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.

Unforgettable - Continuing the sadness

Today I continued work on my Unforgettable digital media presentation. I have finished adding all of the happy footage footage from the clips, and am now onto adding the sad footage. The first sad footage, from this video, I've made continue on to the last of the happy footage from the other clips, but now the audience is aware of the impending grief of the other situations, so there is a feeling of tension that will contribute to the sadness. I'm also very happy with how the syncing of the audio and video is working, and I believe this improves the effect of the audience. I also added a scream, squealing car brakes and a loud crash to the impact on the sad clip, which I feel emphasises the sudden emotional shock the audience feels. I got the very good squealing brakes sound effects from here, (the ones labelled AUTO-BRAKE-SKID BRAKE are the ones I used).

I've also downloaded some sound effects for going in and out of slow motion which I'm going to use on the sad footage from this video when the car flips over. I'm also planning on muting out the music when this occurs, for added effect.

Unforgettable - Beginning the sadness

Today I have begun adding the sad footage from the car safety ads to my digital media presentation, and have started looking for sound effects to go with my Unforgettable presentation. I have begun with the sad footage on the Irish seat belt ad (starts at 0:18) and have been searching for sound effects of screaming, cars crashing, metal crunching, glass smashing, etc to use the scenes when the cars crash to emphasise the impact on the audience. The music at this point is up to around here (1:22), just before the instrumental section. This clip of a girl screaming and this clip of various car crash sounds sound nice, and I have downloaded them to use with my project.

Also, I have been noticing that I've been feeling mildly depressed after working on my project, my heat feels heavy and like it's hammering against my chest. I feel that this effect is the kind of feelings I want to evoke within my audience using my digital media project, and hence believe that feeling these emotions after working on my project is a good thing.

Unforgettable - Surround Sound

Today our teacher revealed that he was installing a surround sound system in the room in which we do IST, which we will be able to use in our assignment. We looked over how you can manipulate surround sound in Sony Vegas, and I've found out that there are easy ways to make sounds come from certain speakers or move from one 'place' to another.

I plan on using this in my final presentation of 'Unforgettable' by, for example, having the car that crashes across the road in this ad go from the left speakers to the right speakers, as if it's flying across the audience. This manual for Sony Vegas and this video by montagical (at 4:40) helped me learn how to pan a sound from one place to another.

In short, you:

• Right click on a layer (it has to be a layer with surround sound)
• Select 'Surround Pan Keyframes' (or press Shift-P)
• Right click on the bar that has appeared beneath the layer and select 'add point'
• Select the point that has appeared and change the location of the orange dot
• Repeat adding points until you have the amount of points you want

I may also have to add the sound of scraping metal or car crash sounds to the presentation so I can get them to move from one side to another easier without other sounds from the videos getting in the way. I think this will be a very effective tool for evoking an emotion if I utilise it well.

The surround sound editor on Vegas that I learned to use, the proximity of the orange dot to the speakers determines the volume of the sounds and music from each speaker

Sony Vegas Tutorial - Surround Sound! by montagical