Sound Editing.

Understanding the reasons for editing factual and fictional recorded

digital sound.
Editing digital sound files have a great impact in today’s world, in many different
scenarios. Editing has three different stages to it, modification, condensing and the
correcting of audio. We edit audio in many things such as Music, Movie, News
Podcasts, and Television Shows etc. We edit these sounds because it has a
massive impact on their audience. For example, in the movie ‘Batman’, the villain,
Bane, had his voice modified to suit the type of character he is. By doing this, his
voice seemed very sinister and malicious to the audience. Another example of why
we edit audio is because of the given time to give information. Such as in a Podcast,
they have a certain amount of time so they condense their audio so they will be able
to get through all the news and get onto another topic quickly and briefly.

All editing must be ethical. Any type of editing that is not ethical, is not editing. It is
lies. For editing to be ethical it must maintain a Freedom of Speech and not to make
the audio misleading. Adverts for example can always be misleading but I cannot be
a forced lie to the audience. Lying to the audience will then become unethical. Often
opinion becomes fact and then becomes a lie. This causes a lie and creates
controversy in the Editing community and the Media Industry. Another example is
Journal Editors. They have many ethical guidelines such as make all reasonable
effort to process submissions on time, any data or analysis presented in a submitted
manuscript should not be used in a journal editor’s own research without the consent
of the author. These give rules towards editors which are very important to follow.
Ethical publishing is particularly important in small and developing communities, for
two primary reasons. ... Educating their authors in responsible publishing and
responsible conduct of research in general can help editors build up the quality of
their journal and the science they publish.

This leads onto my next point, the legal laws of freedom of speech. In article 10 of
the Human Rights Act: Freedom of expression it includes freedom to hold opinions
and to receive and impact information and ideas without interference by public
authority and regardless of frontiers. In the United States of America, freedom of
speech and expression is strongly protected from government restrictions by the first
amendment to the United States Constitution, many state constitution and state and
federal laws.
Factual
My first example of where sound has been edited is on the 18:00 BBC News. It
begins with the main presenter announcing all the news with tranquil bells in the
background. When they switch presenters you can hear the protesters shouting
aggressively but when the presented is about to speak the sound dies down and is
muffled. This is effective because the targeted audience would be able to hear the
presenter clearly and soundly. If the audio was not edited, it would sound like a live
presentation and the audio will sound unsatisfactory. The audio has been edited
properly because there is no jumping fluctuation is audio. Media products such as
TV and Radio Programmes are made to fit into time slots in their set schedules.
They must have references to their timings to include a range of commercials,
announcements and time signals. A news bulletin will be edited to fit the specific time
given (3-27 minutes). Throughout this time, they will have to include announcements
etc which would roughly take 10-40 seconds.

Fictional
And my second example is from the Music Video “Last Forever” By Ayo and Teo. In
the music video Last Forever by Ayo and Teo their voices are manipulated in a way
that will make their voices go high. While recording the music video, they had to get
rid of the background sounds, so the music video will not have rustling against the
floor, fans and machines whirring etc. Having these background sounds in the Music
Video will be unappealing to the targeted audience. This will impact the amount of
people who like the music video and like the song itself.

Now how do we know content is factual or not? The definition of factual is true or
concerned with actual details or information rather than ideas of feelings about it.
Statistics on weather over the past five years is an example of information.
Something is most likely to be factual when many people express their
views/thoughts on the subject. An example is At the beginning of the song bbno$
asked a question while recording the song lalala. You are able to hear Y2K in the
background shouting the answer to his friend’s question. They amped the volume in
the background excluding ambient sounds. After the volume was amped up, they
had to level the sound so it matches the person singing the chorus of the song.
In documentaries we are often told what is going to be said to us. Factual content is
always presented just before or just after the news. But just because the content is
factual doesn’t mean it cannot be edited. Factual information is meant to be facts
and statistics which are expressed through a professional spokesperson, program or
news company. The reason why we edit factual content is to make it sound
professional and understandable through somebody who knows what they are doing.
For example when recording a news bulletin, some people will tent to stutter while
talking. So we will edit the parts we don’t want, in this case it is the stutters and we
keep the parts we do want, which is clear and understandable. We also edit factual
content because we may want to change the order of the way things are said so it
makes sense to the targeted audience.

How do we know content is fictional? Fiction refers to any narrative consisting of

imaginary people, events, or descriptions. In other words, a narrative not based
strictly on history or fact. It also commonly refers, more narrowly, to written narratives
in prose and often specifically novels. In film, it generally corresponds to narrative
film in opposition to documentary. For example, the Reality tv show “Love Island” is
fictional because they have a script telling them what to say and do. We tend to
notice things are fake when many people have a hypothesis about the subject at
hand. Another example is when the rapper Lil Tecca was said to be dead, which was
not true. The rapper was alive and well at home. People like to create fictional
content because it gets a response/expression out of the community about the
subject. Fictional content can vary from Soaps, Netflix series or even fake news.
These are all made up stories to amuse the targeted audience. Many unbelievable
content, may have made up stories we know is not real, may have characters who
are reading a script for the show. May contain things we know are not real. In a
soap, the characters will not address the audience or look at the camera. The actors
are pretending to make the soap realistic. Fictional content have titles whereas
factual program have a documentary about something. Fictional content have actors
and narrators and factual content have presenters, often called documentaries and
nobody is pretending.
But we is fictional content edited? It is edited to produce a believable narrative. This
may mean altering content or real world sounds to create a new world, to create a
new fiction, to create a new fantasy. The audience must believe. Fiction content is
unethical to be produced or edited. The reason why they edit fictional content is to
make it believable to the targeted audience who may be reading a newspaper or on
social media. If editors didn’t edit the fictional content it will not be believable,
therefore will make them lose money and their reputation in their community. Doing
this and being caught can ruin their reputation for many years until they do
something unbelievable.