Post-Production Editing and Effects
A combination of several digital editing programs were used to edit the footage and sound for Woyzeck. Since the footage and sound were recorded separately, they were edited separately and then combined. New York City-based Brendan Padgett and collaborator Kirk Quinsland worked together to edit the sound, using Apple's GarageBand software and Finale's music composition software to create the soundtracks. GarageBand was used to combine performers into one track when they had been recorded separately but were singing, for example, individual parts of a trio. GarageBand was also used to modify pauses, reduce feedback, layer music under singing and speaking, change volume levels, and add repetitions. Finale's digital musical instruments were used to supply the instrumental music for Woyzeck, with the notable exception of the organ music, which was performed and recorded live by Quinsland. The church bells were also recorded live. Finale was a great help to Woyzeck not only in aiding Padgett's composition process, allowing him to avoid painstaking hand drawn notation, but also in providing Woyzeck with a full range of orchestral instruments that would have been well beyond the reach of our budget had we attempted to use live musicians.
The footage for Woyzeck was edited using Apple's FinalCut, Apple's iMovie, Apple's QuickTimePro, Adobe's AfterEffects and The Foundry's Keylight plug-in for AfterEffects. These software applications were used to log and capture footage; crop scenes; create the chromakey effect of dancers on a transparent background; modify hue and saturation in the footage to achieve a grayscale effect; adjust transparency, scale, and position of footage in a layered format with animation thus allowing the combination of performers filmed separately into one scene; add masks; and create doubling and tripling of performers in a scene.
It was important to be able to use a chromakey effect to show performers on a transparent background so that during the installation, the performers appear in the audience member's AR goggles in such a way that it creates the illusion of the performer standing next to the audience member in the installation space. I chose a grayscale effect for the footage for both aesthetic and practical reasons. Due to budget restrictions, Woyzeck was filmed on MiniDV tape, which does not allow for as clean a chromakey effect as can be achieved when using film stock. A grayscale effect is more forgiving than color in terms of the limitations of the DV format and the result is footage that looks more polished. Additionally, a grayscale color theme was central to my design of the installation space, intended to reflect the stark nature of Woyzeck's world.
The ability to layer and animate footage was vital to Woyzeck, since we had filmed performers separately whenever possible, even in cases when characters appear in the same scene. As I have explained, it was advantageous to film performers individually since that allowed us to achieve better lighting conditions and therefore a better chromakey effect. Layering footage during the editing process created the illusion, for example, that two performers standing next to each other had actually occupied the same space when, in reality, they had not. The ability to copy and then layer footage, thus creating doubles, was important for creating uncanny effects for both the grandmother and Woyzeck characters. The grandmother was conceived as a chorus, and was voiced by three performers, but danced by only one performer. Editing effects meant the one dancer could be copied and appear as three identical dancers. Doubling and layering effects were used with the Woyzeck character to create a sense of his existential fragmentation, despair, and panic.
Throughout the editing process, Padgett, Quinsland, and I posted sound and video files on an internet server to facilitate the timely sharing of large files. Many collaborative revisions were necessary to precisely synch specific movements in the choreography with moments in the music and dialog.
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