Boom!

Isolation, consider yourself thoroughly mixed. Before I start though, I'd like to give a quick shout out to my homies, the shortcut keys. They really are the best thing since sliced bread, in fact, I'm going to go ahead and list some of my favourite ones:

ctrl + c = copy

ctrl + v = paste

ctrl + x = cut

ctrl + z = delete/undo

ctrl + Shift + z = redo

ctrl + click = select multiple

ctrl + a = select all

ctrl + s = save

ctrl + d = duplicate clip

ctrl + Shift + s = save as

ctrl + Shift + n = new track
ctrl + f = fade in/fade out/crossfade

alt + mouse wheel = zoom

Shift + mouse wheel = horizontal scroll

alt + click (solo, mute, etc) = apply to all tracks

alt + click and drag (plugin) = copy plugin and settings

numpad 3 = quick record

Windows key + click and drag = scrub audio

That list is far from comprehensive, but those are the ones I believe everyone using Pro Tools should know, they really speed things up twofold, threefold, even. Could you imagine clicking mute on 20 tracks one by one? I've seen people do it, and it grinds my gears. Sorry, I won't rant!

Anyway, on to the actual editing process. My first priorities were naming tracks, and deleting the doubled up audio from Final Cut Pro, making sure my work space was as simple as possible. I then moved on to more complex and specific tasks. I set the grid to frames, which is handy for doing things like syncing a jump cut with the picture, but it's also useful to have a grid so things like automation can be matched between tracks exactly.

Here, you can see how I've faded between the yellow and green tracks at the top using a standard equal power fade, as it is much less noticeable than the equal gain variety, and is completely seamless if done right. Some clips require much larger fades, so using the checkerboard method is preferred, to allow you to quickly experiment and find the correct fade length, and giving you more control over what sounds get cut out.

In this picture I am beginning the process of EQing out an unwanted frequency, in this case a refrigerator hum was in the background. I would begin by combing through frequencies with a 1 band EQ to find the offending frequency. If the frequency was prevalent over multiple harmonics, I would put a 7 band EQ on, and figure out the lowest of the offending frequencies, or "fundamental frequency", then cut out all integers of that frequency to completely remove the unwanted sound. I find intricate work like this is greatly aided by headphones.

Once I had all audio fixes done, as well as the little bits of Foley work that were needed, and the sound effects, like the gunshot (which I downloaded, along with some others, royalty free, from here), I was ready to move on to the final mix.

First, I turned the master down so that nothing was peaking, and there was plenty of head room. Then I simply listened back, watching the levels, setting things that should be at the same level to match, boosting anything that should stand out. I then panned everything that needed to be panned according to its position on screen. It's quite an intuitive process, and should definitely be done on speakers. It's also good practice to listen through with eyes closed and correct anything that sounds out of place. After this I boosted the master so that the loudest sounds were at an acceptable level, and bounced it out.

I have no doubt that Shane and James will want me to change a few little bits and pieces, but, I'm really happy with it. I got it done just in time and with no lapse in quality.

The time has come, now, MIX!

Just thought I'd give a quick update, I've finally got my hands on an OMF with synced sound for Isolation, after spending the past couple of days syncing and doing some very basic mixing in Final Cut Pro. It took the guys a long time to get to a point where they're happy with picture lock and won't be changing anything. Brilliant, I can finally get to work! James has also got some royalty free music that he really likes, so they don't need me to compose a score, though I said I might elaborate on the short pieces of music with something similar if I have enough time over the weekend.

Here's a picture of the session, with files freshly imported from the OMF. The movie file is a very compressed .avi, I did this for a number of reasons: I don't need a high quality video to mix sound, it saves space, but most importantly, it leaves more computer resources for Pro Tools to run smoothly without any delays. You'll notice how I've 'checkerboarded' the audio clips (in FCP). This is to make it easier to create smooth transitions and fades between clips, which can be further helped by increasing the handle length when exporting the files from FCP. You'll also notice how every clip has a duplicate underneath, this is due to the way Final Cut handles mono, I'll be deleting the duplicate tracks. One final note is the stream of green and red clips at the top. These are the camera audio files that I left in because I knew there was a few scenes towards the end where they were actually really clear.

Here, I've created some new stereo tracks, and bussed the highlighted clips to the 'Music' track, which is set to record its input. The reason for this was to collapse the layered music clips into a single stereo clip, and avoid having to create multiple music tracks for a short piece of music. It's just streamlining the workflow really, but when tracks become too jumbled up, it can be a nightmare.

False start and rough cuts

The worst thing about editing sound? The wait. You've got to wait 'til the film has picture lock before you can do any mixing. Sure, you can take note of some of the sound effects you'll need and go out to record them, start working on ideas for music composition, and other little bits and pieces, but the meat of the work doesn't come until the end. Adam decided to take it upon himself to sync up the sound for Who's the Mother, which was all well and good, but I wish he'd let me know he was doing it, I would have given him the sound report sheets, and it would have significantly cut the time it took him. Too late now... I did get most of the sound for Isolation synced though, only to be informed that they had started working on a different sequence and didn't take any of my synced sound, so I'll have to do it all again. A bit frustrating and inefficient, but once again, nothing can be done now. They said they'll hand it over to me for sound sync and mixing once they've achieved picture lock, so I guess I'll wait it out and keep working on The Ghost Recordist.

We also showed off our rough cuts the other day. I'm really impressed with how all of the films are shaping up, Remembering Yesterday is my favourite so far, it's really quite moving, and very artistic, so I must congratulate Paddy, Colin and the crew when it's finished. I'm not so happy with how The Ghost Recordist was received. It's not even halfway finished yet, so we weren't expecting scares, but laughs were just about the worst reaction we could hope for. We were reassured that it was just because of James' hammy acting (which we had planned to fix with some ADR), but still, it was a little disheartening. We got some good feedback on other areas of the film, but the general response was that it's hard to judge without sound, as it's such an integral part of the plot. Listening to the class's feedback on Isolation and Who's the Mother helped too, I know what issues I'll have to fix when I get to the mix.

Sound Isolation

^^^ Get it? Cause that's what you try to achieve when designing a sound studio, and it's also the name of the film? I crack myself up sometimes. But I digress, this is a post about my production sound role in Isolation, and the last of my college shoots for the year, hurrah!

Standing around while everyone else does the work.

I set out into the field wearing my jacket with many pockets to house my many supplies, wellies and a bag and clipboard for the sound log. Sound for this one wasn't too tricky, especially considering I was used to the location from shooting the promo, I already knew most of the things to look out for. Having said that, we did run into some major annoyances. The neighbouring field had a modern "scarecrow" that fired off four blank gunshots every 30 minutes, and ruined many a take. The field is near to an airport, so there were planes abound that day. At one point a boy racer halted our filming for a good 30 minutes, as he sped up and down the adjacent road and caused an awful ruckus. Very rude.

Glad I brought plenty of batteries!

A couple of things I had to keep in mind on the shoot were: wind direction, and keeping wind noise consistent by keeping the mic pointed away from wind if possible, the motorway in the distance, which I had to avoid pointing the mic towards at all times, my footsteps in the grass, and of course, consistent levels and boom handling noise.

Close Miking at campfire.

The next day of shooting was more of the same, but this time with a campfire. I made sure to capture a wild track of that straight away, because I knew the sound would be needed in post to portray the illusion that the fire is there in the shots where it isn't.

The final day of shooting Isolation involved the shots of the main character shooting tin cans with a rifle. We used a pellet gun to hit the cans, and I was to add the gunshot in post. I placed a pellet inside two of the cans to add a rattle when they fell, giving the illusion that the gun pierced the can. Unfortunately, I had to leave the set for the last couple of shots, so I left the boom in the capable hands of Stephen.

And that's it! Shooting finished. I'm happy with the sound that I got over the past 3 days of shooting. There were lots of ruined takes due to disturbances, but I took note of them, so we'll know which takes aren't usable. Most of the shots have no dialogue too, so it shouldn't be too difficult to swap out a bad sound take, even if it needs a bit of Foley. The sound design for this one is to be more minimal than the promo, but it should be fun nonetheless. To finish, here's a photo of me posing with the boom pole, recording nothing useful whatsoever:

Triumphant.

Who's the Mother?

So, yeah, you'd think I could come up with a more creative title than that, but you'd be wrong. We finished shooting Who's the Mother yesterday, and I must say, I had a blast. I went in, full of confidence from being sound mixer for a short film (The Donor) over Christmas, and from the previous two successful shoots. I really learned a lot from working with a professional crew on The Donor, about effective mixing and boom swinging, but also about dealing with issues in the most efficient way. I decided to shoot this one in 24 bit, and keep my levels around -18 this time around, because the extra headroom never hurts. There were two stills cameras on set for the shoot, and a total of 670 photos. A bit excessive, maybe, but at least I'm spoiled for choice! I even took some of them in between set ups.

The first scene was in Coolock library, and Lesley Ann had booked the location with sound in mind. We were due to start shooting an hour before the library opened, so no pesky crowds of people making things more difficult than they needed to be. Luckily enough, a few people arrived while we were packing up, so I chose this time to record some nice stereo library ambience.

This was the best one with me in it. Yes I'm hugging the boom pole.

 I kept the boom moving throughout the shots, focusing on each character as they spoke for maximum clarity. I found that Jay had a loud sounding voice; the microphone picked him up clearer than the other characters even when it wasn't pointed at him, and Conor was softly spoken, so I had to adjust to this early on. 

Tightening the boom pole.

Next we moved on to Lesley Ann's place, to shoot the improv scene for the end of the movie. I had definite concerns about this one, as the characters were sitting all the way across a fairly large room from each other. In a normal situation I'd focus on who was on camera for a given take, but since the lines were changing with every take, I would have to capture them all anyway. If I had known they were improvising an entire scene I would have suggested bringing another mic, but I had to work on intuition alone.

The next day, we shot outdoors, which posed the usual problems; cars, aeroplanes, noisy people. Luckily the scenes were both in relatively quiet areas and it was a beautiful day, so it wasn't all that bad. We shot in and around a pharmacy. There was a tracking shot which meant Niall and I had to take off our shoes and work together to follow the actor around the room. We then moved to another outdoor location, in Clontarf. For the extreme wide shot I crouched behind a car near the actors.

(The one on the left, I'm there right now)

Proper boom technique.

We shot in Mount Temple for our final day, and I must say, it's a great spot.

I just really like this photo.

We had to unplug the vending machines, and there were still some people wandering the corridors, but all went well on the day, no major mishaps. All in all, I'm really satisfied with the production sound. The shoot was a lot of fun, and I think there'll be a lot to work with come post production.

And that's a wrapple.

Calm before the storm...

Wthe the 7 Minutes with Beibhinn shoot done, I can now start freaking out about the next three weeks of shooting, starting with The Ghost Recordist (Or Echo, as Niall would like to call it, I don't know, we might have to have a vote on that)... This is going to be intense. I haven't mentioned yet that we've finally secured Rodrigo Ternevoy as our 'Mikael' after much deliberation. We've also decided that my house is the most viable place to shoot the final two scenes, we were offered another place in Longford, but it's way too far logistically. We need a sound studio, and my bedroom is halfway there, we also need a room that's a blank canvas to use as the oratory, so we're using my mam's room, with her permission, of course. For our exterior, Shane has agreed to let us use his granddad's house on the condition that we don't go filming inside. So, everyone has their scripts, call sheets, contact sheets, shooting schedule, lunch is being made, I just hope I haven't left anything out. We meet in Shane's place at 10am, wish us luck.

In other news, Who's the Mother is up the following week, and it seems they're having trouble procuring an actor too. I haven't seen the final script yet, but it's the least of my worries now, I'm sure they'll send it out soon. Lesley Ann has talked to me about the soundtrack for the film, I though some acoustic guitar music a la Juno would be nice, but we're going to talk more about it in post. James has also been giving me some examples for the Isolation soundtrack, he cited some of the score for Book of Eli, as well as this Dark Ambient stuff as examples. He also talked to me about the atmosphere they were going for. The script has changed a lot since the promo, and they've removed all horror elements of the film, so the sound design will have to change accordingly. It seems like it's actually going to be easier on me, so I'm not worried.

Shooting Beibhinn again

Previously on 7 Minutes with Beibhinn, our hero was shooting a film, and he still is... Okay, not meaning to confuse the narratives here, but this is indeed a continuation of the last post.

   Day 3:   
Shooting the party scene on Thursday was a bit slower to start than the previous two shoots, largely due to the location, which took a lot of looking at maps and calling the producer to find. We arrived, scoped the place out, set up, and found ourselves waiting longer than expected for the actors to arrive. It seems they had trouble finding the place too, good thing this was night shoot. On the plus side, we had time to test out the majority of our shots and have a coffee, and after a quick run through when the actors arrived, we were ready to go.

The first shot, on the balcony, was troublesome for lighting set up. With no way to put a light behind the actors, their dark hair blended into the night sky all too easily. I tried to rectify this by opening the shutter more but it blew out the highlights on their faces. Adding to this was the trouble of positioning; I found that the best place for one of the key lights was outside the window to the left, and the gusty wind meant someone needed to hold the light at all times. The shot did turn out nicely though, the actors stood out well on the dark background (except for their hair), and there were some nice lights in the distance that I could achieve a bokeh effect with if I positioned the camera just right.

For this shot, the trick was lighting the characters properly, but showing no shadows on camera. It took a bit of experimentation, but I eventually got there. I put the lights high, bouncing the back light off the ceiling, and the camera low, which meant getting a good depth of field so as to keep the bottles at the bottom of the shot out of focus.





Despite the delayed start, we finished up just a little after we had anticipated (though I still missed my bus...). The most difficult shot of the day was a tracking shot, where Brian walks into the apartment. Without a proper steadicam or shoulder mount, it was really difficult to keep the camera level for this one.


   Day 4:   
There's not so much to say about this one (there aren't even any pictures!). The day went incredibly quickly, the shots were all static mids and MCUs, using the same lighting plan as the promo. All I really had to do was make sure the composition and exposure was good. The daylight was on our side once again, and things went swimmingly.

So, that about wraps it up for the 7 Minutes with Beibhinn saga. I really learned a lot about the shoot, and am way more confident with a camera than I was when I first went in. I personally think I did a good job too, apart from a colour balancing issue, all my shots were pretty solid. I was glad David was keen on keeping it simple, it meant I wasn't way out of my league.