Post Production - Audio Editing

Throughout the 5 minutes of my documentary show excerpt, There is a total of three different songs used. The video below explains a little of how I sampled all three and how i interlinked them to create harmony with the on-screen action: LINK

It should be aknowledged that I have used no more than 30 seconds of any one copyrighted song. I have made extensive changes to the order in which the two main audio pieces are played to ensure the classification of a 'sample' rather than infringing on copyright laws. I believe I have done a good job of disguising these changes with careful and agonisingly precise beat matching and a long time spent scanning through the tracks used trying to find the most appropriate parts available that fit the editing style and clip subect available.

For example. The very end of the project cuts out over 40 seconds of the end of the song and fades into the final 8 bars of music as I particularly liked the atmospheric ending to this track but could not use too much at a time. I worked out the time signature of the music, cut the track in a place starting a beat and continued it through to the end listening very carefully for any 'lumps' in the bedding track.

The second part to the audio production was the recording of voice overs and re-recording of quiet interview parts. Unfortunately, the time of year in which I have filmed my prject does not play nicely into the hands of amateur video equuipment. This meant I often had a large amount of wind and traffic noise in the background of the shot. A few were serious enough to need careful attention in the form of an audio re-record in the recording studio available at my school's media department. This proved to be far more difficult that first thought. The need to lip sync perfectly is a difficult task, especially when talking from a personal opinion as apposed to reading from a set script that could be followed much more easily. The method I found best for tackling this problem was uploading the certain clips to my pendrive and have a preview of the clip available whilst recording but on mute. This let me get much closer to the actual wording including all 'umm's' and 'ahh's'.

The voice overs were much more simple as there was no visual to match the wording with. I carefully played through the near completed video and bookmarked points that I thought would be improved with a Channel 4 documentary style narration over the top of them. Half way through the initial explosive sequence of riding, an uneducated (in the demands of trials riding) viewer would begin to grow tired of all this 'jumping around on walls'. The introduction of a narrator at this point however adds a new element to the production and keeps a wider range of audience interested for longer.
The easiest option for these voice overs would have been to type up the basic script then ask a class mate to read them out and play this over the top but I wanted my production to resemble the kind of show that could be played during the day on one of Channel 4's many channels. To address this, I employed the help of my mother and her best Channel 4 accent along with a sound recorder and a well furnished room with good acoustics.

There are a few elements that i am sure could have been improved slightly, such as the tone of the narration throughout is slightly lacking in treble. This would have been an easy fix prior to inserting into the iMovie timeline, but not that they are an integral part of the production, this could be very costly if any mistakes are made.