Thursday, 27 March 2014

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.

Sunday, 9 March 2014

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.


Sunday, 2 March 2014

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.