Sound Editing

There were 2 parts to the editing process: Visual and Audio. As we layered our interview audio over with other footage, we split the audio from the clips. The program we used to edit our documentary was iMovie due to the fact that we are not experts with editing, so we used the default program on our school's iMacs. The majority of the audio is in green with some of the audio still attached to clip being shown as blue sound waves.

This screenshot above shows an overview of the audio in our documentary. A majority of the audio is split from the clips, with some audio still remaining attached. Throughout the entire documentary there is a backing track and multiple layers of sound from the backing track itself, the dialogue and the gameplay.

Audio that started over another scene had to be split from the clip and lengthened. This can be seen with the green audio file on the bottom going back to before the beginning of the clip. Syncing the audio and the clip was a tedious job and our resolution for this was to clap during filming to find and easily identifiable moment of synchronisation. This aided us to cover the cuts in the audio as we jumped from specific moments of dialogue to another. We either showed other angles or gameplay footage, including the gameplay footage's own audio. We had to balance the sound so that both elements were easily heard but did not conflict with each other. The dialogue tended to be louder than the sound effects in the game as it was of greater import.

The backing track continued to play in the background throughout the entire documentary. We used an into and outro song as well as an ambient noise from the iMovie sound effect library. The song is called "Borealis". "Borealis" was only 30 seconds long so we had to loop it during the editing process. To make the continuity sound more like one piece, we shortened it before the 30 seconds faded out and added the same track preceding it. Matching the beats made it sound as it if is one continuous piece, and so could be used for an extended period of time. Complementing it with the intro and outro was a simple task as both had very similar beats and timing. In order to eliminate any differences, we faded out from one and into the other. This enabled the transitions to appear natural and eliminate any jarring elements.