Blog Post #23 - Sound Research

      Sound is any auditory portion of media content. For my documentary, sound will be vital to creating and maintaining meaning in my excerpt. Some examples of sounds I will need to use and create are talking, cheering, sound effects, and score.

       Concerning talking, this will occur during my interviews. I will have to ensure that every single interview includes responses from each participant and that it is audible through the video which would be extremely difficult as keeping consistent audio levels and sound quality while filming from different camera angles and distances will create choppy noise and difficulty. To rectify this, I will purchase interview microphones. These record the sound on their own and maintain the same sound level so I can pick up the same audio and quality throughout each and every interview. 

       When recording cheering, I may have to film this outside of filming the team. A way I can do this is filming a group of people when they get very excited over a play and then laying it over the play I filmed and chose to add to my documentary excerpt. This way, I again get the sound level and quality I want without having to give up the camera shots and angles while filming and lower the quality of my cinematography. 

       For sound effects, I want to amplify the sound of mainly footsteps and the ball. By doing this, I can dramatize the clip, to create significance and develop a larger impact using the sound. But, not every play creates sound with such significance. So, what I can do is film many takes of each play and take the best film and best audio, and edit the audio to layer and match up with the best film clip to get the best of both worlds. 

       For score, I need to focus on choosing the different kinds. In my documentary, I will need an exciting beat and rhythm, an ambient and mellow score, as well as a more sad and negative score. The exciting example will be matched up with certain exciting volleyball scenes and shots, the ambient score will be used as background during interviews, and lastly the more emotional score will also be as background for interviews when the interviewee speaks more sentimentally.