Week 16 - Cracking the DaVinci Code
The final stretch of the project - the challenging part of getting everything recorded with the pressure of the videographers has passed and now it's time to do what is my favourite part of any project - collating and piecing everything together into the final submission!
The remaining tasks for this project leading up to the Friday 23:59 deadline were set in stone at Monday's celebratory meeting in the famous Surrey Uni bar of Wates.
River - Combine the Videographics with Audio and Upload
Peer A - Complete the score
Peer B - Balance and Mix the Audio
As predicted much earlier on in the module - the natural shift towards complementary collaboration was apparent with the clear delagation of splitting responsibilities that then combined right at the end for submission. With the exception of Peer A, the other two jobs were dependant on each other - making it even more important to clearly communicate deadlines so that I had time to combine the videographics.
Peer A - Complete the Score
In my eyes, this was probably the simplist job out of the three, combining the score in a way that looks professional and is easy to follow. Peer A, as mentioned here, did a really good job in creating the 1st movement score - despite it's unusual structure. I suggested adding in some finer details to the 2nd movement score to take into consideration the probability parameters on Push that really helped the rhythms have life rather than be stuck in a static loop.
I'm a huge fan on presenting the front page of a score with plenty of detail on what the music is about (a blurb) so after a few suggestions to Peer A, we had our score completed in plenty of time. Top is Peer A's first draft and Bottom is the final version after my constructive criticisms - a subtle yet professional difference.
Peer B - Balance and Mix the Audio
My first concern about the audio was the initial sacrifice we made in recording it mono into Peer B's computer for the 2nd movement. What this also meant was that the input going into the computer was pure audio - meaning that we wern't able to change any automation parameters or manipulate any individual channels on my set. The only thing we could change was the master volume.
The first draft of Movement 1 was soon received after I sent my full stereo recording to Peer B and we were all surprised in how well it turned out and I was especially pleased when I could hear clear interactions between parts (such as Peer A's suggestion of playing melodic fragments in unison).
The only thing that I thought could elevate the performance further would be a bigger range in dynamic contrasts. They were written on the score quite clearly by Peer A so there wasn't really much excuse! Perhaps the others were more focused on staying together and watching each other for smooth transitions. One thing we did particularly well in texturally spacing out instruments so they wern't performing all the time.
After a few mixing suggestions from both myself and Peer A for the solos - we soon had the final mix of the first recording. Peer B wanted to work on the mixing further but I said that sometimes it's best to just stop trying to improve the work, leave it as it is and move on. Micro-editing really small details would only extend the project further and with other remaining tasks linked up to the audio - it was a wise move to push onto the 2nd movement.
And thankfully, Peer B was able to do a convincing mix of the 2nd movement. In fact the mono recording from my Push turned out much better than expected. With the the compositional structure based on layering, it was not noticable that this set of individual layers was recorded in such a way. It was absolutely the right call on the night and I thanked Peer B for his quick problem-solving skills, when I perhaps wasn't quite on full form later that evening!
Despite my aprehensions at the start of the night - we had a really successful 2nd movement recording and it was the first chance for me to listen back to the movements back to back. I made the decision that it was best to not have the movements attacca, but instead leave a substantial pause. This way, the listener would be able to adjust to the change in character rather than have an adrupt switch.
Myself - Combine the Videographics with Audio ... (and wait patiently for some rather relaxed videographers)
So this is the actual point when I came to realise why Tom said to be careful with working with people outside of the project.
Unpredictability.
After the recording session - one of the videographers said they would be able to help to improve the colouring of the video. I was a bit wary of letting them get involved with the video at first (as I mentioned to them that they were there solely for recording the footage). However, after they showed me a video on the difference colour grading makes to footage - this persuaded me to give them the files. One final catch though was that it was strongly suggested that the programme I used for cutting and transitions was consistant to what they were using and the videographers mostly used Premiere Pro and DaVinci. Given that DaVinci was free, we went with that and I then downloaded the free trial and explored the software - making use of a range of YouTube tutorials online to learn how to cut video clips and input transitions.
Now they had no motive to prioritise the colouring in terms of our deadlines - apart from keeping their professionalism perhaps. So they did manage to colourize everything... at around Friday at 4pm. Not good for poor me to get the final video together and uploaded by midnight (given we had 18 minutes worth of high-quality footage to get through).
It was lucky that I did the learning process of the new software earlier in the day so that when the videos arrived, there was no messing about experimenting but instead doing. I had a clear vision on the video asthetic I was wanting and my other group members had full faith in my video skills after watching my outstanding competancy based video. Many hours later, I had the full video ready. Some creativity in transitions (End of 2nd Movement) and the timing of subtitles (Starting the marble-run in the 2nd movement with when the title appeared) from myself lead to the incrediably close submission via email at 23:57 on Friday - too close to call. This was technically no one's fault (certainly not my other group members) - we didn't specify a deadline to the videographers and to them their deadline was to submit the coloured videos, not including the timing of all the editing afterwards. Something definitely worth remembering for the future.
But it was submitted - The finish line was in sight... one final blogpost to go!