Lenny – Audio Syncing Excercise

This was my first time syncing video and audio that had been recorded separately. I ended up only using the wild lines for the final piece of dialogue in the scene, mostly because I wanted to use the wide shot, but still have Lenny’s dialogue performed as a whisper, and Louise had revert to her normal speaking voice by the time we filmed the wide shot. While I did syncing the wild lines manually, I think it lined up pretty well.

I was surprised how well the Premiere was able to automatically sync up the audio from the camera and the audio from the microphone, particularly seeing as we didn’t have a clapper and forgot to clap before we begun rolling. When Premiere had finished syncing the audio from the internal microphone and the external microphone, you could clearly hear roll camera being called just as the vision cuts in. It’s possible there may be a couple of mili-seconds of delay between the two audio tracks in some of the clips, but I didn’t notice it when I was editing.

I’d be interested to see how it would go with a scene where the audio had been recorded later in a completely different environment, whether it would give similar results. It might also become harder with a longer, more complicated scene, as there could be more places where the audio tracks may appear to line up. I was happy with how it worked out with this exercise, and it’s defintely a feature I want to try and utilise more.

In terms of the shots themselves, the way in which the location is set up lead to some over the shoulder shots which can feel a tad awkward. Neither of the actors are centred to the frame, rather than are slightly to one side. However, I feel that this could be improved by either showing more of the location and pushing the actor further to the side of the frame, or tightening up on the face to show more of the characters expression. There is also a significant amount of head room in both of the two over the shoulder shots as well as the wide two shot, which could have been reduced to help bring the attention of the viewer to the characters.

Make the Bed Exercise

I think this is probably the project that I’ve been the happiest with so far this semester. It really helped that the action of making the bed was simple enough that there was a natural sequence of how the video should flow, but there are still enough steps that there was enough room to play with the concept and experiment a little.

My favourite shot in this project was the one in which I placed the camera on the bed and shook the doona over the mattress. While the camera did move a little and I struggled to get the focus as clean as I would have liked it to have been, the concept itself is one of the more creative shots I’ve taken in a long time.

I also quite like the opening shot. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure how to begin this piece when I was storyboarding, but once I’d set up the tripod, placing the camera where I did and dragging the doona off the bed in front of the camera seemed like a natural fit. I established the lighting set up in this shot, which then also seemed to fit well for the subsequent shots in the video. It gave the piece a warm glow, which works well with the warm colours that were already in the room.

As I’ve already said about this project, allocating that extra little bit of time allowed me to be more patient and precise with my shots. While that sounds like something that’s fairly obvious, it’s worth reminding ourselves of every so often, as it’s easy to forget and allow the quality of our work to potentially fall as a consequence.