Sound Bites

Rona Boakye

Task 4 - Soundbites

Soundbites are short snappy provocative answers that normally politicians use to advertise to grab viewers attention. In class we did a task where we had to try and get these soundbites for our documentary. My documentary is about stray dogs, it took me quite awhile to make up these questions. When I finish making up these question we had to ask people in our class questions answers while recording them. This process was a bit difficult because everybody was talking at the same time so you had to be loud and also be quite close to the person you was asking the question to.

My first question was 'Do you think that Dangerous dogs should be killed?', I got mix response with this questions. My two favorite responses that I think would be good sound bites and would grab the views attention are 'There only dangerous or harmless if their owners are the same towards them' and ' Yeah because I am not a fan of dogs anyways, so if they are dangerous then I feel that they should be killed'. These represents the two views on this topic.  My other two questions were 'Would you be scared of people if you were abused?' and 'Would you like to be homeless?' I thought that I could have phrase these questions differently so it would have been more provocative and I could have got better responses. Some of the responses were very similar or very short. But some of these responses could be very usefully for my interview and when I do my documentary I will be include this technique. I think the best way to get a good response from the interviewee is to ask them a controversial question and to get a controversial response. I think this is the best way of getting people to talk about documentary even if it has some negative responses. To have a controversial soundbite in your documentary will catch the audience attentions and make them want to know more about the documentary.

When researching about soundbite I found a video of the reelections for the president of USA. I don't find politics interesting at all especially American but some of these soundbites made me want to watch and see who wins even though Obama already won that elections. One soundbite I like is from Michael Obama, this soundbite is regarding the election and she says 'This elections will be closer than the last one that we can count on' the way she said they statement was punchy and short, also got across her point. Compared to my interview, her statement seem a little bit thought, she sounded more confident to answer the question and she knew more about the topic that she was talking about whereas my interview people had to think fast , they didn't really know about the topic and were pressured the answer correctly. There was also a series of soundbites from the news presenters saying 'The mad dash for campaign cash',  'cash dash', 'The battle of the bundler'. This showed me that news presenters can also have catchy soundbites not only the interviewees.

Journal - Sound Track Production

This is the non diegetic sound track that I created for my 'Harry Brown' soundtrack. I looked around listening and playing different instruments to create a sound that would convey a tense scene.

Task 1: Moving Image Soundtrack Quiz

1a) The three main elements of moving image is sound effect, dialogue and music.

1b) Diegetic is audio/dialogue which the characters in the film can hear for example in the movie 'Honey' there was a club scene where you can see the people in the dancing a long to the music and it also shows a shot of the dj playing this track. Whereas non-diegetic is when only the audience can hear the audio/voice-over. By doing this it gives the audience the mood and meaning so the audience will know what the director was trying to convey. For example in 'Boyz N The Hood' the scene where Ricky gets shot and you hear a soundtrack slowly fading in. The soundtrack was slow and quite high pitch, this show the audience that something bad had occur.

1c) Synchronous is when you can hear the original audio without any editing being done for example in a web series called the 'The 3 Olodos' the three main characters are sitting in the park and you can hear the ambience wind and car sound in the background, and you can hear the dialogue which was not edited in. Non- Synchronous is when sound effects is added to for example emphasis the sound in the film, this is done in the post-production stage. For example in Kill Bill fight scene with Vernita you heard glass breaking, jumping on sofas, falling on to glass, punching and etc but it was very over exaggerated so the audience could hear as well a seeing how extreme the violence was 

1d) Dialogue is one of the spoken word in film audio this is something the character in the says it could either be a conversation or maybe talking to themseleves. An example of this a scene in 'Inbetweeners' where Neil, Simon, Will and Jay go camping and they start discussing about ways they could 'cure' how bored they were. Second spoken work used in film audio is narrative or voiceovers, this is when you have a non-diegetic person describe or telling or explaining what is happening in the film. An example of this is in the 'The Great Gatsby' when Tobey Maguire was narrating the story about Gatsby. The last spoken words in film in interviews which is normally taking place in interviews for example in the documentary 'The Lift' the directors has a informal interview with the people that get inside the lift so he can know more about the people that lived in the estate.

Action Plan. Sarah

Sound Production Journal

Wednesday 5th February 

Today I have been work on My 'Life on Mars' sound production. First of all I have change a few of the sounds around because I thought it didn't work with some the video. Also I have been changing the Track volume... (to be continued)

Styles of documentaries

Poetic

• I could use this technique in my documentary by reconstructing me 'observing' a 'stray dog' going about it's day around my area.
•  I could also use stylise music and special effects.
• POV shot of dog.

Participatory

• See me (film director) interacting with the dogs in Battersea dogs and cats home.

Expository

• Show different point of stray dogs.

Reflexive

• In the introduction of my documentary I could say 'I am making a documentary about...'
• Talk about things that are not going to plan in my documentary

Observational

• Place the camera at streatham vale park and film the stray dog roaming around.