We have got the interviews that we want to use and knew that the sound on those would need sorting out as the levels are inconsistent and contain a lot if noise.
Although we agreed that most of the clips flowed naturally there was one clip that seemed glaringly out of place. This was where we had a sequence showing the climber prepping for his climb, followed by a nice shot of him sat on top of the cliff looking out at the landscape, then the footage of the climb. This didn't run right as it showed him having done the climb before he had even started, so we took out the cliff top clip and worked it in at the end of the climb where it fits more naturally.
We also inserted two new clips that shows him starting his second climb. We felt that we needed something to connect the clip of him sat on the ground putting his shoes on, to being half way up the cliff face. Therefore we reviewed the subclips of suitable footage to use in the film, and found two clips that actually follow the shoes clip. The first is of his legs, with shoes on but now standing up facing the cliff, and the second is a similar close up of his legs, but from a different angle and in this clip we see him taking his coat of and dropping it on the ground. This also works as it explains how he got from the clip on the ground putting his shoes on, in which he has a coat on, to being halfway up the climb in just his T shirt.
We experimented with putting a visual of just the rock face over the interview audio where the climber mentions "around here it's gritstone and limestone", but we both agreed that it didn't work so well. For one, he is in shot speaking leading up to that quote and we already have a cut away from the climber to a visual of what he is talking about in that interview, to put another in so quickly made it look a bit like a 'show and tell' presentation. Secondly, the interviewee is actually leant against a rock face of gritstone and limestone when he says it so that already establishes in your mind that that is the gritstone / limestone that he is referring to.
We moved the interviews slightly to line up the quote about Stanage Edge to fit better beneath the visuals of Stanage Edge, which in turn meant that we could fit in the quote about "hot aches" under the visuals of him shaking his hands and blowing on them, which makes the picture fit the quote, and vice versa.
I went through the interview and took out the sniffs, which were annoying to listen to. The tidied up, sniffless version sounds a lot nicer.
Alex and I worked out a sound design for the film: where would be natural sound from the film, where the interviews would go, where music would play and where atmos would go. Alex found a really good piece of atmos track online that we would be able to use. Unfortunately, the mac doesn't have enough disc space so we need to get that sorted before the technicians go home today, and we start working on it tonight.
Alex also showed, by removing some of the audio tracks that in certain points of the film that silence could actually work really well too as we go from one scene to another. Taking out all the audio,just briefly, helps build tension, so we are also experimenting with that.
We spent a lot of the session working on the audio levels. We tried different variations of levels for different audio clips until we got close to 'normalising' the vocal levels between the different interviews, and we took out the beeps and other noise that feature in a lot of the audio on the various clips.
There was another issue that we saw in our playback that we wanted to address, which was the over exposure of a particular shot. (There is actually an issue about over exposure on a few of the subclips, some of which we use in the final cut, but we wanted to experiment on the most noticable first and then apply to others if we find a solution that works.)
Alex started experimenting with colour correction on the clip where we are watching the climber from above as he tackles a rock face.
By altering the colour depth in colour correction Alex brought the brightness down on the clip and increased the green in the clip to blend the clip in with the adjoining clips in the sequence, which had a more lush, natural colour.
The colour correction worked really well, and now the clip that was over exposed doesn't stick out when the film is played through.
Before we left, we went back through the project brief to see how what we had worked on, and what we had learned met the criteria of the brief. We are really pleased that we have met the criteria by working together on the project. We have both experimented with technical aspects of the project, we have undertaken research to broaden our ideas about structuring the documentary, we have discussed ideas and worked really well together to try things out. Even when we were pretty sure that something might not work, because we have planned this project well, and organised all the clips and made planning and progress notes throughout the preparation, we had the luxury of time to try things out anyway.
It has been really useful for me. It is always good to work with somebody new as you find the little quirks that they have when doing the same job as you. For instance, some people use shortcuts, some use key strokes while I work quicker using the mouse (a habit I'm trying to get out of).
Alex and I have worked really hard, and really well together on this project. We have put in a lot of time and shared the work load. It has also been really good fun.
As with the Night Journey project I think a lot of the success of this project is down to preparation, keeping things tidy, and keeping progress notes.
Tonight we are meeting to concentrate on tidying up the sound levels on each clip and to (hopefully, if we can get some disc space) add the atmos tracks.
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