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.

Shooting Beibhinn (with a camera, you fiend)

So, the shoot is done, and my work on 7 Minutes with Beibhinn, complete, and I must say, I'm rather proud of myself. It was tough, physically as well as everything else, considering I had got an injection a few days before, and had to hold up the weighty camera and tripod for the majority of the shots, I'll need to rest a bit before my next shoot, but that makes it all the more rewarding. I'll start from the start, this is going to be a long post so, hold on to your hats!

   Day 1 and Day 2:   
I arrived to the bar in a timely fashion, allowing me to get everything ready for the shoot. Stephen and David run a tight ship, so I knew there would be no messing around.

(Well, a little messing around).

We stowed our gear in the backstage area, and I set up the lights, while the rest of the crew set up their respective equipment, and we got to the standard practice of testing out shots with the sound guy as a stand in until the cast show up. And show up they did. We were set up to get the first shots, the small speed dating segments, immediately.

 

 First Lighting set up.

These first few shots were very similar: Static over the shoulder shots on the level with a key, back and fill lights, then a simple reverse of the shot. While the shots were similar, setting them up meant moving the lights to a new location each time, which meant moving all of the plugs, and the tables. I decided it was best to have crew members stand in as subjects while we blocked out the lighting, so the actors wouldn't get restless. My technique for each of these shots was to close the tripod legs, plant it roughly where I wanted it, set the exposure and white balance, then hit record, lift it into position, and signal to David that I was ready for action. The most difficult thing about these shots was keeping the camera from canting to one side, I had to keep an eye on the lines in the shot and use them as anchor points. This would have been made much easier with a proper counterbalance system for the camera, or a shoulder mount.

This shot of the event announcer was a bit more tricky. Besides the actor fumbling with his lines, meaning we need quite a few retakes, he was quite animated while he talked, I had to anticipate and follow his movements. I found it became easier with each take, and the subtle movements gave life to the shot. Afterwards, we filmed a shot of the crowd from his perspective.

Later on,  we did some more shots with camera movement, including the focus pull I mentioned in an earlier post, some quick zooms, a simultaneous zoom out and pan (which required 2 people on the camera), and some detail shots to use as cutaways. After the shoot, we transferred the rushes to Stephen's laptop while we were still in the bar and reviewed some of them. Looking good!

Tune in next time of part 2 of the 7 Minutes with Beibhinn shoot. I was going to put them all in one but this post is long enough as it is!

Twist that focus ring!

The 7 Minutes with Beibhinn crew and I spent the guts of the day testing lighting techniques and one specific pull focus shot for the upcoming shoot. I must say, it's been a helpful workshop. I was a little bit rusty on 3 point lighting, and trying to get two separate sets of people lit up for the one shot is easier said than done, but a bit of practice really helped, and I feel like I understand lighting a bit better now too. I also got to know the camera better. I was already pretty solid on most of the settings, having done my research, but repeating that focus pull shot gave me a feel for the focus ring. We found that using markers on the ring with this particular lens was actually quite unreliable, as it responds differently based on the speed you are moving the ring and yields different results each time, so I held on to the camera for a while after the workshop and got a feel for it. We tried the focus pull a few different ways, and found it worked best if I did it myself, mounted on a tripod, so we decided we'd just go straight for it on the day to cut time.

The Bello Bar

So yesterday I went with the 7 Minutes with Beibhinn Crew to check out their location for the first scene, 'The Bello Bar' in Portobello. It was pretty much a standard recce, we spoke to the manager, took some photos and got a feel for the place. It's quite a big place, there's a main bar area with a sound booth, a lounge, restrooms, kitchen, a band area and a backstage area. Plenty of space for hiding lights and camera movement, electrical outlets everywhere, really, it's an ideal location. Aesthetically, there's a very nice colour palette, and the soft furnishing make it feel intimate despite the space. I'm looking forward to shooting here.

The lounge

 Band area (with blue lights)

 Backstage

Bar area

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.