Upon learning more of what goes into the process of film-making, sound was next on our agenda and hence we were instructed to create sound for the Lenny exercises from the week before. Not being able to be a part of the filming process of the Lenny exercise led me to want to really engage in creating the sounds, particularly due to the fact I had never really experimented with the equipment.

However, it was upon doing this exercise that I realised creating wild lines, atmos and folly after production can be an extremely difficult process if done poorly, especially for when you arrive at the editing stage and have limited sounds to work with. Being beginners, my group and I didn’t realise how well we had to match up the sounds with the actual clips, and therefore, we just went for it. This led to the recorded sounds not matching up with the ones in the edited clip and most of them were cut from being used. These being the footsteps we recorded as they were completely off from the real ones, and parts of the dialogue. That’s why in the clip, some dialogue is from the original camera and others is wild lines.

Although it didn’t quite work out in this exercise, I now have an improved and greater respect for those who do practice folly and other sound construction as a profession. To get the sounds spot on and perfectly timed takes a lot of patience and precision. It reminds of the when I went to Universal Studios in LA at the start of this year, and watched a stage show which was centred on film production and what goes into it. People from the audience were picked out to have a go at performing folly to a clip from a movie and it was quite entertaining seeing non-professionals give it a go. It honestly reflected exactly how my group and I went in doing our own.

I hope in future exercises that I am able to better perfect working with sound, so when it comes to editing I am not faced with the inevitable “red face rising.”