Hitchcock makes it very clear to us. There’s an objective and a subjective camera, like there’s a third- and a first-person narrator in literature. —Manuel Puig

[one_half padding=”4px 10px 0 4px”]Oops, sorry, but if you were looking for the Barry Manilow song One Voice, this isn’t it. You can find that song here, if you’re really insistent. And old. Like me. Actually, it’s the only song from the 1979 album of the same name that I like at all, and it’s actually the 2010 version he did with acapella group Straight No Chaser that I prefer. You can find that one here, but again, the song has absolutely nothing to do with today’s picture. They just happen to share a name. That’s it.  Hope you’re not too disappointed. If you’re younger than 50 you’re probably wondering what I’m even talking about.

What we did with today’s picture, which was completely reprocessed from the original to fit the video format, was experiment with adding a voice over, one voice, specifically my voice, to the video. Narration of this kind is a fairly common thing for short videos such as this, so I figured it couldn’t be too terribly difficult, especially given the challenges we’ve already had this week. My assumption was that this might not be easy, but would be reasonably doable without having to purchase new equipment of any kind.

Let me just say that equipment certainly does matter and the absence of a high-quality recording contributed to the challenges of laying a voice track over everything else. In an ideal world, the voice over would be recorded separately where it could be appropriately equalized and its levels adjusted professionally. Instead, what we ended up with was a recording that caught every possible background sound and left my voice sounding as though I was shouting into an empty room. [/one_half]

[one_half_last padding=”4px 4px 0 10px”]To its credit, Adobe® Premiere Pro™ has a number of filters built into its effects selection that did a great job of removing most the background noise. You probably won’t hear the air conditioner running. You definitely won’t hear the cat jumping into my lap in the middle of recording. You won’t even hear my hand bumping my coffee cup right toward the end. The tools in the software are not sloppy by any stretch of the imagination. Any deficiency here is mine. To be able to properly utilize those tools, though, would take much more time than what I have to offer the project this week.

Adding the voice over to this picture was made somewhat easier by the fact we didn’t have to follow complicated motion or animation that would have required precise synchronization between the audio and video tracks. Yes, that capability is there, but again, we would be looking at a severely steep learning curve that doesn’t fit well with the remainder of my schedule this week. There are other things to do. Such as laundry. Lots and lots of laundry. As much fun as synching a voice to animation might be, that’s just a luxury we don’t currently have.

What we have, though, is one voice over what is actually two images. This allowed us to reveal the photograph slowly so that one actually listens to the narration. I like the overall effect, but, perhaps like most people, I’m less than thrilled with the sound of my own voice. We never sound how we think we’re supposed to sound. There’s a scientific reason for that but it would take a lot of time to explain. Barry Manilow is more interesting.

The original image and appropriate credits are below.[/one_half_last]

A Second Thought (2012). Model: Kat Gulling; Makeup: Danelle French; Hair: Kelly Walsh; Styling: Jantina Anderson; Studo assistance: Brian Logan