The Museum of Moving Image

A few days ago I had an obligatory opportunity to visit the Museum of Moving Image. I was pleasantly surprised with my findings, not that I thought it would be boring or anything, it was just better than I had expected. I participated in a number of hands-on demonstrations which happened to be very informative and fun. I can defiantly say that each demonstration had taught me something new, but the one I was most fond of was looping. Looping is the process undertaken during post production that enables you to improve the sound quality of dialogue. Many of the lines in films must be looped for various reasons, such as poor sound quality, dubbing in foreign languages or to make something sound more authentic. I knew of looping before but had no idea how complicated it could be. During the demonstration I was in a sound booth watching a scene on a screen and listening to the lines of a particular character (I chose Babe). After watching the scene I had to recite his lines matching the movement of his mouth. It sounds pretty simple but it's not. It was difficult to speak in-sync with the character and it took me a few tries. Granted it has to be easier for the professionals but I can only imagine how frustrating looping can potentially be for an entire movie with multiple characters. If you ever find yourself at the museum I also recommend one of the animation demonstrations. You rearrange various objects and record a picture of it. This process is repeated hundreds of times but when played back it's a clip. I made a short clip about frogs doing flips, anyway it was very exciting and I think the museum was a great experience.