Author: Sam Jenkins

Dialogue Edit Learning Outcome
My first learning outcome was to improve my skills as a dialogue editor, primarily through the use of iZotope RX5. Throughout the semester I have worked on several extracurricular activities, including The Kinema in the Woods documentary, and a short clip sent over from Electric Egg.  Such activities allowed me the time and experience to learn how to use the Advanced Audio Editor and the Insight plug-in, mainly through researching iZotope’s YouTube videos.

Was it met?
When comparing the dialogue from Electric Egg’s clip, to the dialogue in Cognition, I believe I have achieved this learning outcome. The dialogue itself is much cleaner, there is little background noise and the clip does not noticeably fade in or out, it works smoothly when combined with the room tone. The location for Cognition, Lincoln BIG, is situated adjacent to the A15 and therefore offered large amounts of background noise in the form of traffic, that I believe is virtually inaudible because I applied the skills learned for RX to the dialogue in Cognition. Here is a before/after example of the opening scene:

Before

After

Having requested feedback from the client, the Producer stated: “The quality of the sound overall is astounding… The dialogue mix [Sam] put together was great, especially with the adjustment of tone he did with Anca’s [who played Susan] vocals.” I believe Hannah is referring to background noise when she says ‘tone’. The director added: “Sam is very skilled and knew his stuff. He worked long days to ensure that this was achieved to a high standard”.
This is very pleasing to hear and suggests that this learning outcome has been achieved, one way of assessing it was through feedback from the client, which is pleasantly positive. My peers, Rob and Dan, also stated that the edit was good as it was smooth and background noise was well-treated.

Improvements
Although I believe the clean-up and edit of the dialogue was good, I am not as pleased with the overall tone of the dialogue. In places it is not consistent due to the natural reverb of the small attic space. The idea was to utilize this reverb to draw attention to the boxy-ness of the room, but I believe it does not sound pleasing to the ear. A couple of lines sound much cleaner with less reverb which I think sounds better. I aimed to use Zodiac as my benchmark, but do not think I did as well as I could have to replicate this reverb. Therefore, the next outcome concerning dialogue would be to improve MIXING skills – level, automation, processes such as EQ and reverb, etc. which would have improved the quality of the dialogue for this piece.
Additionally, although the broadcast standard target is -23 LUFS, we were only able to achieve around -29 LUFS. This is not terrible, but offer too much headroom and room for improvement. On the final day during the sync issues we noticed this sound clipping, so automated levels and took the limiter off the master fader, which meant the film went from -24 LUFS (basically spot-on) to -29. I have learned for next time to try and plan for the film to be finished incase occurrences such as these happen, and we have time to sort them out properly and get the level back up to around -23 LUFS.

Working Professionally with a client

Was it met?
Another learning outcome I set was to enhance skills when working with a client, such skills as professionalism, teamwork, communication, personal and set etiquette. Upon feedback from the Director and Producer, this also appears to have been met.

The producer suggested that while I was quiet at first, I became chattier and open to suggestions quickly, while offering my own suggestions as well as any questions or queries I had comfortably. Hannah also stated that I remained very professional throughout the whole process, was friendly and approachable and worked closely with other members of the crew to get the project done quickly and thoroughly.

The director also wrote that I was professional, motivated and hardworking. A great team player, always optimistic and willing to help, while communicating efficiently throughout.

The feedback received is positive which is very pleasing to me, and suggests that I can work professionally with a client. Hannah also implies that my skills progressed, from being quiet at first, to opening up to and with suggestions, while being helpful and chatty to all of the crew and cast.

Improvements
Although the feedback is positive, I still believe there is much room for improvement. I agree with other comments praising punctuality, and the willingness to fill in as body double or help with reflectors, but my personal skills, professionalism and technical skills can all be developed. Being perceived as shy is not so negative, but again something to work on, as I wish to be a confident individual, which I believe would stem from improving my knowledge in both location- and post-sound.

Feedback Form – Producer

Feedback Form 2 – Director

Location Sound Techniques
My final learning outcome was to develop and enhance skills on location, such as practicing boom techniques and planting mics creatively.

Was it met?
I believe this was perhaps the weakest improvement concerning the individual learning outcomes. Although there was opportunity to be creative with plant mics onset, this only occurred one morning across the three days, and for one afternoon with the boundary capturing dialogue. The sound we captured with the plant mics in the hallway, corridor and stairs was very pleasing and was used in the final film, equally as pleasing.

Without making excuses, I believe the location change had a part to play as we had no preparation, storyboards or information about any scene, except the script. The director and DP were working as they were going, and the producer was excellent at keeping us in time – not that we had much. Extra time would have afforded us more opportunity to experiment with plant mics, but I’ve learnt that that’s just how it is when you get into more professional productions.

Either location would not have offered us great space, therefore practicing boom techniques was perhaps a poor choice of learning outcome. There were a select few wide shots, but these were not particularly wide relatively. Most shots were close-up, which allowed us to record from a very good, close position, but did not offer much improvement with booming skills. There were a couple of times I had to get into crazy positions (evidenced in the location sound process) which Ric Viers’ (2012) resource had prepared me for, but on the whole my improvement was not vast.

Challenges faced
On Thursday 15^th, one day before hand in, we bounced the audio with the video into a .mov file as we thought we had finished the post production (how wrong we were!). When Dan returned home, he noticed that both on his Android device and PS4, the audio was out of sync with the image, even though on Rob, my own and the university macs, this was not as noticeable. The next morning, deadline day, we came in to fix the issue, as well as noticing an issue with the levels, which were also not apparent the previous night. We overcame this issue by first sorting the levels – taking off the limiter and automating the music and SFX in the final scene, before conducting a bounce in sound theatre A. We believe the sync issue may have been caused through the creation and frequent transfer or even the bounce across both sound theatres, which may technically have slightly different variations. For example, the video sync offset may not be calibrated effectively in sound theatre A.

Although this was stressful as it was deadline day and we needed to finish writing our blogs, we tried a few adjustments, kept calm, solved the issue and handed the film in on time.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe my practise with dialogue editing and working with a client has greatly improved. I feel confident in my ability to create smooth dialogue, while removing background noise and other spot sounds utilising RX’s Spectral Repair tool. Feedback from the client was very positive, both in terms of the dialogue edit, and how we worked well together. Although I gained more experience working on set and on location sound, I feel my overall practice concerning location sound has been improved the least of the three learning outcomes. However, I was very pleased with our experimentation with plant mics, albeit there was not much opportunity, but this sound did find its way into the final film.