file in the multitrack editor where I can start to add effects and make edits.

This screenshot demonstrates how I was able to edit and import the audio file into Adobe Audition. I split the file in the multitrack editor and made edits in "Track 1". This means that any edits I make in track 1 will be applied to every file in that track. The first major edit I made was increasing the volume: the original file was very quiet and hard to hear, so  by increasing the volume it will be more noticeable in my animation.

This foley sound is supposed to represent a large gate or a big creaking door, but is actually the sound of the bird cage door opening and closing. To make the sound appear bigger and heavier than it really is, I pitched the sound down and added reverb to make it sound like a realistic gate. I used a reverb pre-set called "room ambience" to make the gate more natural sounding but also eerie at the same time. As well as the rest of my audio tracks, I applied the de-noise effect to the track to erase any background noise and unwanted ambience.

In the screenshot below, you can see me make edits to another audio file: the gavel sound. I had to improvise with this sound by using a wooden bar and hitting it onto a table. similarly to the gate foley sound, this sound was also relatively quiet and I had to make edits based around that. After using the de-noise effect, I increased the volume of the track. I increased the volume by a lot as I want this sound to be attention grabbing in the animation, similarly to a jump scare. To add to the volume, I used a pre-set from the stereo imagery effect and increased the bass of the file. To finish editing this track, I added the room ambience reverb effect.

All of the audio files, once finished with edits, were normalised. This means that all the audio tracks were a similar volume and not ensuring that they are neither too loud nor too quiet. I did this by manually editing the volume of the audio in Adobe Audition, and making sure that they were all similar volumes to each other. I used the gain feature to accomplish this.