Week Five March 5th-9th

At the start of this week I was editing the video and audio footage from Iman Casings. Although it was a very interesting visit, it's difficult to make it look exciting. The fact that the raw product is sheep's guts could put the viewer off. I want to try to make a slightly sickening process look interesting.

Final Cut Pro

When I am editing the process I have the Discovery Channel programme "How it's made" in my mind. The bottling factory was much more interesting, as there were lots of moving parts and different stages to film. We were spoiled with all that very interesting and diverse footage, so this factory is a real test.

I have been using two DAWs (digital audio workstations) to enhance the sound on these videos. For our first video for Safefood 360, I used Audacity.

Separating and labeling tracks

  It was a very handy tool in this situation because the narration was recorded all in one track. Audacity allows you to split it up into multiple tracks, and then export them individually in one go.

Exporting Multiple Tracks

 It also allows you to remove long pauses in sentences, thus allowing each sentence to flow better.

The other DAW I have been using is Reaper.
Reaper is very useful for removing echo from a speaking voice, and to remove background noise. I removed a low background hum from the narration with it's "VST, FFT EQ+Dynamics" effects manipulator.

Reaper VVT Effects

The sound engineering module was really helpful, as the voices and music recordings were really unsuitable in their raw state. Before I began this work experience, I didn't really appreciate how important it is to get the sound right on a video. To be actually working on these projects, the demand for quality is high, which leads you to experiment more in an effort to improve your abilities.

On Wednesday, George asked me to leave this project for a while, and make a start on a re-make of the Safefood 360 video, with the Food Safety Software brand, rather than Safefood 360. The reason for this is that they want to push the re-seller programme.

I had some royalty-free music in mind, but George suggested that I use the original track.  I continued working on this project for the rest of the week.