The Creation and Use of Sound in Media

For the second nested unit, you will be required to create a podcast, using your own original article
This podcast focuses on your creation and use of sound

Over this coursework unit find any podcast, subscribe and listen.

Sound within different media industries
Film
Fiction/non-fiction TV programmes
Computer games
Animation
Audio- visual advertisements
Radio drama

Radio drama- entertain

The following list are elements of sound
Wild tracks -> Audio recording intended to synchronise with the video, but recorded seperately. This is recorded OUTSIDE
Atmospheric sounds -> Also known as ambient sound, refers to the background noise present at a given scene or location
Sound effects -> These are artificially produced to emphasise content
Dialogue/Speech -> conversation between two or more people/individual spoken words
Music -> Theme tunes, incidental music

How do these elements create different effects?
All sound created and included within media products have been done for a reason
In terms of enhancing visuals, it:
Creates tension
Reinforces genre/conventions
Establishes mood
Helps to create a time/location
Enhances characterisation

There can also be
A purposeful use of silence

Ultimately there is always
An effect on the audience





Wild Tracks would consist of the speaking in this video
Atmospheric sounds would most likely be the calls and voices in the background recorded post filming in order to emulate the sound of the police station
Sound effects would consist of the jail cell noises and the phone ringing
Phone ringing was most likely pre recorded before the production was made. Jail cell noises would probably have been made by recording door jams opening and closing/rattling metal chains.
Music from the violin and banjo were likely recorded post recording despite being shown in the shots.

Music from the violin and banjo were used to mimic podcasts that used similar music. This was done to create a comedic effect by parodying what the video is making fun of; crime podcasts, Portland.

The differences between sound files

Use .WAV files for TV, radio, DVD or any other media requiring top uncompromised audio quality. WAV files are lossless, uncompressed, broadcast CD quality music files. WAV files are also the right choice for loops to be processed with Flash for web animations.

Use MP3 files for web pages, web videos, in fact for anything on the Internet. An MP3 file is a compressed music file. It loads rapidly and still plays with a very good sound quality. There are several levels of possible compression but for Internet usage we recommend 128kbps which is what you download automatically from our server when you order music from us. If your project requires a different level of compression you can easily do it yourself with iTunes using the .WAV file supplied with your order.

AAC: Advanced Audio Coding, also known as AAC, is similar to MP3, although it's a bit more efficient. That means that you can have files that take up less space, but with the same sound quality as MP3. And, with Apple's iTunes making AAC so popular, it's almost as widely compatible with MP3. I've only ever had one device that couldn't play AACs properly, and that was a few years ago, so it's pretty hard to go wrong with AAC either.

Ogg Vorbis: The Vorbis format, often known as Ogg Vorbis due to its use of the Ogg container, is a free and open source alternative to MP3 and AAC. Its main draw is that it isn't restricted by patents, but that doesn't affect you as a user—in fact, despite its open nature and similar quality, it's much less popular than MP3 and AAC, meaning fewer players are going to support it. As such, we don't really recommend it unless you feel very strongly about open source.

WMA: Windows Media Audio is Microsoft's own proprietary format, similar to MP3 or AAC. It doesn't really offer any advantages over the other formats, and it's also not as well supported. There's very little reason to rip your CDs into this format.

Lossy vs Lossless
Lossy reduces the size of data.  Lossless doesn't compress file's data. Lossy compression is used in images, audio and visual while Lossless is used in text, images and sound.







When editing, I timed how long it took for each sound to take in the original sound bite. I then copied that with the sounds I recorded and ensured to record more than enough footage as it would be better for it to be cut off than looped. After I edited on Garage band, I synced up the noise with the video so you can see how I created the foley sounds. Unfortunately, we didn't get enough footage for the "wind" (hand dryer) so I used a reverb to loop it and reverse its second loop making it sound more organic without greatly diminishing the sound (as wind sounds similar forwards or backwards).
When exporting I used a .WAV file type. Because of the increase in quality and the high amount of storage on my school's computers, I didn't have to sacrifice the quality of the recording to make the file's size smaller meaning I wouldn't have to downgrade to an mp3 file.
Another factor contributing to my file's size was that it was Lossless, ensuring that it had the highest amount of quality without the