Post 43 - POST-PRODUCTION: Editing sound

Towards the end of the editing stage of our film, I found the 'Adobe Audition' program which can erase background noise and edit a sound file. Through-out our production of the film, my group knew that we had unwanted background noise which none of us could remove successfully or to a good enough standard to have a high sound quality unless with 'Video Effects' in Adobe Premier Pro. However with Audition, I looked into how it removed external noises such as the traffic in our outside scenes. There was also a few inside shots where the tool want needed to remove any noise from the rest of the location as it was busy. I looked up tutorials on how to remove background sounds and found one very helpful, this is embedded below.

From the video I then set out to edit pieces of our film which required sound editing. The SlideShare below shows a presentation of the 4 stages of how I edited the sound. A more detailed description on what was being done on each picture is written below the presentation.

Post 41 - Post Production Edting from MellowShark

Slide 1. We listened through our sound clip multiple times before analysing what exactly would need to be done to it. We knew the disruptive sound of the traffic needed to be quietened, but the actor's voice needed to remain clear and not become tinny or echo like. I selected the clip and opened Adobe Audition.

Slide 2: Once the file was in Audition, I played the sound file again to see where the sound of the traffic could be cornered and, from my knowledge from the tutorial, selected to make the edit. I had selected the traffic at the start of the file as this did not have Charlie's voice in it, this was then make into a 'noise point'. Capturing this meant I was then able to go onto the next stage.

Slide 3: After capturing the sound, I used the short-cut CRTL-A to select all of the file to remove the sound from. Using the tool 'Noise Reduction (process)' I was then able to test and change the levels of the removal of the sound. This step took the longest as we didn't want the noise to become tinny and the echo of Charlie's voice kept becoming this. After I had made the sound file sound like we wanted, with less traffic and more emphasis on Charlie's voice, I clicked apply and listened to the file again before saving the new sound file.

Slide 4: We watched the clip again to see if the sound worked better, using the undo and redo short-cuts to flick through the two versions to see if there was an improvement and if we could still hear Charlie's voice clear enough. We were happy with the change and continued to edit other sound files in the same way.