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.