P2. Describe how the sound elements are produced
Voice overs and scripted speech
The equipment that would be needed to do voice over and scripted speech are primarily using a professional microphone designed specifically for vocals and speech such as the Marantz MPM-1000 in the studio. Having a script prepared with all the things that would need to be mentioned or said is also necessary, scripts can be made using programmes such as Celtx.
Scripted Speech
Scene in movie
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Radio play
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Fake trailer/ tourism advert
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Voice overs in different media products
Opening scene in a movie
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Advertisement
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Movie trailer
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Theme music and Incidental music
Theme Music
Unlike the music the audience can always hear in the background, theme music is defined as a piece of music that is repeatedly played usually in the introduction and end credits of a media product, it can also be used when introducing characters. Bellow I show some example, the first example shows the theme tune of Batman which would have been played at the beginning of every episode, to this day it remains as an iconic song for this character which reminds people of this shows from the 1970s. Another example is the theme song that can be found in the beginning of some movies such as Pulp Fiction, this can be identified as a theme song because people remember it for the song that is played after the robbery in the caffe, an example of this would be the advert of Direct Line with one of the famous characters called Mr Wolf (both characters have the same name in the different media products) played by the same actor from 20 years ago.
Batman Theme Song
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Film theme song
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Character theme song from movie
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Incidental Music
Incidental music is the music version of ambient sound which creates a link between the situation displayed and music which can alter your emotions, this can be scene is all sorts of medias like games, documentaries and movies. One of the examples I have bellow is Cornfield Chase from Interstellar which was used only once when the most tense moment of the film took place. The soundtrack gave the audience the gripping sensation that the characters would have felt at that moment. Other examples can be identified in the use of background music in documentaries, productions such as BBC Planet Earth. As can be seen in the video, at the beginning it starts with a song that is used to spark some curiosity for the audience as it is showing giraffes, the song then changes to the narrative as they begin to talk about the "silent extinction of the giraffe", the song could be described as desperate and serious. This example can also be seen in movies and as I said before is used to influence the emotions of the viewers.
Background music for the narrator when speaking about nature
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Background music to establish the tense moments for the audience
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Wild tracks
Wild tracks are useful when a media production requires a sound to almost always to be played in the background for the film/tv product. The benefits of using this technique is that obtaining sound from nature or real ambiences is easy as long it is done with proper equipment such as digital sound recorders. Bellow are some examples, to the left I show a video of a river being recorded for its sound. To the right shows a tv show of Bear Grills starring in man vs wild, as can be seen by both videos, there appear to be many different recorders on screen for the purpose of collecting sound both from the star and the sound of the wild. Once all has been collected, the editors combine them making a product where the audience can both hear the star clearly and enjoy the sound of nature.
Sound recorded
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Behind the scenes of Man vs Wild
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ADR
ADR otherwise Automated Dialog Replacement, is used of media products when a sound recording of the characters voice would be too difficult to produce, the alternative is syncing the dialog on film to post recorded dialogue. The overall objective is for the audience to not notice any differences otherwise it will disturb the audiences attention. Bellow I display some examples of ADR being used by a big production studio and a basic level production. The movie "The Great Gatsby" shows to have been complained about the quality of the sound by its audience, using a panel of audience testers might have prevented this. Beside it shows an example of possibly students using ADR to change to voices of the harry porter film, this simply shows how simple the technique can be performed but also how hard it is to do without being noticed.
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Foley
Foley artist have been known to be both the necessary yet thankless. This is because like other sounds, the audience is supposed to expect good sound effects when watching films/ tv/ games and many other media products. Their job consists of producing individual sound effects for their contracted media productions, this is because media products want to avoid having copyright strikes for having used unauthorised material, therefore making sounds for individual productions is a better alternative. Both videos bellow present ways which sounds can be recorded for different media products.
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Ambient Sound
Ambience sound is sound that has been recorded from a specific location that is further used for a media product, usually as a background sound. Depending on the location and setting, ambience sounds don't always have to be real do to the high flexibility of editing of sound. Ambience sound also uses sound editing such as surround sound, this can be seen for example when you hear something more to your left than to your right despite not physically being there. Bellow are some examples.
Ambience sound Example
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Ambience sound Example
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