Unforgettable - Complete!

I have completed the finishing touches to my work and have uploaded the my final video here for my teacher to mark. I added some final touches including a heartbeat sound on the amp layer at the end to further utilise the amp, and changed where some sound in the video are heard so that I utilised all the different speakers. I've shown the video to a few of my friends and they all agree that my video is very powerful in evoking grief or sadness.

Here is a summary of what I have accomplished with my finished project:

• The scenes change on the beat, or at a vocal cue, which adds to the atmosphere and flow.
• The major events (eg, car crashes) that occur are all places at slightly unexpected or syncopated parts of the music, to further shock the audience.
• The amp is used twice, once to emphasise a time slowing down sound effect, and again to create a haunting heartbeat sound near the end.
• The sound effects come from all different directions, and sound travel from one place to another like they do on screen, which makes the video more real and adds to the atmosphere.
• I used audio manipulation to make the King Nat Cole (the singer of Unforgettable) hold one of the syllables ('ble' in 'unforgettable') in the video longer, so that it would fit in with the rest of the video.
• I used video manipulation to zoom in and stretch the footage so that there were no black bars down the sides of the footage.

I believe I was very successful in evoking an emotion, what do you think? Watch my video here:

Unforgettable - Main footage finished

Today I finished editing the footage from the sad car safety ads, the video ends on this scene (a boy in a hospital bed), slowed down, zoomed in on the boy's face with a heart rate monitor playing quietly in the background, and the music fading out. My Unforgettable digital media presentation is almost complete. I've watched through the whole thing in one go and I believe I have been very successful so far in evoking sadness and shock. The next few lessons I am going to spend adapting my digital media presentation to better utilise the surround sound and amp. Next lesson I intend on making these adjustments and testing it on the surround sound system.

Unforgettable - Testing the Audio

Our teacher got the new sound card which allows us to test the audio in our project on the surround sound and amp today, and so I have decided to start development on some of the sections of my digital media presentation that utilise surround sound and the amp today. I have added the sound I'm using for the speeding up and slowing down of time to my LFE layer (which plays on the amp). This makes little to no difference when using headphones, but I'm sure it will when I'm able to use the amp. I'm also planning to do the following to utilise the surround sound and amp:

• Have the car crash sounds fly from one side of the room to the other
• Have crashes that occur on certain parts of the screen come from the corresponding speakers (this crash would happen on the right speakers)
• Have sounds like the screaming and crashing sound effects that I'm adding be at contrasting points in the room
• Have other sound effects that utilise the amp

Unforgettable - Peer Review

I have gotten up to about 80% of my Unforgettable digital media presentation complete. I have also been going back through the amount of the presentation that I have already completed and been emphasising certain aspects of the originally-almost-completely-faded-out-background-noise from the videos. These particular moments have had sudden sounds that add to the shock of what is happening, or have added to the atmosphere of that time in the video.
These moments have included:

• The giggle at the start of this clip (which I had to do some tricky fading with to make sure the singing voice in the background wasn't easily heard)
• The couple being hit by the car and scream in the same clip (0:18)
• The car being hit by a truck here (1:00)
• The man being hit by a car here (1:11)

I've also shown my video (or what's made of it so far) to the two students sitting next to me, both of whom felt that it really shocked them and made them feel uneasy and upset (not in a sick way, an emotional way, it wasn't that bad). Discussing with them what they felt has also helped me develop my understanding of the emotions I've evoked. I've come to understand that although it is a small amount of happiness that I'm portraying in the first half, the second half is partly sadness or depression, but also largely shock. Now that I understand that this is the emotion I've been trying to evoke all along, I'll be able to incorporate this into the rest of my digital media presentation.