Harry Potter Editing Exercise

GaragBand is a software application for Mac's that allows us users to construct music or podcasts. I edited this Harry Potter sequence using this application. I found this whole feature very interesting as it was a learning experience, I had never used this before. I hope to be able to use the skills for this further into the course when it comes to adding non-diegetic sound onto our opening sequence. 

I didn't add sound onto the whole sequence as I only intended on editting in some in order to gain experience and skills to use afterwards. I played around with the different sound choices that were available before coming to this final piece. 

To begin with, once I had clicked n GarageBand to open there were several options containing different instruments. I chose 'Loops' as it will let me use all the tracks that come with GarageBand and it also lets me record instruments if need be. However, I did not need to record any instruments for this particular exercise but it may be useful for when we edit our final opening sequence. I then had to name the project. At the bottom of this I saw options to change the tempo, signature, beats per minute and key. I did not change these as I wanted to adjust them within my project. Once it was created, on the right of the software I saw all the tracks that Apple provides in which I had to choose from. These tracks were segmented into a numerous amount of categories. This was helpful as I was able to choose according to what mood I wish to emit from my sequence. I wanted to make the sound contrapuntal, consequently, complimenting the mood displayed by the visuals - so I chose the category 'Dark'. This was the main category I used alongside 'Orchestral', 'Intense' and 'Guitars' - all creating the same mood for the viewing experience. 

To mix the audio, I would drag the second soundtrack underneath the original/first soundtrack, slightly overlaping eachother. This would allow the transitions to the next scene flow and make sense; producing a sound bridge. Also, the second procedure I learnt to make the different soundtracks blend was by decreasing the sound gradually towards the end of it and making the next soundtrack gradually get louder - starting off quiet. This reduced the jerkiness of the whole track and allowed it to flow smoothly. Some of the soundtracks were too long thus, did not fit into the scene. Therefore, I simply shortened the soundtrack item by dragging the edge of it shorter from whichever end neccessary.