The Force

I want to use the trailer for the Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens.

I'm not super sure what I want to do with it yet, but I think I'm going to use cartoonish/light-hearted sounds to render the trailer not as epic or serious as it is originally. Hopefully it will produce a humorous result. I hope also that it will be an exercise in exploring the importance of sound and audial imagery in setting the mood and in the overall definition of an audio-visual work.

Here's the finished edited product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm4jLd04D4w&feature=youtu.be
(Youtube did not let me embed it),

Objectives:

The objective of the piece was to use audio to give the piece a different mood and tone than the original work. The aim was to make the trailer 'lighter' by introducing sounds that were more light-hearted, and even humorous at points.

The Process:

I definitely became more efficient at the work as I progressed in doing the project. As I learned how to use the tools I had (mainly Logic) it became easier to accomplish what I wanted to get done. I finally learned what certain keys do when you press them (like how 'p' brings up the piano roll), and I figured out how to compose midi pieces faster and more efficiently.

One technical issue that I ran into right at the end was cutting the video and the audio into one final piece. Luckily, I have iMovie installed on my personal computer, so I was able to use that, which made it pretty seamless. However, since I don't really know the software, I still had trouble finnicking around with the timing (which I had spent a lot of time before in Logic getting right). I ended up having to bounce, upload, download, import and export around 4 times because I couldn't get it to sound right. In the end, I scratched everything, and started from a new project, and finally nailed it down.

In terms of responding to feedback: early on, people seemed to support the idea of having cartoonish sounds in contrast with the more serious video, so I decided to use those more heavily than I would have otherwise, and I think the piece really benefitted from that.

Self-Reflection

In broad strokes, I definitely don't think my piece is horrible, but I do think with more time it could be better. The sound effects are probably the best part, and they sound authentically cartoony and are integrated with the piece well. It is kind of strange that the tone switched between the 'light' and 'dark' sections of the video, but that is also a nice effect.
However, the background music is a little lacking, and could do with more time. At best, it's really just a shallow 'space-filler' and sometimes even detracts from the piece. Additionally, the piece is really thematically disparate. Different parts of the music don't really match up: the soft base line that starts the piece is very different from the waterfall of piano notes at the end, which is very different from the guitar riff at the end. It lacks a lot of unity.