Major Project: Rough Cut & Sound Editing Workflow

Continuing straight from the First Assembly Cut of Double Exposure, I began the Rough Cut. Working on this cut across a period of 5 weeks alongside the Director, I continued to keep edit logs so that I could keep track of our day to day progress. Below are logs and screenshots from my work up until before finishing sound editing, along with my approaches to sound editing during this initial time.

Day 7 (Day 1 of Rough Cut Editing - Cutting Down the Film & Scene 4 Sound Replacement)

Day 7 Edit Log

• From starting the Rough Cut, I no longer worked on my own with crew feedback, and began working alongside the Director.

• Added 'Fade to Black' and 'Exponential Fade' transitional effects to the current opening shot and audio clip to get a feel for the opening of the film.

• Began reviewing the film multiple times with the Director to work on cutting the length down from 18 minutes to approximately 14 minutes - allowing for just under a minute of production company logos, opening titles, and closing credits to reach just below 15 minutes in total.

• Decided with the Director to remove scene 8 from the film - consisting of Emily driving in her car and getting out, as it brought nothing to the film and cut down on time. The before and after screenshots can be seen below, showing a clip of scene 8 in the before, and the closed gap and flowing connecting between scenes 7 and 9 in the after shot...

Before Scene 8 Removal

After Scene 8 Removal

• Received Tommy (Dan)'s ADR recordings of him whistling to use as a replacement for his in-scene whistling in scene 4 that didn't cut together. Proceeded to add the best quality and well-matched audio clip of this to the scene and sync it to his mouth's movements.

• Also changed and replaced my previous 'towel' FX sounds in scene 4 to be better matched with his actions.

• By the end of this day we had cut down the film from 18 minutes and 23 seconds to 16 minutes and 6 seconds.

I feel that the Director and I made great progress on the first day of Rough Cut editing and worked very well together to strategically decide which parts of the film needed to be removed in order to cut down time but not lose any quality.

Day 8 (Tutor's First Feedback Changes & Further Cutting Down)

Before beginning further work on the Rough Cut, we had our first group viewing with our tutor to show him the film for the first time, our current progress, and gain his insight and feedback. Below are my notes from his feedback...

Tutor's First Feedback

The feedback consisted of...

• Advising us to find a location and similar car in order for us to film an opening shot using a drone, so that the opening of the film is more cinematic and gives the audience a sense of their surroundings.

• Check for a wide shot in scene 5 to get a feel for the location.

• Potentially Emily's stare in scene 6 is too long, but this could work better with music.

• Cut around characters using doors/entering and leaving, as we don't always need to see this.

• Scenes 12 & 13 were potentially too slow before getting to the next seen and needed cutting down.

• Steph's line in scene 17: "Emily have you done something?" was out of place and unneeded, so I was advised to remove this.

• Noticed that we can see crew members in the house from a distance in a scene 18 shot, so a different take needed to be used in its place.

• Double check that there aren't any extra shots in scene 14 that can be used to highlight the shed in the distance.

• The moments at the end of scene 21 and all of scene 22 need to be a lot faster paced with heavy cutting on sounds to get to scene 23.

• All sounds from scene 19 onward should get louder and louder before scene 23.

• Consider elongating Emily's walk from her car to the door in scene 1 to get a look at the shed.

All of the above feedback was extremely helpful and taken on board as can be seen in my edit log below. Also, our tutor gave feedback on the fact that the audience may not get enough of a sense that Emily is a professional photographer, and that we needed to consider adding something to the film to highlight this. So his feedback on both the drone shot and extra shot prompted us to plan for one more shoot day in order to get the opening shot, and a my proposed shot of camera equipment in the back of Emily's car to insert into scene 1.

Following the viewing and feedback, we began our work on this and further cutting down the film...

Day 8 Edit Log

• Used a wider shot in place of a closer shot in scene 5 to indicate that Emily is alone in the room and that Steph isn't there anymore.

• Corrected slightly out of sync sound that I noticed in a scene 1 clip.

• Cut down unneeded elements of scenes 12 and 13 to get to scene 14 faster.

• Cut out any unneeded door/entering and leaving shots that were unnecessary from scenes that used them.

• Removed the unneeded and out place line of dialogue in scene 17.

• Replaced the scene 18 clip where crew members are visible with one where they are not.

• Zoomed in on and re-positioned a clip of Emily walking through the house in scene 21 so that she can leave the shot, and so that I could cut straight from her leaving the shot to her slamming the bedroom door on us (as her reflection could be seen all the way until the end of the original shot which didn't work or flow).

• Along with cutting this part of scene 21 down, I cut down scene 22 to make it faster paced to get into scene 23.

• Alongside time cuts that occurred when making feedback changes, then cut down the film with the Director from 16 minutes and 6 seconds to 14 minutes and 55 seconds.

I think from taking on our tutor's feedback on day 8, our whole crew worked extremely well to immediately think of a way to fix the issue of Emily not seeming like a photographer by planning an insert shot, and taking action to arrange a shoot day for this and the new opening shot. I'm also glad that I was able to work on the feedback changes while they were still fresh in my mind, and get the Director's perspective as I worked. For one day's work I think these changes drastically improved the pacing and flow of the film.

Day 9 (Cutting Down to Approx. 14 mins & Beginning Sound Editing Process)

Day 9 Edit Log

I found that from day 9 onward in the editing process, my edit logs became slightly shorter as the work that I was taking on became a lot more about communicating with the crew and our technical adviser, research, and large and extensive tasks that sometimes took more than a day to complete. Day 9 consisted of...

• Continuing to cut down the film with the Director, starting with removing the dialogue "We need to deal with this!" "I don't want to!" from scene 15 to cut time without losing quality or continuity.

• Removed a large part of scene 4 and mixed Dan's whistling from this scene into scene 5 to connect them and allow them to flow. I feel very proud of this change as I felt that a lot of scene 4's visuals were too long and unnecessary, so I had the idea to only use the shot of Dan turning off the shower, with his whistling flowing into him entering the kitchen in scene 5. I first tested this with the Director, and the transition worked extremely well, so I then tidied up the audio slightly and tightened up the cut to make this moment seamless.

• Cut down the film from 14 minutes and 55 seconds to 14 minutes and 2 seconds by taking off small parts of scenes throughout the film, reaching our required time span.

• Made last sound changes (lifting dialogue volume in some scenes) in Adobe Premiere Pro (as can be seen below) before beginning my work on the audio in Adobe Audition...

Once all of these tasks were finished, I needed to move all of the film's audio to Adobe Audition for more professional, detailed and clear sound editing, especially as all of our audio recordings had so many noise and distortion issues. Although I had learned of previous students using Audition to edit their sound, I had never used this software or any of it's techniques before, so I was completely new to the process.

To get hands-on help, I asked our technical adviser to guide me on the most common and professional ways to begin using Audition. He was extremely knowledgeable and helpful with this, and allowed me to learn the exact process for exporting audio into Audition from Premiere Pro, and the most organised and professional ways to separate and organise audio clips and tracks within the software. With his help I learned the steps to take and put them into action with my work...

• Use 'Edit in Adobe Audition' to copy all audio into the software with the same cuts, volume, fades/effects and arrangements as my Premiere timeline'.

• Save this as it's own audio-based project.

• Select 'Edit Audio to Video' to see the film so that the audio can still be edited and/or synced to the visuals.

• Initially the project in Audition looked almost exactly the same as their order in Premiere, 3 tracks with lots of mixed audio clips, as can be seen below...

• To begin organising these tracks and clips, I needed to go to 'Multitrack' > 'Add mono track' (for in-scene/normal audio) or 'Add stereo track' (for travelling sounds such as a car entering shot). For each track that I added, they would be renamed in professional conventions, such as DAN 1 (character dialogue), SET SOUND MONO 2 (in-scene sounds), ADR (re-recorded audio) & ATMOS (atmospheric background tracks) etc. In total, my tracks consisted of...

• DAN 1
• EM 1
• EM 2 (any overlapping dialogue etc.)
• STEPH 1
• STEPH 2
• SET MONO 1
• SET MONO 2
• SET STEREO
• FX MONO 1 (sound effects recorded separately and added in post-production)
• FX MONO 2
• ATMOS
• ADR 1
• ADR 2

• By creating these detailed and separate tracks, they would make each and every audio clip easily categorised and identifiable, along with fitting professional sound editing conventions. They also allow for controlled and generalised mixing further into sound editing.

• My last task of the day was to listen to every and all audio clips, and assign and move them to their appropriately named audio tracks, keeping them at the same time frame and in sync while doing so, as can be seen below...

• By the end of the day, I had carefully moved all of the clips from their three unnamed and organised audio tracks, into their appropriate tracks across the Audition project. This was the end result...

Below, my notes from initially learning to use Adobe Audition's organisational methods can also be seen...

I feel that I made brilliant progress on this day, having cut down the film to it's required length with the Director, and instantly moving on to setting up the film's audio in a software that I had never used before. This was a very clear and organised way to prepare working on the sound, and I had already learned a lot about the software from this.

Day 10 (Recutting, Adding Space for New Shot & Sound Editing Restart)

Day 10 Edit Log

• On day 10 I realised that I wanted to create an empty space on the Premiere timeline using temporary audio, to make room for the new opening shot that was to be filmed, so I returned back to Premiere and completed this task, adding approximately 10 seconds to the film.

• I also decided to make guidelines for myself based on audio db's, such as very low key sounds peaking between -42db and -36db, so I tweaked all audio in Premiere to meet these guidelines (as can be seen in the Edit Log image above), and to try to achieve balanced audio.

• I then started over with my Audition project using the altered timeline and audio, creating all new named tracks and sorting the audio into their assigned tracks again. However this time I needed no assistance and was able to complete the task in a much quicker but still thorough way.

This day was more of a tweaking day, realising that I wanted to make some further changes before moving on to Audition. I ended the day by finishing organising the audio in Audition again, but with improved audio and a move exact time scale for the film's length.

Day 11 (Test Shot Addition & Andrea Kapos Feedback Changes)

Day 11 Edit Log

• As the Director and DOP recently found a suitable location for the new opening shot, they did a test shoot with the car and the drone. So I temporarily added one of the best shots into the Premiere timeline to get a feel for how the opening of the film would look, and as a crew we all agreed that it had a much stronger start to the film than the original shot.

• Following this, I had the idea to add a scene 8 shot (Emily's hands on the car wheel as she drives), with the intention of pairing this with the photography insert shot that was soon to be filmed, so I temporary added this after the drone shot within the Premiere timeline.

• Director Andrea Kapos reviewed the current cut of the film and provided her insight and feedback. With similar advice to our tutor, she felt that certain scenes such as scenes 1 and 2 should potentially be shortened to get to the more key scenes a bit sooner and to keep the film exciting. So alongside the Director, we proceeded to remove a shot from scene 1 and the very start of scene 2.

• Andrea also advised that we make Steph's whistling in scene 3 start a bit later so that it's more shocking for Emily's character, so I moved the audio track of this a few frames down the timeline, and synced it with her lip movements.

Although this day temporarily halted my sound editing work, it was very helpful to get a professional Director's insight into the film, and work off of her advice, I feel that by cutting down the slower and simpler scenes, the film will have a very flowing pace.

Day 12 (Start of Audition Sound Editing)

Day 12 Edit Log

• Before going back to working in Audition, I wanted to explore any usable information on correcting faulty and distorted audio, as all of our audio was recorded on faulty equipment and wasn't clean and clear enough. I learned a small amount of useful information on noise reduction techniques and tools from two websites: No Film School and The Adobe Help Website. However, I found that this was far more unspecific, less detailed and much more time consuming than seeking help and advice from our technical adviser, as I feel that hands-on learning is much more effective and specific to my own work.

• My main job for sound editing was to reduce the overpowering hiss sounds in hundreds of audio clips in order to clean them up and have them sound much more professional. Our technical adviser pointed me in the right direction for the right tools to use within the software and areas to focus on, especially for removing high and low frequencies that occurred in certain scenes' audio clips.

• Using a professional sound board and speakers, and starting from scene 1 onward, I began lowering the hiss within each audio clip, without making any dialogue and in-scene sounds become too quiet or have a watery/tinny sound. For this I tested using a number of tools on my own, and discovered the 'Hiss Reduction' tool, allowing me to reduce the 'Noise Floor' as much as each clip needed. As I became familiar with each clip's intensity of sound distortion, I made presets within Hiss Reduction to apply to each clip to keep them at similar tones and volumes without the effect becoming too strong or weak. The Hiss Reduction tool with an example preset called 'HISS 2' (the second weakest version) can be seen below...

• Alongside this, whenever an audio clip contained a high frequency (a ringing-in-the-ear type of sound) or a low frequency (a low buzz or hum), I was taught by our tech adviser to open the clip in the 'Spectral Frequency Display' - this shows consist lines of high or low frequency in a clip as well as general hiss and noise. I was then able to simple drag and select the frequency from the clip and delete it, I did this for every clip that contained such as frequency.

• Also in line with my other tasks, still within the Spectral Frequency display, I used a tool called 'Spot Healer' that allowed me to almost remove an unwanted sound, without losing any other key sounds within a clip, such as the sounds of unwanted birds in the background of a clip.

• So in total, my first three techniques for cleaning up all of the audio in Audition were Hiss Reduction, removing frequencies, and using the Spot Healing tool.
• I also found that in order to listen to just one track at a time (such as DAN 1), I was able to hit the 'Solo' button, muting all other tracks, as can be seen below...

• As I worked my way through each clip, I also listened out for where more detailed fade effects needed to be added between each clip in order to transition and blend them together more seamlessly, and where volume levels needed improving. So I proceeded to adjust these areas of the clips as I worked.

By using a small amount of online research, gaining very helpful guidance from our tech adviser, and practising using the software on my own by exploring and testing different tools, I was able to become more familiar with sound editing, noise reduction and the Audition software on day 12. I was also seeing very good results in how much clearer each clip was becoming from using these effects.

Day 13 (Audition Sound Editing Scenes 1 - 15)

Day 13 Edit Log

• Continued work on noise and hiss reduction using my three techniques from day 12.

• Also began adjusting volume more so based on movements and location, such as footsteps coming closer or becoming heavier, as can be seen below...

• In scene 11 when Emily pulls out a stray hair, no sound can be heard. So I used my initiative to record a snap-like sound by clicking my knuckles at a distance, I then added this track to the scene 11 clip and it sounded very effective and realistic. The Director approved of this and the audio clip has remained in the film.

• Continued to work on each 'Solo' track to focus in each individual clip's audio.

• Scene 14 had the biggest issue with high frequencies, so I made sure before using Hiss Reduction and Spot Healing on each of the scene's clips, to remove the high frequencies first so that they were still visible for me before removal. Below are screenshot of one of the scene's audio clips before any changes, after the removal of the high frequency being silenced, and after using Hiss Reduction, we can see that the sound issues are drastically lowered...

Original - Before any changes

After high frequency removal - if we look closely we can see that the frequency has been cut out

After hiss reduction - we can see that the hiss (coloured red above) is almost completely removed

• Similarly, I often had to use internal camera audio for very loud sounds within the film, as they became too distorted on the external mic's audio. The camera's audio however always contains a low frequency hum/buzz that needed to be removed. But as this was low instead of high, it needed to be cut around the loud noises or dialogue in the clip, so that they weren't effected...

Low hum/buzz-like frequency removed in a scene 15 internal audio clip

• As I continued to work, I found that often parts of the scenes were too quiet, so I added looped atmos tracks to these scenes to create a more realistic atmosphere.

• Lastly, I found that the dialogue of the film - especially in scenes 14 and 15 were very quiet and contained a lot of hiss, so I was unable to remove this using my current tools without drastically losing the volume of the dialogue. I decided the the dialogue would need detailed, individual work separately from the non-dialogue clips.

Finishing my day's work at the end of scene 15, I made great progress with clearing up over half of the film's sound. I found that I was able to get into a routine and rhythm for my own ways of using and applying tools and effects to the sound, and was seeing more and more results.

Day 14 (Last Extra Shoot & Recording Day, Adding New Footage & Audio, and Audition Dialogue Sound Editing Scenes 5, 14 & 15)

Day 14 Edit Log

• After finishing our crew's morning and afternoon of filming the new opening drone shot, the photography car interior insert shot, and one piece of extra sound FX, I reviewed, organised and labelled all video and audio from the day in preparation for adding them to Premiere and Audition.

• I then selected the best opening drone shot with the Director and DOP, and cut the shot into the current timeline. I then realised however that my plan of pairing this with the scene 8 car shot and the photography insert shot wasn't going to work as they simply didn't cut together. So the Director and DOP went out on the same day with the same props and reshot the photography insert shot, this time with my new idea of adding the shot to scene 1, when Emily leaves the car and slams the door. I suggested someone slamming the car door with the photography equipment in the backseat, in order for it to look as if it was recorded at the exact same time as the original scene.

• I then quickly received the new photography shot and selected the best one with the Director, I rearranged some clips in scene 1, and replaced part of one shot with the new insert shot, synced with the sound of the car door slamming, and we felt that it cut together very well.

• With the new opening shot and insert shot in placed and cut together tightly, I synced up the day's audio and different audio clips from scene 1's original shoot. As this was not linked with the Audition project however, I needed to add markers to the areas of the Premiere timeline that had new, unedited sound clips that would need to be altered at a later date.

• I was then able to add the day's new recorded FX sounds to the Audition timeline (swigs from a beer bottle), as I knew it would help the sound design aspect of scene 15. The FX additions can be seen below...

• I then moved on to improving the film's dialogue in Audition. With help from our tech adviser, I learned to use the 'Noise Reduction' tool to clear the hiss sounds from the dialogue clips, without losing the dialogue's volume. By the end of day 14 I had drastically improved scene 5's dialogue (the first line of the film), and improved scene 14 and 15's dialogue.

This was a very productive day consisting of three separate shoots followed by incorporating extremely effective shots and audio to the film. I think from this day alone all of the film's visuals and audio had really started to tie together.

Day 15 (Tutor Viewing & Audition Sound Editing Scene 16-19)

Day 15 Edit Log

• Our tutor had his second viewing of the film, and was very pleased with the previous feedback changes that were made to the rough cut, along with the new opening shot and insert shot. He provided extremely helpful feedback on further changes, however as these could not be made while the audio was still in Audition, I needed to make them after this process and the soon approaching colour grading process were complete.

• Picking up from scene 16 onward, I began simultaneously working on noise & hiss reduction of all clips, as well as separately clearing up dialogue-based audio clips with the Noise Reduction tool. I felt confident in completing both of these tasks after becoming familiar with the methods on day 14.

• Also started to adjust the volume in scene 16 to slowly get louder to build to the intense moment of scene 17, along with raising the volume of scene 18 and 19 to heighten the drama.

• Continued to remove unneeded sounds such as birds or extra movement-based noises, alongside hiss and noise reduction, frequency removals, and using fade effects to blend the clips together. Below we can see the noise reduction tool used on dialogue clips, and a before an after of this process, where we can see how drastically the waveform of the hiss have dropped in volume and intensity...

Noise Reduction Process

Before Noise Reduction

After Noise Reduction

This day took slightly longer based on the extremely large amount of varied audio clips and dialogue across scenes 16 - 19, but I feel that I made great progress within sound editing the film, and was getting to grips with using the software.

Up to day 15, the film had drastically changed since the First Assembly Cut, the film was 4 minutes shorter, much tighter cut together, smoother, better paced, the opening of the film was more cinematic, Emily's career became more clear with an insert shot, and the sound editing process was in full swing. I think that by this point, the Director and I were very pleased with our progress, and I was feeling confident with how much I'd learned about using Audition, and how drastically I'd managed to improve the professional feel to the film. The next steps before finishing the Rough Cut and handing it over the our Colourist/DOP, were for me to finish the current sound editing process and place it back within the Premiere Pro timeline.