Foley sounds

Production Journey

I worked on Dark Secrets with Khairun. It was our first time working with GarageBand. There were a lot of lines, however fortunately since it is a radio drama i  did not have to memorise anything. Khairun was in charge of writing the script, after she was done she let me see it and we tweaked a few things. While recording it was hard to be serious, since we were trying out best to voice act. We made mistakes and laughed. However we still managed to get all of our recording done. We did our rushes log then we deleted any unwanted recordings. Then after we recorded all the characters bits, we started to edit them on GarageBand. We started off by matching the voice so it would look like Avery wasn't talking to her self but having a conversation. We then placed the foley sounds in the right places. Then we saved it. However there were issues with saving sometimes in GarageBand so we would have to re-record what we needed again. 

 

Then we gathered audience feedback, some said the voice's wont clear or we needed more emotion. So me and Khairun re-recorded a lot of the lines again and tried harder this time for it to sound more believable. I did happen to be a bit sick for the beginning half of the recording so it sounded a bit mumbled, but it was too late to change it since we needed to hurry up and edit everything then post it to blogger. 

We then had to add more to our drama since it wasn't long enough. And because of this we had to go into GarageBand again and match up the recordings. 

One of the scenes we added was to make it longer is, where i was pretending to be an American youtuber. For this i had to put on an accent, for it to seem more believable. I also added a sponsor. And we made it so when  Avery was watching the video the audience could also hear the video. We also added spooky background music to it, to intrigue the viewer. We made the recording quieter and added keyboard foley sounds. When she is typing foley sound is used. This made it feel more real that Avery was watching a Youtube video. 

We then needed a voice for another character - the police officer. We asked miss Lowndes if she would be willing to do it, and she agreed to. When she recorded it when talking to Avery on the phone we wanted the voice to be clearer than when she was talking to Jaden. When she was near Jaden and she was speaking we added echoes so it seemed like she was using her walky-talky speaker. 

After all that our recordings was done we went into final cut pro to edit our recordings. We imported all the recordings, sound effects and music we needed. We then added a picture from google and text saying the title "Dark Secrets" to play throughout the whole radio drama. Since this is supposed to be an original piece of work, we had to use copyright free music. So to get our copyright free music, we went into google and searched Youtube to MP3 converter. Then we went to YouTube and searched copyright free background music etc. And then copied the link and added to the Youtube to mp3 converter, then downloaded it. And added it to our recording on final cut pro. Background music was important to not only set the mood but to get the audience engaged as well. Without music it would be a pretty boring. As it isn't a visual media. There would be no suspense, or anything like that, which would make is less intriguing to the audience. Which might make them not want to finish listening to the whole radio drama. Which could also potentially make them not want to watch the other episodes that come out as well, as this is the first episode that sets the expectations and represents how the other episodes will be like.

U 16 Storage, compression and file size

Storage

Flash Drive - A USB flash drive consists of a flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB interface. USB Flash Drives are typically removable and rewritable. It can be attached to a keychain. When you plug a USB Flash Drive into your computer USB port, the computer recognises it as a mass storage device and assigns it a drive letter.

Hard drive – A hard drive is a piece of hardware used to store digital content and data on computers. Every computer has an internal hard drive, but you can also get external hard drives that can be used to expand the storage of a computer.

SSD – An SSD (Solid-State Drive) is a newer and advanced form of a hard drive that works as a storage device in computers. With no moving parts, SSDs access and deliver data more quickly than traditional drives.

Cloud – Cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your computer’s hard drive. (The PCMAG Encyclopaedia defines it succinctly as “hardware and software services from a prover on the internet.”) Ultimately, the “cloud” is just a metaphor for the internet.

Compression

DRC – A new (dynamic rang compression) DRC tag can now used to tag and enhance the volume of a certain sounds in your audio file. The sounds in an audio file range from softer sounds to louder, depending on the text, the language and the voice.

Downwards/Upwards – Downwards compression treats the signal only when it goes above the threshold, by reducing the volume or “pushing it down” On the other hand, upwards compression only affects audio signals below the threshold, by increasing the volume and pushing everything up.

Size VS Quality

Lossy – Lossy compression means that the image size is reduced while some data from the original image file is eliminated.

Lossless – A lossless file, the FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is compressed to nearly half the size of an uncompressed WAV or AIFF of equivalent sample rate, but there should be no “loss” in terms of how it sounds. FLAC flies can also provide a resolution of up to 32-bit, 96kHz, so better than CD quality.

Bit rate – Bit rate refers to the amount of audio bits transferred at a given time. It is usually measured in kilobits per second (kbps) The higher the bitrate, the larger the audio file.

Files size – File size is the measurement of space a file takes up on a storage medium, such as a computer hard drive or ad server. Also, the resolution of your image has nothing to do with its file size. However, the file size of the image on the left is 630% larger. This makes a big difference in a page load speed, especially when using larger dimension images and when using multiple images on a page.