Limestone 3 Sounds

 

The first sound that I appreciated and really stood out to me was at time 2:50 when on the of the voices said, “Everybody’s just gone.” The way that the word “gone” was edited to that it faded out in a suspenseful and kind of creepy way. The video said that all 327 people from Limetown were gone and that no one knew where they went. The word “gone” faded out for a whole 2 seconds to add to the suspense and eeriness of the situation. Also the person who said, “Everybody’s just gone,” was a police officer, thus the fact that even the official authorities were puzzled and a little scared, adds to the effectiveness of the audio the editor used.

 

The second sound that I noticed was at time 3:47 to 5:08 when there was a ringing in the background as Lia Haddick introduced herself as the story was transitioning between scenes. I noticed the audio because it did two things for me. First, its fast paced tone made me think that this investigator Lia Haddick was the perfect investigator for this case because she seemed serious and intense, like the ringing was. The story said that people seemed to forget about what happened at Limestone, but it was evident that she had not. It also had some eeriness to it which added to the effect that something creepy had happened in Limestone and it added to the suspense in my opinion.

 

The third sound that caught my ear was at time 8:33 to 9:22 when they read the public speech of the man who funded the construction of Limetown and how he wanted it to be a research community. The humming has an innocent tone that make the viewer think that the original intention of Limetown was good, however bad things could happen if the experiment went wrong. Also during this segment with the humming, the investigator mentioned that her uncle worked in Limetown and it shows that she is motivated to find out what happened there.

 

 

Limetown

Limetown is a podcast very similar to the very popular podcast Serial. The podcast uses an array of sounds from helicopters, news broadcasts, several interviews, a narrator, and more. This intertwining of sounds allows for a stimulating mix of sounds to help make the podcast more interesting to listen to.

A moment of sound that I found interesting in Limetown was the mashup of news anchors reporting on the disappearance of the people of Limetown. This happens around the 3:00 time mark. This mashup allows for the listener to experience how big of an epidemic this was, since it was being broadcasted on multiple platforms with concern waving through the sound of the broadcasters voices.

I really enjoyed most parts of the podcast as a whole and how they utilized different sounds to make the listener feel as if they were there physically or actually watching Limetown as a television show. The sounds set for a very serious mood throughout the podcast which also better helps the listener understand the severity of the situation.

The one part of the podcast that I was not a fan of was the beginning interview. To me, it sounded very stale and set up. That was an aspect of sound throughout the podcast that I wasn’t a fan of and I felt like it hurt the mood and intent of the podcast rather than help it.

Overall, I really enjoyed the podcast and the use of sound to really capture the attention of the audience. When there are no visual aspects to something, the affect of sound plays a major role in how an idea or story comes across.

Gone

I enjoyed listening to Limetown, hearing it as a precise ballet of sound bites and music that enhanced my imagination’s emulation of the story as it unfolded. The overlay of helicopter and emergency responder sounds on the news reports gave me the uncontrollable feeling that the story was more real and personal than any “based on true events” movie could project on me as a viewer. But since I have to pick just one instance when I appreciated the sound design, I’ll focus around minute mark 2:50.

As the man at this point is giving us his testimony of the situation, he is interviewed with ample situational noise. Cameras flash, people discuss their hurried concerns in the background, and the reporters feed their questions. The sounds grab your attention to the emotions of everyone in the vicinity of the interview as if you are there; however, as the man finishes saying “everybody’s just…” the sounds wash away instantly. His voice is captured into a “reverb” filter (from what I can tell) and he says “gone,” as his voice echoes in solidarity. I went from feeling and visualizing the emotions of everyone around him to imagining just his face in confusion and desperation. Eyes wide, forehead wrinkled. I know the effect was intricately chosen to show the weight of the word, which builds the theme of the episode: gone, everybody’s just gone. And that’s all we know!

Honestly it would have been a great ending to the episode, but I did enjoy how this bit prefaced the story’s explosion from a local tragedy to global news. It’s as if the sounds imploded on themselves with the word gone, and then exploded as the clip resumes sounds at the three minute mark with global news sound bites.

Limetown Podcast

One of the moments where I really noticed the sound design was around the 3:00 minute mark of the Limetown podcast. The sound editor mashed together a bunch of sound bites from news programs detailing what happened in Limetown. But, it was how they did it that actually had me impressed. A sound bite would rise in volume, the listener would pay attention to it, and then it would fade out just as another sound bite would come up. While it seemed like a normal sound function at first, I noticed that the sound bite that was faded out was still going even while the next sound bite was playing. In addition to that, there was still the ominous music in the background. So, the techniques seemed simple at first actually turned out to involve a good deal of layering of sounds.

Also, another technique that impressed me from this same situation was the fact that there was also some maneuvering of sounds with the Left and Right of the speakers. Sound bites tended to start on the left side of speaker and move to the right side of the speaker (or vice versa) as it began to fade. For some reason, that made listening to all those news sound bites a little bit more interesting.

I Don’t Have To Answer That Sound Design

A moment of sound design that I really liked, or was interested in, was in RadioLab’s “I Don’t Have to Answer That.” Around the four minute mark in the podcast, there are what sounds like overlaying audio clips from possibly different newscasts and interviews about politician Gary Hart, then moving onto other clips. The sound seems to mix different clips together, along with a sort of spunky music in the background. I liked hearing it all mixed together. The music in the background flows nicely with the front audio, making it all flow nicely.

I also enjoyed, in Limetown, the parts where helicopters where brought in the background when interviewers, reporters, or the narrator were talking. It made things sound more dramatic, and caught the listeners attention more, I think. I really enjoyed those parts.

 

 

Lydia Schwartz

So you want to learn how to do stuff on premiere…good luck

So you have come here for me to help you add an audio transition. Your video will be so much cooler that way!

Well lets get started.

  • First you are going to want to open premiere because well why are you watching this if you don’t need to know how to do it on premiere.
  • Now that you have opened the software, hopefully you have your videos already in the edit a video screen
  • Click in the middle of your 2 videos you want to add an audio transition to. It should bring up a red line in the middle of 2 videos.
  • Now go up to the right hand corner and you will see a bar with the word effects.
  • Click on the word effects.
  • Under effects you will see different options.
  • Click on audio transition. Make sure you click on the triangle bullet next to the words audio transition.
  • Now choose the audio transition you want to use.
  • Take the mouse and click and drag your transition to the red line I told you about before.
  • Now you should have an audio transition in your video!

Replace Edit Tutorial

With the replace edit command in Adobe Premiere Pro you can quickly and easily replace a clip in your sequence with the one you have selected in your source video window. First, simply load the clip you want to switch in to the source video window. Then line up the playheads in both the source video and editing box windows so that the video switches to the clip in your source window at the desired time. Next select the clip you want to replace in the editors box and click on the clip tab on the toolbar. Scroll down to “replace with clip” and select “from source monitor, match frame”. This will replace all the frames from the position of your playhead to the next cut point with the same amoScreenshot (1) Screenshot (2)unt of frames from your source video starting at the position of the source video playhead.

Resizing Tutorial

Lets say your clip looks like this in Premiere…

Screen Shot 2016-01-31 at 8.08.51 AM

The frame size of the file is too small for the frame size of the sequence it is in, which is why there is a black border around it. To fix this, follow these steps:

  1. select the clip you want to resize
  2. right click and select “scale to frame size”
  3. make sure not to click “set to frame size”

Screen Shot 2016-01-31 at 8.09.11 AM

Your video is now resized to fit in the frame. This also works with clips that are too big in the frame of the sequence.

Screen Shot 2016-01-31 at 8.09.20 AM

Video Tutorial

One of the biggest problems I found while making my video was when there was constant lagging in my video playback when I wanted to view how my editing was working. I was lucky enough to come up with a way to decrease the lagging (in which when the video plays back, it stutters or is not lined up video to audio), which is what I am going to give a tutorial on now. This tip of rendering, which makes the playback as smooth as possible,  became very helpful to me when making my video, which is why I decided to share it.

First, look at the sequence panel on the interface. If you notice, in the timeline above one of the clips, there is a red line (indicated by the white arrow), as opposed to the line being green like the clip preceding it. This means that the clip needs to be rendered, in order to decrease lagging.

Tutorial 1

In order to make  the red line green, the clip must be rendered. In order to do that, you start by choosing where to start the render. Click on the timeline where you want to start (I chose where the red line started), and press on the keyboard. This makes you choose the “in” for your video clip.

tutorial 2

Next, to choose where to end the clip render, click on the time line where you want to make an “out” (the end of red line), and press on the keyboard. Now you have established an “in to out” on the clip sequence.

tutorial 3

Now that you have an “in to out,” you want to render the clip. Go onto the tool bar at the top, and click on Sequence, and then choose Render In to Out. This will render the video clip from where you chose your “in to out” in the sequence.

tutorial 4

Then, after you click that, this window will automatically appear, showing the rendering of the clip, and how much time remains to render the clip. Longer clips take more time to render each frame.

tutorial 5

When that is finished, notice that the line in the timeline that used to be red is now green, meaning the clip has been rendered. Now, when you playback, the video will not be lagging, or at least not lagging as much as it was before. Then, you can continue on with your project without losing your mind.

tutorial 6