Editiiiiing

Okay, so editing for The Ghost Recordist was, admittedly, pretty easy. We had like 12 clips on the timeline, hardly any intercutting, it was a doddle, I almost felt bad for the other groups. I guess this balances out with some of the difficulties we encountered on our shoot. Niall and James had a lot of trouble blocking out the shots in a way that flowed, that was difficult because the editing was so sparse. I think what we've got is a good representation of the style we're going for, even if it doesn't make perfect sense right now... We may need some amendments on the script for the main shoot. Anyway, major project presentations are pretty soon and I'm not quite sure what exactly they entail, I should go find out!... Okay, I'm still not sure, may need to ask in class.

Editing the sound for Who's the Mother, and Isolation, however, that was a different beast altogether. Who's the Mother was a lot of dialogue panning and fixing transitions between shots, it was time consuming if nothing else, I wish I had more time to work on it though. I had a lot of fun with Isolation. Besides the mixing of lots of wind atmos, I had bits and pieces of foley to do, which I have a particular fondness for. I could really get creative with this one too, they wanted lots of non-diegetic sounds to build up an atmosphere in the second to last scene. I won't reveal too much though, I'll leave it for the presentations.

But of course!

I never spoke of how shooting the promo for The Ghost Recordist went! I must say, the nerves hit me when we went out on the shoot, I had never produced anything like this before and I knew it was on my head if an actor didn't show up, or we forgot equipment, or the food sucked or anything at all, basically. A million things could have gone wrong, but they didn't, thankfully. I found that, once everything and everyone was on set, managing resources was much, much easier, and I felt much more at ease than the night before, and part of my job was to keep calm and be organised (or at least appear to be). I acted as a consultant to a stressed out Niall, a sort of stage hand for props and lights, a chef, a time-keeper, and comic relief. Oh, I also took lots of nice pictures.

Shane Showing Alan the art of boom swinging.

Actors between takes.

"The lonely light."

More actors between takes.

All in all, I'm happy with our two days of shooting. The last scene of the first day took far longer than anticipated, Niall and I should have thought about that one more, but other than that, everything went like clockwork, we had everything we needed, and everyone was satisfied.

The Blogger Returns

So I haven't posted on this in a while. The plan was to write a little post after each production was finished, but as you can see, that didn't happen. My excuse: I got a new hard drive and had to transfer my OS, and all my (1 TB) of data to it, which rather restricted my access to my computer for some time. Well, at least I'm no longer living in mortal fear of my hard drive failing! So now I must use my incredible powers of human memory to recall events from a whole week ago... Oh boy.

Isolation, I had high hopes for the sound design on this one. I'd thought of possible soundtracks and crazy experimental sound effects, and imagined how they'd play out with the natural ambience.

Minimalism.

That's what I was hoping for, dense but simple sound. Production sound was fairly simple for this one, the dialogue was fairly sparse, so most of the work will come in post. One of the lines peaked in literally every take, because of a fault with the level meter in the Zoom I didn't notice til afterwards, so it looks like it's going to stay distorted. James reckons it's not worth getting the actor back for one line of ADR, not for the promo anyway. I'll just have to be more careful on the main shoot, and trust my ears more than the technology. The rest was great though, I really enjoyed working on the project, stressful though it was, and I can't wait to get editing.


I knew I wouldn't have as much to focus on for Who's the Mother?, as it's quite dialogue heavy. I just made sure the recordings were clear, with the mic as close as I could get it, and the levels were good, standard protocol. Because there's so little else going on audio-wise however, the dialogue does have to be pristine, as any mistakes will be that much more noticeable. I'm hoping it's all A-OK. I would like to do a soundtrack to this one, and I'll be fighting for it. Something with acoustic guitars, similar to Juno (which is one of the film's influences, so, negotiation points). Post production will consist of a lot of mixing, so it may be a little tedious, but I enjoy that sort of thing in small doses.

Success!

My first collaborative shoot went off without a hitch, thankfully. We filmed the promo for Seven Minutes With Beibhinn over the past two days, and we didn't have a single catastrophe, which is more than I can say for some of the other projects I've worked on. Oh, by the way, David Wolfe and Stephen Fennesy's production is now a comedy drama called Seven Minutes With Beibhinn, unfortunately there were some complications with filming in the seminary. Probably should have mentioned that first. Ah well.

Everything was well organised, call sheets, shooting schedule, and top notch food. It's safe to say any potential chaos was avoided, and all was calm. The camera (Sony NXCAM) was a real pleasure to use, once I got the hang of it, the white balancing was a little finnicky at first. The zoom and focus are smooth as butter, and it's got a lot of features. The shots were mostly static and simple, which gave me some time to get back into the swing of working a camera, but at the same time, I'd love to try some more difficult ones to see what it can really do. We found that the lights cast fairly obvious hard shadows even with diffusers, so we just bounced them off the ceiling, using them as fills, combined with natural light.

So the shoot went well, I'll be giving away more detail during the presentation of course, but that's it for now. Next up, sound recording for Isolation.

A bit late to the party

Well, I realise I haven't really posted on my work experience yet, so I'd better get started. Let me first say this: Finding work experience when you've got so little is HARD, it doesn't just help to know the right people, it's completely necessary. I've asked a bunch of people that just haven't got back to me. It's in this regard I'm so lucky I go to a college with really helpful tutors. I've been offered a work placement on Leticia's newest feature documentary, Land of Amber, and having been given a peek at the rough cut, and suffice to say I am rather excited. I will of course be doing post production sound for the piece, and I'm confident I'll do a good job. More to come when I get started, hopefully soon.

Shameless self promotion

After a long and incorrigibly confusing day, we have finally selected our crew roles, and I'm rather pleased with them. I'm a part of 4 production teams (including my own), which means four presentations in December. FOUR! I can feel my hair turning grey already. I'm really glad we're working on a variety of projects though, the spice of life and all... Niall and I have also been privileged with a five star crew for our own production, and best of all, we get to boss them around =D

So the first film I opted into was Lesley-Ann and Adam's drama, Who's The Mother? as their sound guy. I wanted to work on this one because it seemed like a lot of fun, though I originally opted for AD or set designer, but I'm happy to do what I'm best at. I'd imagine the role will involve mostly on set dialogue recording, I'll probably have to be careful not to shake the boom pole around because I'm trying to hold back my laughter.

Another role that I'm really excited to do sound for is in James and Shane Davidson's Isolation. I've been wanting to get my teeth into this since the idea was conceived, and I was almost heartbroken when the role was stolen out from under me because I got the timing wrong for the meeting, but I'm back working on it fortunately. It'll be a lot of atmospheric sounds and foley work, and maybe a little ambient soundtrack, for which I will take full advantage of this:

My own slice of studio right at home. I've been gathering the equipment for this bad boy over the past couple of years, and I'll finally get to use it to its full potential!

The other production role I've laid my grubby hands on is camera man for Answering the Call, David and Steve's documentary on trainee priests in the seminary. I may need to borrow the camera for a bit of practice beforehand, I haven't done any video recording in a while so I may be a little rusty. I'm pretty handy with a stills camera though, so I think I can manage this. I'm a little nervous, but they say that's a good thing.

Double barrel post-gun...

...or something, not a very good title this time around, but ya can't win 'em all. Okay so I didn't really try, but at least it's informative, this is indeed a double post, covering 2 whole weeks of class, and maybe more! So, here we go, in chronological order (the best order):

Last Tuesday, Conor Barry came in to tell us all about the wonders of producing! You could tell right off the bat he was good at what he does, he was organised in thought but conversational in tone, he used lots of analogies and stories to aid his presentation, and gave a great many useful tips. I'm glad I was taking notes. He gave us mostly practical information and didn't go on too much about his own films, although I could tell he was excited about them. Among his words of wisdom were some keywords for the producer: Resources, control (of resources) and responsibility (and trusting those in your employ). The other two were more concepts, subjectivity and objectivity, or proving your claims of talent with evidence of experience. Conor also instilled in us the importance of marketing and distribution as the most important thing for a producer to focus on; if the film isn't going to reach an audience, why make it?

Vanessa Gildea gave us a workshop the following Tuesday, dealing with her work as a director and producer. Her talk was less informative, but more motivational and engaging than Conor's, and she takes a more creative approach to production by the looks of it, though I wouldn't say either is more effective. She told us about her role as 'creative producer' and how it's slightly more involved, and allows you to offer your opinion on the film a lot more, which appealed to me quite a bit. She also showed us her 'look book', which was brilliant, I'd almost consider making one just for the fun of it, so I'm sure it'll be a useful thing to add to our arsenal in future, especially if we make feature length films. She gave us a really nice piece of advice about documentary filmmaking too: The subject should set the tone of the film, if the subject is a person, the camera, lighting, soundtrack and overall style should match their personality.

Besides that, Niall and I decided our production company's name should be N&N's productions, and that will steal the M&M's logo... Genius! We've also been working on the script, I've got some character biographies made to help me with this. We've procured some possible actors too, but we're still deciding on our location, it's looking like we'll be making a set somewhere practical for the interiors. Right now it feels like we're on top of things, which is always a good sign, hopefully I'll be in the same mindset for my next post!

You have made a selection

The final decisions have been made regarding (some of) our film ideas, and it's time to get collaboratin'. Having been drafted for James and Shane's production, Isolation before they were even sure they were going ahead with it, I felt somewhat privileged, especially considering that particular film was the most sought after of the ten. I had also offered to work on sound for Answering the Call, thinking I could go whole hog and do sound on two productions, but it wasn't to be. So for my second choice, I'd like to work as either AD or production designer for either Heaven/Hell or Man Baby, because I really like the ideas (I think all of the ideas are brilliant), and think I could add to them. After Eleanor's workshop last week, Production design definitely seems like something I might enjoy, whereas I hadn't really considered it before.

I'm looking forward to the final crew meetings, and it seems our idea has attracted much interest, we have a selection of candidates, which is always nice. I'm especially excited for soundscaping Isolation though, audio is my passion, and I've got the know how to do a good job. I'm also nearly finished setting up my little home recording studio, so pictures to come in my next post.

Time to get Kraken

Sorry about that, bad pun, but cool picture... I just had to do it. Is it just me or is this blog becoming less formal with every post? Is that really such a bad thing? Save the formal writing skills for cover letters, I say, this feels much less like work.

So anyway, Niall and I gave our pitch on Tuesday (totally unprepared by the way, I'm pretty sure most of the class only realised the groups would be pitching together on the day), and I think it went okay. I've never been much good at selling my ideas. I know the trick is to make them seem much more exciting than they are at that point in time, with the hope that they'll live up to the pitch by the time they're fully developed, but I just can't grasp how to actually do that. Maybe I'll Google some pointers, isn't the internet great? My first idea, which we actually went with, came across well, partially because I'd had some practice the previous week. The second was just trying to shove the plot into 5 minutes, but I do think it's a good plot, but it needs more work. Maybe some time in the future.

Next on the agenda then, the full script and trailer for The Ghost Recordist. Not sure if that's actually a good title, it does the job as far as I'm concerned, but I may have to ask for some opinions. The script, I think I'll enjoy writing, but, well, I'm not a fan of trailers. I don't like revealing anything I'm doing until it's a finished product, all neatly polished and ready to be taken for what it is, but I know that's just not realistic. So I'm a little nervous about it, I have no idea how to go about making a marketing trailer, but I guess that's what the workshop on Tuesday is about. I'd better start gathering cast, crew and locations asap!

Oh, and I watched the aforementioned Berberian Sound Studio, which I really enjoyed, and took a look at a few horror shorts I hadn't seen before:
   8 Butterflies was creepy and atmospheric for the most part, some of the scenes were a bit cliché, the story was fairly convoluted, but on the whole it gave me the heebie jeebies.
   The French Doors had an absolutely brilliant premise, and good execution. The soundtrack was an odd choice though, like they got their "Horror Movie" and "Cheesy Spy Movie" tapes mixed up.
   There Are Monsters shows how some simple video editing and sound effects can make you jump out of your skin if you're not expecting it, the end could have been much better though.

A blog with me in it

So we had Production Designer Eleanor Wood in yesterday, who told us all about the various roles of a PD,  told us all about how she got into the business, and gave us some useful pointers. Until yesterday I was quite unclear as to what a production designer actually did, I thought it was much closer to the organisational role of Producer, but in reality it's much closer to Art Director, which Eleanor worked as for a number of films. Among the most universal pieces of advice she bestowed upon us were: Stay away from unions if you can help it, electricians are the bane of the filmmaker and stick to your creative ideas no matter how much opposition you come up against from your crew. All in all, it was an informative visit, and entertaining too, I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for A Thousand Times Goodnight, the trailer was fantastic.

Among everything though, she confirmed my suspicion that Dylan Moran is a legend.

I was also asked to act as sound guy on another group's film already, so it appears I'm in high demand! I really can't wait to get started with production, on other films and my own.

Not another dissertation!

So I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting another dissertation so soon, due in at Christmas? Oh god, the pressure is on. I am very glad I have my experience from last year to draw on however, I know to keep my workload spread evenly and it'll all be okay (I'm panicking on the inside).

I know I want to base my study on sound and music in horror films, but I'm not sure of a specific title yet. Perhaps something to do with clichés, and how they detract from the value, and scariness of the film, I find myself looking at Film Sound's list of cliches, and giggling and nodding at each one, so it could be a good avenue to explore. Before I nail it down though it's a good idea to research as much as I can about the topic, so here's a few of the sites I'm checking out at the moment:

http://filmsound.org/ the obligatory source for film sound, a hub of sorts.

http://designingsound.org/tag/horror/ - A good few articles on here, though not exclusively dealing with film.

http://www.soundandmusic.org/projects/sound-fear-musical-universe-horror - Some very informative videos about sound in horror films.

http://www.filmmusicmag.com/?p=11755 - A detailed interview with a fairly prominent horror composer.

http://www.lma.cnrs-mrs.fr/~kronland/Sense_of_Sound/49690139.pdf - A very detailed scientific article on how sound affects people.

Plenty of reading material there to last me, this is definitely the most import part of my secondary research. I'll update with more sources for the other parts of my secondary research, as well as anything else useful I find.

So it begins...

The year is off to a flying start. We've been assigned our partners for the year and are all ready to get our projects moving forwards. Before we start driving though, we need a vehicle, so we spent yesterday's class discussing some ideas and getting feedback, sort of like a test pitch, except I was completely unprepared and had unwittingly volunteered to go first. Oh boy. It went well though, and when it comes to pitching next week I think I'll be prepared. I've got my ideas together and fairly well developed, ready to write up, and spent some time discussing Niall's ideas with him. He's not what you'd call an idea man, but we talked about some short stories we liked, stuff from classic writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, and websites like Creepy Pasta , we had agreed to go the horror route, as you may have guessed.

As far as my ideas go, well, I have many, but two that are particularly plausible, and well developed. One of which I pitched in class, and it was quite well received. It's about a quirky sound recordist who discovers a way to communicate directly with spirits via recording equipment, but it all goes to hell... Literally. It's to be shot in a documentary style, and I was referred to a film called Berberian Sound Studio, which I plan to view forthwith. My other idea came to me in the night a number of weeks ago: A 20-something college student sits alone in his room, when his friend starts sending him unusual messages over Facebook. This turns from slightly strange to terrifyingly bizarre when he realises he can trust nobody outside of his room. The plot of this one is kind of harder to fit into a tagline, so hopefully a good treatment and pitch will do it justice.

Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to getting started on our project, and I heard some great ideas yesterday that I'll be very excited to help out with and see finished.