Sound and Image Assignment 3

#1 Lenny - A Reflection

Pre-production

There are four of us in the group with Michelle as the director, Hiho as the first assistant director, Selena as the cinematographer and myself as the soundman. The first scene will be a scene where Lenny walks down a whole way in a wide shot angle. The second scene is when Sharon walks down the stairs from a wide shot to a medium shot angle. Finally, the third scene is a scene of Sharon and Lenny having a conversation while sitting at the bottom of the stairway.

We wanted to make use of RMIT building's interior designs as a background so we used this location for our Lenny shoot because of its colorful designs.

We used this location for 2 scenes; scene 1 and scene 2.

Before shooting the scenes, we had our two actors to be taken pictures with each other to pose as lovers for the story. The pictures also will be replacing the 'book' in the script that was provided before in class. We also wanted to change the scripted a little and change the dialogues of both characters to Mandarin, because we think that it would be interesting to see a none-Chinese person speak in that language.

We faced a few technical issues when preparing to shoot the scenes. One of them was the camera not being able to read the SD card, which really takes a while to solve since we don't really have much experience with the camera. This issue did not affect our schedule, however, as we manage to get all the shots by the end of the day. This is also part of our downfall as there were grains on the image and the exposure is not really balanced properly. To make up for the time lost, we decided to record some wild lines while the others tried to solve the card reading issue. In that time, I was able to capture the dialogues for both Lenny and Sharon, footsteps of both of them in their respective scene locations to maintain the reverberation of the footsteps, and atmos. I also manage to record some other minor wild lines such as the photo shuffle sound, a metal handle sound when Lenny grabs on it before seating down, a few others. Some of these wild lines are some sounds that we might need for the scene but not really necessary.

Since that we only have 2 hours to shoot the scenes, scene 3 was shot first because it has a few shots to cover and it is the longest scene of the three scenes. For the shots, we have a wide shot of Lenny sitting on the stairs and a medium-full shot showing Sharon walking down the stairs to where Lenny is. We also have shots of a medium close up of both Lenny and Sharon while making sure that we did not cross the 180-degree line.

Wide shot of Sharon coming down the stairs towards Lenny

medium-full shot of Lenny and Sharon

Next, the second scene is shot by placing the camera in the middle part of the stairway to shoot Sharon as he walks down the stairs. We tried to experiment some shots where the camera follows and pans to the left when Sharon came down the first set of the stairs, turn and walks down the second set of stairs, even though we were not supposed to move the camera in a single shot.

Sharon walking down

....turns....

...and then walks down the second set of stairs

Post-production

Before I began editing the clips, I have organized the clips to different bins where I have my video clips and audio clips in their respective video and audio bins, and another with the video and audio merged together.

I have also created four sequences for each scene and all the scenes together.

Looking at the clips that we shot, I actually noticed that the boom microphone is in some of the shots, mainly the shots for the second scene. So I decided to experiment with the clips by cutting up the shots into small parts to make the subject seemed like a time skip. I've also composed a soundtrack for the video and edited the time skipped clips to follow the beat of the song. The soundtrack is also automated as such that when the conversation between the subjects began, it will duck down in volume.

Here is the edit that I have done: