During our Audio Project 2, we encountered a number of problems that we had to over come. Once we received the e-mail from the single cam media group, we decided that we liked the brief and that we’d like to arrange a meeting with them to discuss a possible collaboration with them. In this first initial meeting we didn’t realise they were already behind with the script and had only just done a story board as we thought that this was the stage they were supposed to be at, it was only until after the meeting that we realised they were behind after discussing the meeting with our tutor. We should have realised this at the time as this was just beginning of a project that was full of delays.

When we eventually realised the group was behind, we had already agreed that the collaboration would go ahead and that Shane Bailey and I would work with them, we asked for a schedule from them. When we received the planned schedule we believed that timing wouldn’t be an issue. It then dawned on us a month later when timing soon became an issue when we first started filming on the 28th of February instead of the planned 18th of February in the schedule.

I do feel that I wasn’t very prepared when it came to the whole on location recording process. Before this, I saw myself as someone who would take on the majority of the post production as Shane had past experience in on location recording, but soon realised that between the two of us the on location recording would be shared between us. With only practise before filming with on location recording and operating a boom pole, I wasn’t very confident in doing the on location recording and didn’t want to jeopardise the audio we’d be using in the post production stage, as only I know too well, is something that we definitely didn’t want to happen, so Shane took charge for most days with the process, as I filled out the tracking sheets, and I relieved Shane of recording as and when he needed and took over then and also the day he couldn’t attend due to a funeral.

We received a Marantz that seemed to pick up a lot of background noise, even at minimal levels, with advice given over the phone from a member of media loans; we were still unable to get rid of this quite hissing noise being picked up by this old style Marantz. This is evident in the final mix down of the film.

Delays only got long as we only filmed on location in Scunthorpe 3 days a week, as opposed to the planned 5 days a week, as after the lead actress was already hired, no one had asked her about her availability and it turned out she could only do a handful of days a week, one week she couldn’t make any days, so that week was almost a write off as we could only record a handful of scenes that just included the lead actor. A couple of the days the actress could attend, Shane and I couldn’t attend, but filming had to go ahead without us being able to record the sound on location with time being limited due to the lead actor having another job in the up coming weeks and with filming already being later than scheduled, so the producer took over the sound recording process for these 2 days and the editor logged the tracking sheets.

The delays soon started to show as the main bulk of the filming finished in Scunthorpe on the 28th of March, 18 days later than originally planned in the schedule which was the 10th of March. This now meant we were over 2 weeks behind in editing. While we waited for the scenes to be returned we began producing some music and television ideas that we picked out from the script. This turned out to be a good thing as deadline was fast approaching and we were still unable to start the post production process as the editor had no finished scenes for us. With the editor being behind in the editing of the scenes, we suggested that we would like the scenes as and when she completes them, as we were edging closer and closer to the final deadline. By the time we received the first couple of scenes, we were within 2 weeks of the deadline, and we only received scenes 6-7, out of 37, which we completed by us the day we were given it. We then had to wait until we received a few more scenes. We received about half of the scenes and managed to get time in the sound theatre with just over a week until the deadline on Tuesday the 30th of May. After 2 days of post production we were told that the editor wanted all post production for the film to be complete by Monday the 6th of May, giving us less than a week to complete the whole post production process for the film, even though we had asked for 2 weeks minimum. We managed to finish all the post production for the scenes by the 6th by booking out the second sound theatre over the bank holiday weekend.

As mentioned earlier we had problems with a Marantz picking up an unusual amount of background noise, coming out as a hiss. We then also noticed the days we was unable to film on location that the producer recorded, the levels were very low meaning once gained, the background noise was also made louder. Although we tried several techniques to get rid of this hiss in the post production process, we were unable to this successfully, although we feel with the timescale we had and limited funds, we could have been able to get rid of this background hiss that we feel severely brings down the quality of our final mix of the film.

Thursday 18^th April

Received Scene 6-7

Scene 6-7 – Consisted of, creating the sound for a war film, a football match and a fighting game. Recorded Foley for such things as the high heel footsteps and keys, added sound effects when it was not possible to record. Then mixed.

 

Tuesday 30^th April

Received the rest of the scenes

Scene 9-12 – Consisted of creating a “girly” style ringtone and re-syncing most of the on location recordings. Recorded Foley for clothe movements, added sound effects such as the crackle from the fire.

Scene 17-20 – Consisted of re-syncing most of the on location recordings

Recorded Foley for cupboard door closing in bath room

Scene 23-24 – Consisted of re-syncing most of the on location recordings and re-recorded the frying of the eggs

Scene 26-29 – Consisted of re-recording a bath filling up, replacing several door closing sounds. Recorded Foley for clothe movements as we took out all on location sound out over the bathroom scene

 

Wednesday 1^st May

Scene 9-12 – Consisted of recording Foley for such things as opening and closing the back door, pouring orange juice into a glass, locking the front door with a big set of keys. Then mixed.

Scene 17-20 – Consisted of  more re-syncing of most of the on location recordings, creating a short 2 second TV clip as Harry turns the TV on then almost straight off. Recorded a urinating onto a pregnancy test type sound and the zipping of his jeans. Then mixed.

Scene 23-24 – Consisted of re-syncing most of the on location recordings and placing in the recorded frying of the eggs. Then mixed.

Scene 26-29 – Consisted of re-syncing most of the on location recordings, replaced all sound from bathroom scene including the running of the bath, all spot effects, grunts and sighs. Dialog recorded very low (as neither Shane or I could make filming so the producer recorded this day) so we attempted to EQ out background hiss with not much luck. Edited dialog to make more sense.

Scene 1-5 – Made notes for next session

Scene 32-35 – Consisted of re-syncing most of the on location recordings. Placing a high pass filter on parts such as the walking down stairs and opening and closing of the car door as it was very bass heavy

 

Thursday 2^nd May

Double checked scenes 6-7, 9-12 and 17-20, bounced them down and handed bounced down audio to the editor.

 

Friday 3^rd May

Scene 30-31 – Consisted of recording Foley for the first 33 seconds of the scene as no audio was recorded. This included taking a the sound from a previous scene of our actress in bed, then recording Foley for her reading, shutting and putting down her book, moving and moving back the lamp, sighs and breathing

Scene 13-14 – Consisted of recording spitting a mouthful of water into a glass vase to re-create the sound of someone throwing up.

Received Scene 23-37 – These scenes were cut together differently to the scenes that we had previously been given as the editor thought the pace needed quickening, so all previous re-syncing had to be done again and added extras such as Foley and sound effects had to be taken from previous sessions and put into this scene 23-37 session

 

Saturday 4^th May

Wrote and recorded music for the intro of Scene 1-5

 

Sunday 5^th May

Scene 23-37 – Continued to make finishing touches to these scenes. Consisted of re-syncing on location audio then added sound effects needed from previous sessions and mixed.

Scene 21-22 – Consisted of re-syncing the on location audio. Added in the recording of the doctor’s answer phone message and adjusted the EQ on it to sound more like its coming from a telephone by taking off the low and high ends and adding a slight boost to the mid.

 

Monday 6^th May

Scene 1-5 – Consisted of recording the Foley for the bedroom scene, which included a zip, a tie, clothes rustling and a clock ticking. Added the 2 ringtones we created at an earlier date into the scene. Recorded music for the end of scene 5 (Made sure it lasted a little longer than the film so it would overlap into scene 6). Then mixed

Scene 23-37 – Added a slightly different version of the music we created for the end of scene 5 at the end of scene 37

Scene 15-16 – Mixed

Scene 13-14 – Consisted of deleting previous progress and started again with new film. Added news report, sick Foley and a TV click on. Found some royalty free music that resembled a children’s TV show from www.freeplaymusic.co. Mixed and handed all remaining scenes to the editor.

28^th February – 28^th March

The on location recording process took a total of 12 days recording in Scunthorpe spread over 4 weeks. The equipment we used for this process was a Marantz, Sennheiser shotgun microphone, a boom with a pistol grip, an XLR cable, and headphones.

We encountered several issues that we had to over come when recording on location that we had to over come. On the first day, after about an hour of recording, we noticed that if we listened carefully we could hear the heating in the headphones, so we had to make sure the heating was turned off every day when recording in the house from then on, but apart from that, the first few days passed with no problems. One of the issues we first encountered was recording out side. There were a few outdoor scenes, but they were all particularly short in length, but it was near impossible to record outside as the microphone picked up any hint of wind, rendering the audio practically useless. This was also the same for any scenes that we had to record with the bath running. We decided not to even record any scenes with the bath running as we felt this would just be a waste of time and decided to do all the sound for this in post production. For a couple of the days of on location recording we received a Marantz that seemed to pick up a lot of background noise, even at minimal levels, with advice given over the phone from a member of media loans; we were still unable to get rid of this quite hissing noise being picked up by this old style Marantz. This is evident in the final mix down of the film.

We only filmed on location in Scunthorpe 3 days a week, as opposed to the planned 5 days a week, as after the lead actress was already hired, no one had asked her about her availability and it turned out she could only do a handful of days a week, one week she couldn’t make any days, so that week was almost a write off as we could only record a handful of scenes that just included the lead actor. A couple of the days the actress could attend, Shane and I couldn’t attend, but filming had to go ahead without us being able to record the sound on location with time being limited due to the lead actor having another job in the up coming weeks and with filming already being later than scheduled, so the producer took over the sound recording process for these 2 days and the editor logged the tracking sheets.

I have several shared roles in the project with Shane Bailey.

For this project I am required to make sure all equipment is booked before planned on location recording days, making sure we have a Marantz, Sennheiser shotgun microphone, boom pole with pistol grip, a suitably long enough XLR cable and headphones. Record all location sound and log tracking sheets explaining what audio was recorded for each file on the Marantz. Carry out all audio post production, this includes, cleaning up the dialog, recording Foley, adding required sound effects and producing music.

 

Individual research

 

– Chion, M (1994) Audio-vision: sound on screen. Colombia University Press

Higher Education

– Carlsson, S. Film sound

Available from: http://filmsound.org/

– Bordwell, D. Thompson, K (2008) Film art: an introduction. New York London McGraw-Hill

 

For this project we are required to produce all the music for the film, which includes producing “a simple original soundtrack”. This is the one part of the project I was worried about as I had never produced music for a film, and knowing the importance of music to film, I wanted to make sure we used the right techniques to intensify the emotion of the certain parts of the film where music was going to be placed. Before producing the music, I carried out further research on the importance of music and how it is used to intensify emotions.

 

– Juslin, P. N., & Sloboda, J. A. (Eds.). (2010). Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications.  New York: Oxford University Press.

– Parker Tichko. Do tempo and pitch modulation elicit emotional responses in music. WordPress.com

Available from: http://parkertichko.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/do-tempo-and-pitch-modulation-elicit-emotional-responses-in-music/

– Peay, P. (2004). Music in film: Soundtracks and synergy. Wallflower Press

 

Monday 28th January

As told in the meeting a week ago, we received a schedule for the whole development, filming and post process. This process would give us 2-3 weeks to complete all audio post production for the film. In the previous meeting, we had asked if we could receive a picture lock at least 2 weeks before the final deadline for us to complete the post production to the highest standard possible.

Week 1	14th Jan – 20th Jan	• Roles confirmed• Idea Finalised• Research into both roles and area of subject• Create digital logo for Ellipsis Productions
Week 2	21st Jan – 27th Jan	• Script Development• Multiple Platforms (website, facebook) to be created• Proposal Completed
Week 3	28th Jan – 3rd Feb	• First Draft of script to be completed
Week 4	4th Feb – 10th Feb	• Location scouting and Actor auditions • Gathering of any props
Week 5	11th Feb – 17th Feb	•
Week 6	18th Feb – 24th Feb	• Mon & Wed Filming
Week 7	25th Feb – 3rd March	• Filming
Week 8	4th March – 10th March	• Filming• Footage uploaded
Week 9	11th March – 17th March	• Film/Edit
Week 10	18th March – 24th March	• Edit
Easter	25th March – 31st March	•
Easter	1st April – 7th April	• Edit
Easter	8th April – 14th April	• Edit
Easter	15th April – 21st April	• Edit
Week 11	22nd April – 28th April	• Edit
Week 12	29th April – 5th May	• Final piece to be burnt onto disks• Paper work finalised
HAND IN	MAY 8TH	• Hand word in