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.