Directions Unit: Sound Design| Problems & Changes

After completing my first draft of my sound design, I came across a variety of problems and changes needed for my design:

Problems/Changes

Timing

Firstly, I realised that planning time for my design didn't quite work out. It seemed to be that 1 minute wasn't enough time - in fact it came out to be quite complex to fit all the sounds I wanted to in this short space of time. Therefore, I had to alter my ordering and had to remove my final scene, which was the 'coach and pedestrians' scene completely. This allowed me to fit into the one minute limited time however I feel that it may effect my sound design in general as I haven't included as much of the picture as I wanted to. For example, I haven't included the coach in the background of the image.

Sounds in general

One of my main worries for this part of the unit was getting the exact sounds I wanted. Of course this would be a problem due to the individuality of some of my sounds e.g. the creaking pole or snow falling on top of a car. This therefore has forced me to alter some of my sounds or instead not use them at all, affecting my intentions. Nevertheless, this only seemed to be a problem once or twice and I managed to get a sound similar to what I expected. For example, the creaking pole was replaced with a similar creaking sound.

Ken Burns Effect

Another problem was the use of the ken burns effect. Because my intentions were to show someone walking down the winter's street, I decided to use ken burns to create an emphasis of the pedestrian walking. However this became problematic as I found it difficult to make the effect become smooth instead of rough, which you can see when looking closely at my sound design. Perhaps having more experience with this effect (as it is the first time i've used it) would help me to make it seem more smooth and consistent.

Picture Pixelation

This turned out to be quite a big problem. When zooming into the image, you can see clearly that the image becomes more pixelated and not as clear. This makes my sound design seem less professional due to the quality of the image I used. It also reduces the idea for the audience to recognise what part of the image I am talking about.

Cropping

Although a minor problem, cropping also became an issue. This is because I only managed to crop down a ratio of the picture e.g. it only cropped into squares - I couldn't alter the cropping ratio. This created less emphasis on some parts of my image as they were more rectangular instead of square e.g. the restaurant part of the image wouldn't crop without cutting out some of the image due to it being more rectangular shaped instead of square.

Conclusion

Overall, I found this part of the unit quite challenging. I generally found it hard to get the exact sounds I wanted as well as finding it hard to show what I'm trying to show within the image. Nevertheless this unit has generally helped me with directing as I didn't think I would be able to find as many sounds in an image as I did, as well as being surprised how you can make a story from just one still image.