Weekly Reflection March 6-March 13
This week was spent largely in the audio realm, with a bit of jumping back and forth in Premiere obviously. As touched upon in last week’s post, the approach I am taking in terms of workflow looks much more like a graph filled with peaks and troughs than one with a straight, undeviating linear direction. I recognized this to be the case, have accepted it and am actually enjoying the “jumpy” nature of my work as of late. It keeps me on my toes! I spent some more time recomposing the instrumental and going back into Premiere to realign the audio shots accordingly. I also recognized that some of my cuts in Premiere were too fast, and I did not want to give the viewer an epileptic seizure! I had to slow things down a bit and let the story speak for itself. It was also quite shocking to me how different playing certain scenes of the piece out of context feels and looks in comparison to showing the whole film from the beginning. This threw me off a few times during the editing process, and I started second-guessing my decisions until I went back and replayed it from the very beginning. I am not sure If I even need to do any re-shoots at this time, which is a blessing! I am confident that I have enough material already. I laid out the song in its entirety and am pleased with the transitions. As of this point I have also laid out about 75% of the video to the audio in a way which I feel to be a more finalized representation. By this time next week, the whole rough lineup should be done so that I can really start to mix and master the audio and edit the video clips, as well as add effects and truly take things to the next level! I will then seek to gather feedback.
This Medium post I read represents a thought that I had been having with regard to my own work, and it is something I see a lot in the audio world especially with regard to mixing and mastering electronic music. It has often been said in the past (usually in reference to the way the recording and mixing processes had been done for decades since their creation) that the tracking, mixing and mastering processes are separate. The engineer will first record the audio, then mix and set levels and effects. It is only at the very end where they will send it to a mastering engineer. This is not necessarily true anymore. Today, engineers in electronic music tend to track, mix and even sometimes master simultaneously. They will record a synth and automatically be EQ-ing it, adding compression and reverb as well as setting levels. It is also common to see a mastering limiter being mixed through from the jump. I have chosen this route with my own engineering because I feel I have more control afforded to me by technology to go back and make changes without them being permanent. Nowadays the producer and the engineer are one in the same, and one must wear many hats to gain exposure and notoriety.
