***Graduation***

Welcome to the Digital Pathways Graduation event!

We're very proud of all of the students and the amazing work they have completed throughout the program. These students have shown a lot of dedication and have all grown a lot as media makers. Please take some time and check out the projects our Advanced Audio class and all the other classes.

Thank you so much for coming and supporting our students!

~~LAST DAY!!!~~

Congratulations! You made it.

It has been a real pleasure working with all of you and getting to see you grow as artists. I mean it when I say YOU ARE AMAZING!

So today, on our last day, we have a bunch of stuff to do...

1. Take the post survey for this class. This will help us learn about what you're learning! Click the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VWXKGNX
2. Update your BAVC profiles. I have sent each of you an email telling you what you're missing. Please check your BAVC gmail accounts and see what you need. At the very least everyone will need to upload their Final Projects (see below).
   
3. Finish your Final Projects! You will need to convert your Projects to MP3 or FLV movie format. (People doing an audio post-production piece will need to convert their files. Ask Quinn how to do this.)
4. Backup your work. In the Shared Media folder, there is a folder called Best Work. Inside that folder, there is a folder with your name. Please put 3-4 of your best pieces INCLUDING YOUR FINAL PROJECT in that folder. Also, if you would like to back up your work, I have DVDs that you burn your files onto and take home.

Thanks for being an amazing class. I can't wait to see you guys at our

Graduation Event
Friday, June 18
5:30-7:30pm

@BAVC's main office
2727 Mariposa St., 2nd floor
San Francisco, CA 94110

See ya there!!

Performance Evaluation

Each of you are going to come up and show me how to get a basic recording session going. Here are the exact things I'm going to ask you to do, so if you are unsure about any of these, please be sure to ask me to go over them before we get going.

1. Select vocal and talkback microphones. Set up the vocal mic on the mic stand.
2. Plug cables and headphones into inputs on the Digi 003.
3. Create a new Pro Tools session in a designated folder.
4. Create new audio tracks and label them accordingly.
5. Set the microphone inputs on the audio tracks.
   
6. Get signal from the mics and set good levels.
7. Adjust headphone levels.
8. Record a short vocal segment.
9. Save and close the Pro Tools session.
10. Transfer the session folder to the Media Share folder.

Peer Review

Today we are going to be sharing the work we have done so far on our Final Projects and provide feedback to help us get these sounding/looking as good as they possibly can.

First, please put copies of your projects into:
Shared Media>Student Work>Peer Review

When you come up, before you play your project for us, I want you to say a few words about it. This will help you to be prepared if someone hears your project at the Graduation and wants to ask you about it. Please answer the following questions:

1. What's your name?
2. What is your project? (song, audio post production piece, etc.)
   
3. What do you think is unique about it? How does it reflect your own personal style?
   
4. What software programs did you use to make it?
5. What is one part of it that you really like? What inspired you to create that part?
6. What's something that was hard about your project? How did you do to make it work?
7. What do you have left to do?
   
8. Out of everything we have learned about in this class, what did you enjoy the most? What kind of project would you work on next?

Recording Evaluation_Review

Today your priority is on getting as much work done on your Final Projects as possible. We will be getting up in front of the class and presenting what we've got on Monday, so try to knock out as much as you can.

The other thing I will be doing Monday is starting to give you guys individual evaluations on what I think are the most important thing you should be leaving this class with. Namely, I want you to be confident about setting up and running a recording session!

This is not supposed to be a surprise test and I'm not going to try to trick you. In fact, I will tell you right now what I am going to be asking you to do. Please take a look at the list below and see if there is anything there that you feel unsure about. If you would like to go over anything, please come up to the instructor station sometime today and I will be happy to review with you!

Setting up a Session
Each of you is going to come up and show me how to get a Pro Tools session going. Here are the exact things I'm going to ask you to do, so if you are unsure about any of these, please be sure to ask me to go over them before we get going.

1. Select vocal and talkback microphones. Set up the vocal mic on the mic stand.
2. Plug cables and headphones into inputs on the Digi 003.
3. Create a new Pro Tools session in a designated folder.
4. Create new audio tracks and label them accordingly.
5. Check the inputs on your tracks and make sure the correct mics are going to them.
   
6. Get signal from the mics and set good levels.
7. Adjust headphone levels.
8. Record a short vocal segment.
9. Save and close the Pro Tools session.
10. Transfer the session folder to the Media Share folder.

~~~{Final Projects}~~~

Well, we are getting very close to the end of our class. Here are some dates you should be aware of...

Important Upcoming Dates:

• Friday, May 21 - Last makeup class
• Tuesday, May 25 - Peer Review
  
• Thursday, May 27 - Last day of class
• Friday, June 18 - Graduation!!!
  

Final Projects
Starting today, everyone will be working on a Final Project. Our main focus until the end of class is going to be in getting these projects completed. This is your chance to make a polished audio project that showcases the skills you have acquired throughout the course of the program. You can decide what you want your project to be, as long as it uses the skills you have learned in this class (recording a song, audio post production, etc.)

The first thing you're going to do is think about what this project is all about and plan out a schedule for how you will get it done in the classes we have left. Please do the following:

1. Please copy the following file to your computer and open it: Shared Media>Class Materials>Final Project_Schedule.odt
2. Fill out this sheet - answer all the questions and map out what you steps you want to get done in each class.
3. Save it as: your name_final project_schedule
4. Put a copy of the document in: Shared Media>Student Work>Final Project Schedules
   

All projects should:

• Be a reflection of your own unique experiences and skills – give me something that no one else in the world can give me!
• Be at least 4 minutes long
  
• Be polished, and complete
  
• Include great attention given to the mix (volume, panning, FX, automation)
• Have some type of live recording (vocals, guitar, ADR, sound FX)

If you are making a song/spoken word piece...

• It should have a deliberate arrangement and structure that keeps the listeners interested
• Vocals: rap, singing, poetry, essay, speech
• Complex instrumentation
• Final piece Exported/Bounced song as an audio file
  

If you are doing Audio Post Production...

• All actions and dialogue should have corresponding audio with them - good synchronization, no empty gaps.
• Should have an original musical score that you create
• Mix the audio - make the actions believable with the use of mixing, panning, FX, and automation.
• Export/Bounce the final piece as a Quicktime movie
  

Couple things...
Collaboration is encouraged, but be careful to budget your time accordingly - ESPECIALLY regarding the use of the vocal booth. Be considerate of the fact that everyone needs to have access. You are encouraged to constantly get feedback from your peers throughout the production process.We will be doing a Peer Review on Tuesday, May 25. If you have an idea for a project that is different from the two options above, please talk with the instructor to discuss the best way to make this happen.

{Influence pt. 2_Mixdown}

Continuing from our assignment last class, we're going to spend some time mixing our beats. The trick is, you are going to mix someone else's beat and someone else will mix yours. Here is what I want you to do. We're going to do this in 3 steps:

1. Export audio files of all the individual instruments of your beat out of Reason.
2. Import a classmate's files to Pro Tools.
   
3. In Pro Tools, use faders, panning and fx processors to create an interesting mix.

Part 1 - Exporting

1. Create a folder called: your name_trackout
2. Do a file Save As and call your save the song as: (name of song)_trackout
3. In the Mixer, COMMAND-click on ALL your pan knobs and faders to reset them back to the default settings.
4. Set the End Marker just past the end of the song.
5. In the Mixer, click on the S button to Solo the instrument you want to export. NOTE: if your Redrum is going to one channel on the mixer, you also have to click the S button on the drum channel in the Redrum.
6. Go to File>Export Song to Audio File
7. Change the filename to the name of the instrument you have solo'd.
8. Make sure the file is going into the Trackout folder you created in step 1.
9. Hit Save.
   
10. Check the Export Settings (44,100 Hz/16 bit is fine)
11. Hit Export.
12. Repeat Steps 5-11 for each instrument in your song.
    
13. When you have all your audio files in the Trackout folder, put a copy of the folder in Shared Media>Student Work>Influence Trackouts

Part 2 - Importing to Pro Tools
You should all be pros at this by now. Just in case you forgot...

1. Copy a classmate's Trackout folder to your computer
2. Open Pro Tools.
3. Start a new session called: classmate's name_your name_mix
   
4. Go to File>Import Audio and import all the tracks from your classmate's folder.
5. Put all the files on new tracks.

Part 3 - The Mix

1. 
   

{Influence}

Today I had planned to do a lesson where we get into using a new software program called Logic Express. Unfortunately, we're having some trouble with our serial numbers for the software, so we're not going to be able to get to this today. Instead, Quinn is going to talk a little bit about how we as artists can listen to other artists and use these influences to help us in developing our styles.

As part of your assignment, I want you to send me an email (crunde@bavc.org) that includes the following info:

1. The name of the song and artist that you are going to work on
2. 3 elements from this song that you think are important to the artist's style.
   

Game Audio_Intro

On Thursday we will be taking a field trip to Sony's Playstation office to learn a bit about the kinds of audio work that goes into video games. In recent years, games have become a huge part of the entertainment industry and it is important to be aware that whether you're an animator, a video person, or an audio engineer, there are many jobs in gaming that require your skills. So today I wanted to take a little time to talk about the different elements that go into sound for games.

Games have come a long way in the last 35 years, or so. One of the very earliest games was this game, Pong:



Pong was a big deal when it came out back in 1972. The idea of playing a game on a screen was pretty high tech and magical. And even in those very early days, sound was considered a key element to the gaming experience. How many sounds did you hear in that clip?

Now let's take a quick look/listen to this clip from the game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which was released on Sony's Playstation 3 console in 2009:

For the record, I neither condone nor condemn violence in videogames. This particular game, however, is notable for having won a number of awards, including in the audio field.

So, what did you notice about the sounds from that clip? What kinds of sounds did you hear? Were they constant throughout the play?

In a lot of ways, game audio is the same as any other type of audio post production. You have the same basic elements of

• FX
• Dialog
• Music

However, these elements behave somewhat differently in games than they do in, say, films. The big difference is that in a game, the player controls the movements and actions of the character. That means that there isn't just one set order that all the sounds happen. The sounds need to reflect what is happening on the screen in real time.

The main way that this is done is through the use of triggers and zones.

A trigger is just an action that triggers a sound. For example, the character opens a door on the screen, triggering an audio file of a door sound to play back. The character walks, you hear footsteps. The character jumps on a mushroom, you hear a sound.

A zone is like a preset map in that tells the game when to play certain sounds. For example, when the character starts to get close to a waterfall, you start to hear the sound of a waterfall. As he/she gets closer to it, the waterfall gets louder and louder. When he/she walks away, it gets softer and when he/she gets a certain distance away from it, it stops altogether. Zones are also important for music, because they determine when certain transitions are about to happen. Ever notice how a lot of the time you just sort of know when something bad is going to happen? Maybe the music starts to build up, or maybe it goes away completely. Chances are, you walked into a certain zone!

There are tons of topics that we could get into about this, but today I just wanted to give you some basics. Your assignment will be to do some audio post for a piece of this clip from Uncharted 2:

{Audio post: Ghost Dog ADR_pt2}

Today let's finish up the Ghost Dog projects from last time. Once you've got your ADR recorded, you should concentrate on the following:

Part 3 - The Score
You guys are all pros on producing scores by now. For this piece, the challenge is to try to figure out what the mood of the scene is and make that happen musically. What would you say was the mood of the original piece? How did the composer (the RZA) help to create the mood with music?

1. Create a Stereo Aux Input
2. Insert Reason on it.
3. Create an original piece of music that fits the mood of the scene.

Part 4 - FX
This part is sort of optional, but can help to make the scene more convincing, if you want to try. In the original scene, there were hardly any sounds beyond the dialog and the music (there is a faint sound of pigeons fluttering at the end).

The one thing I want you to add is some street sounds in the background when the dialog happens.

You can add some additional sounds if you choose with the following restriction: do NOT add sounds that distract the audience's focus from what's happening visually! (e.g. gunshots, screaming, random sounds, etc.)

Here are a few ideas for sounds that would be appropriate:

• Pigeons
  
• Footsteps

Part 5 - Editing & Mixing
This is really important. Once we've got all of our sound elements in the session, we need to make sure that they're all clean and balanced correctly. We also want to add some

First, clean it up...

1. Use the Trim Tool to cut off the extra bits at the beginning and ends of the dialog regions.

Now let's set up a good balance by paying attention to the overall levels of all the tracks.

1. Go to Track>New and create a Stereo Master Fader.
2. In the Inserts section of Master Fader track, click on Multichannel Plugin>Sound Field>Phase Scope. You should see this pop up:The meters on the left side will help us to see exactly how loud the peaks of our tracks are.
3. Now Solo the dialog tracks.
4. Play the part with the dialog back and watch the levels on the Phase Scope meters.
5. Important: dialog in audio post production should hit about -6dB at its loudest parts. If your dialog is not loud enough, turn up the faders on the tracks so that the peaks are at -6dB.
6. Unsolo the dialog tracks.
7. Listen to the whole thing including the music. How is the balance between the music and the dialog? In general, they should be about the same volume (we're going to adjust this next), but if the music is way louder or softer than the dialog, raise or lower it to whatever it needs to be.

Now let's make it so that when the characters start speaking, the music dips down a little bit and we can hear them better...

1. Use the Grabber Tool.
2. Zoom in so that you can see the dialog clips well.
3. On the Aux Track, you should see a line that goes across the screen showing the volume level. Right before the dialog starts, click on the line to create a dot.
4. Click on the line at the end of the dialog to create another dot.
5. Make two more dots in between the beginning and the end of the dialog.
6. Click and drag these dots down to make the volume come down during this scene and then come back up at the end.
7. Listen back to this scene and move the dots around to adjust them. The goal is to make this dip sound smooth and not very noticeable to the audience.
8. Save

When you think you've got everything done, have an instructor check your work. If it's all good, do the following:

1. Bounce to Quicktime movie.
   
2. Name the file: your name_Ghost Dog ADR
3. Put a copy of the Quicktime movie in Shared Media>Student Work>Ghost Dog ADR
   

{Audio post: Ghost Dog ADR}

Today we're going to start working on a project that involves two of the areas of audio post-production that we have been discussing: ADR and scoring. In addition, we're going to use some mixing techniques to give the piece an interesting and (hopefully) believable flow.

First, let's watch the clip we're going to be working with. This is a scene from the 1999 movie, Ghost Dog, directed by Jim Jarmusch and starring Forest Whitaker. Check it out:

What are the main sound elements we can hear in this scene?
What kind of mood is the music creating?
What do we notice about the volume levels throughout the scene?
Is there anything about the dialog that you think might be challenging?

So, you are now going to work with this clip and replace all the sound with your own...

Part 1 - Preparing the Session

Please do the following:

1. Look in Shared Media>Class Materials>Film clips and find the file called: Ghost Dog_RZA.mp4
   
2. Copy the file to your computer.
   
3. Pick a partner.
   
4. One of you needs to create an Empty Pro Tools session called: Ghost Dog ADR
   
5. In the session, create 3 Mono Audio tracks.
6. Label one audio track: Ghost Dog
7. Label the other audio track: Samurai
8. Label the 3rd track: TB
9. Import the video into your project.
10. Play it back and listen carefully for the part where the Samurai in Camouflage (the RZA) starts speaking. Drop a marker exactly at this point. Name it: RZA
11. Save this session and quit out of Pro Tools.
12. Put a copy of the Pro Tools session in your folder on the Shared Media drive.

Part 2 - Recording ADR
You are going to work with a partner to record the ADR for this scene. You will play one character and he will play the other. You will take turns engineering and preforming the lines. Here is the dialog:

Samurai in Camouflage: Ghost Dog, power, equality.
Ghost Dog: Always see everything, my brother.

Please do the following:

1. On the Instructor Station, copy your Ghost Dog ADR Pro Tools session to the folder called Student PT Sessions on the desktop.
2. Open the session.
3. Check your Mic Inputs and make sure they match this setup:
4. Decide which one of you is going to play Ghost Dog, and which one is going to play the Samurai.
5. Have the first person go in the vocal booth, and the other person set recording levels.
6. Make sure that the video clip is big enough and the monitor is angled so that the performer to see the lips of the characters.
7. Do a few practice run-throughs and decide if you want to record while listening to the original audio, or if the track should be muted.
8. Record!
9. If you get a take that you think is good, but you want to try another one, create a new Playlist by clicking on the little triangle next to the track name, and then clicking on New.
10. When it asks for a name for the Playlist just click OK.
11. Record as many times and create as many playlists as you need to get a good take.
12. Switch positions with your partner and repeat Steps 5-11 for the other character.
13. When you think you're done, SAVE the session.
14. Put a copy of the session in your folder on the Shared Media folder.
15. Go back to your desks and copy the PT Session to each of your computers.
16. Open the session and pick the best playlists for each character.
17. Do some basic editing to clean up the audio (trim the edges, fade ins/outs, etc.)

Audio Post: ADR

Did you know that most of the dialog that you hear in a movie was not recorded at the time when the scene was actually being shot? A lot of the actors' lines were rerecorded in a studio in order to get better sound quality, or sometimes a better performance. This process is called Automated Dialog Replacement, or ADR. The trick is for the actor to be able to recreate the emotion from the scene and make it sound as natural as possible. Here is a clip showing the ADR process on the film "King Kong".



Real ADR is done through a process called looping, where a short scene is played over and over and the actor performs his/her lines repeatedly until he/she gets them just right. It is the mixing engineer's responsibility to make the recording sound as believable as possible in the scene. Think about it...if the scene takes place in the middle of, say, an empty parking lot, are the voices going to sound the same as they do inside a padded vocal booth? Of course not! So, the engineer has to figure out how he/she can match the sound of the actor's voice to the place being shown on the screen. This is done by making decisions in the recording process (microphone choice and placement) and in the mix afterward (using reverb, EQ, pitch adjustment, and other FX to make it sound like the character is in the actual setting on screen).

Today, we're going to do a little bit of our own ADR...

{Audio Post: Score2_Theme}

Today we're going to work on a specific area of film scoring: the theme.

According to Wikipedia:

A theme (or "leitmotif") is "...is a phrase or melodic cell that signifies a character, place, plot element, mood, idea, relationship or other specific part of the film. It is commonly used in modern film scoring, as a device to mentally anchor certain parts of a film to the soundtrack."

Last time, we talked briefly about the example of Darth Vader from Star Wars and the theme music associated with him. Today, we're going to listen to another theme from Star Wars and work on creating our own themes for a specific scene from the movie.

"Why are we spending so much time talking about Star Wars?" you ask.

Because along with many other areas of film making, Star Wars had a major influence on the way other film scores were made after it came out. The composer, John Williams, is one of the most famous film composers in the history of cinema. One of the things that it made popular in modern movies was the idea of having themes in the score that are associated with specific characters and ideas. This is part of what makes the music so memorable and recognizable.

So, let's take a look to a few scenes:




What do you think this theme represents?
What kind of mood does it create in your mind?
Is it connected to a specific character or idea?
How is it put together or structured?
What kinds of instruments are used?

Now you are going to create your own theme for the Binary Sunset scene.

Please do the following:

1. Look in Shared Media>Class Materials>Film Clips and find the file called StarWars_Binary Sunset.mov. Copy it to your computer.
2. Launch Pro Tools and make a new Blank Session. Name it: your name_ForceTheme
3. Import the Binary Sunset Quicktime movie into your session.
4. Watch the clip a few times and think about how you are going to create a theme for it. What kind of mood? What kinds of instruments? Will the music change at a certain point? Feel free to listen to the original version if you need some ideas!
   
5. Go to New Track and create a Stereo Aux Input track.
6. Insert Reason on the Aux Track.
7. Create a theme!
8. Save.
9. Bounce everything to a Quicktime movie. Name the file: your name_ForceTheme
   
10. Put a copy on Shared Media in Student Work>Force Theme
    

{Audio post: Score 1_Scary}

One of the classic cases where a score is used to build up emotion is in a scary sequence when you know something bad is going to happen. You know it's coming, you know the character should do something different, but they're going to fall right into the trap! And the whole time, the music is building and building until...BAM!

Basically, whether you were consciously aware of it or not, the music just helped to manipulate you to feel a certain way, even though your brain already knew what was going to happen.

Question: what kinds of instruments do you typically hear in scenes like this? Why do you think those instruments are used so much?

Today, you are going to do this. Please do the following:

1. In the Shared Media folder, look in Class Materials>Film Clips>Freddy Clips and copy the file called Chase.mov to your computer.
2. Create a new Pro Tools session and name it: your name_scary score
3. Import the Chase movie clip into your session.
   
4. Watch the clip through a few times to get a feel for when specific things happen that should have a musical equivalent. Drop memory locators at these points.
5. Set the mode to Grid.
6. Try to change the Tempo so that you can get some of the memory locators to fall right on the first beats of the grid.
7. Create a Stereo Aux Input track.
8. Insert Reason on this track.
9. Make scaaaarrry music!
10. Bounce the music to a Quicktime movie. Call it: your name_scary score
    
11. Put a copy in the Shared Media Folder in: Student Work>Scary Score
    
12. Save your Pro tools session.
    

Audio Post: Score

Last week we spent time focusing on and getting some experience working with sound FX. This week, we are going to turn our attention to another crucial part of audio post-production: the score. In case you forgot...

The score is the music that is created to go along with a film/video.

Wikipedia says:

"A film score is actually the background music of a film (which is generally categorically separated from songs used within a film). The term soundtrack is often confused with film score, but a soundtrack also includes anything else audible in the film such as sound effects and dialogue. Soundtrack albums may also include songs featured in the film as well as previously released music by other artists. A score is written specifically to accompany a film, by the original film's composer(s)...since the 1950s, a growing number of scores are electronic or a hybrid of orchestral and electronic instruments. Since the invention of digital technology and audio sampling, many low budget films have been able to rely on digital samples to imitate the sound of real live instruments."

What do you think is the purpose of the score? Why do we need music in movies?

Well, actually, not all movies have a score, or sometimes they use music very lightly. But most films have some kind of music to help enhance the emotions/moods of the different scenes. This can be important so that the audience has some direction on how to feel about what they are seeing.

For example, let's say you have a scene of a woman walking down the street. There is no dialogue in the scene, so we don't know exactly what she's thinking. Is she happy? Angry? Determined? Worried? Music can help us easier interpret what she is thinking without her saying a single word! Also, in scenes without dialogue, the absence of sound can make the scenes feel very slow and/or empty, so the music can help to move the story along.

Music can also be created to give specific characters their own themes. These themes usually come in throughout the movie whenever the character appears onscreen. A classic example of this would be Darth Vader's Theme (The Imperial March), composed by John Williams for the Star Wars movies: