Category: Individual Reflection

FINAL SUMMARY

13421070 / / Audio Production, Contribution, Individual Reflection, Learning Outcomes, Process Management, Project Overview, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

Reflective Summary – G.Bailey – Production of ‘George’ 

SUPPMAT - Group Feedback

The image above documents the positive email feedback we received on my group’s involvement with the production team during the production of George, which speaks directly to the achievement in my  first learning outcome for the project pertaining to the role of Supervising Sound Editor – To successfully manage the audio team’s interaction with film’s director, editor and producer on a practical and creative level, and ensure the audio team’s work is delivered on time and to a good standard – and one of my personal learning outcomes – To successfully manage a three person team in delivery of the entire soundtrack to a new piece of visual media efficiently.

Interaction with the client was one of the most critical parts of the process from my perspective as well as the most fraught, due to the two seperate directorial directions the film required and the production problems around the time of the original directors departure. The fact that we delivered audio for the film under complicated circumstances which met and exceeded the client’s expectations in some areas on time and on target (with respect to the extension granted us) whilst having had to guide the direction of the audio for the film with little collaborative support from the creative lead in it’s early stages, and still received universally positive feedback suggests I successfully managed the interactions with the relevant personnel. I dealt with a great number of logistical and technical problems for both the media groups involved throughout the production, generally made the final call on decisions about our priorities when I was able to do so, spent a great deal of time trying to keep spirits up on all sides as problems mounted, and attempted to encourage the other members of the audio team to look at things I felt they were perhaps missing (like trying to clear the director’s music choices via PRS, rather than taking an easy, copyright free, option). In managing the process here, I learnt above all that I should be more expectant of the kind of problems thrown up throughout because, whilst I classed them initially as unusual difficulties, according to the industry sources I consulted they appear par for the course in film production.

To judge the initial direction of and maintain the consistency of the overall tone of the audio team’s work on the piece, and liase with the director to ensure this is concurrent with their vision of the piece – This outcome is more difficult to judge because the initial direction of the audio for the piece was not necessarily the direction that was requested of our work after Christmas, which is not to say I misjudged either directors requirements as far as I’m aware, and no one aspect of the audio particularly jars with any other. There are plenty of tangible examples that stemmed from the requests of the two creative leads – audio devices influenced by Green Mile, the use of the specific radio track at the behest of the second director etc – in the final artifact that will testify to the attention to directorial requirements paid throughout both the pre production and production process. Of scenes in which I led the sound design, I feel we did everything we possibly could to bolster the story without overstepping the boundaries created by the picture, even though this was fairly frustrating as we could clearly see the initially strong idea being buried under the production problems, and I consistently pushed for the audio dimension to be given as much headway as possible to help tell George’s story, even as the picture was hampered in doing so. This approach was also, ultimately, in keeping with both director’s vision for the piece.

To manage the post-production workflow and contribute substantially to the sound design, construction and editing of the piece – Getting down to the nuts and bolts of the post-work aspect of the Supervising Sound Editor’s role, I can cite my overall contribution as evidence of my success here. I put a lot of time and effort (at least 60 hours of editing and foley work alone) into making a slightly confused final edit as good as it could audibly be across the various disciplines of audio post-production work, as well as dealing with much of the final quality-control decision making and the crucial final mix and master stage, all under considerable time pressure and with sometimes weekly changes to client requirements. The detail of some of the managerial and technical challenges are documented elsewhere in this blog, though it is worth mentioning the main one from an editing perspective was the lack of information forthcoming about changes from the films editor until we pressed home this information’s importance, and both my team and the client are apparently proud of or happy with the technical aspects of ‘George’ I’ve had a hand in. I also feel this level of involvement in the film satisfies my personal intention to have a good degree of creative involvement in the conception and direction of the soundtrack for the piece. There are plenty of ideas and work I can call my own in the audio of this film.

To manage the delivery of the soundtrack at various stages of the production along with relevant paperwork, to the director and producer – The various deadlines for all the groups have been met consistently throughout the process, and all paperwork completed as per the supporting materials of this blog.

Moving on to personal learning outcomes not particularly related to my official ‘role’ within the production I will say only a few words as I would hope they are self-evidently fulfilled by information furnished elsewhere in this blog –

To expand my knowledge of the theory and audio techniques deployed in the films influencing ‘George’, and in drama as a genre more generally – I refer to my research posts here, and ven though I at first thought the big budget reference points that were furnished to me for the films sound design would be difficult to find relevant material in, I was surprised at the amount of useful information I was able to glean from them through researching their creators.

To contribute extensively to the practicalities of creating and recording music for, and of recording location sound for the piece – This outcome encompasses my only real regret about the production in that I simply could not find the time to get involved in the composition of the music as I would have liked to. This is not to detract from the music in practical terms nor to say I didn’t have a hand in okaying the direction of the original compositions alongside my contribution to recording and mixing them, merely to say that as far my fairly ambitious outcomes are concerned this one was a bridge too far. As I more than fulfilled this requirement in terms of my first experience of location audio work and learnt a great deal from my colleagues in that matter, 50% will have to be enough here.

Conclusion – critical appraisal of the film as a finished piece:

Group Aim

  • To create and deliver the soundtrack to the film ‘George’ by Lucy Norton, Charlotte Hughes, Shaun Standring and Angelin Selvanathan.

Group Objectives: 

  • To create an effective musical score and soundtrack that suits the themes of the film and supports the story in a manner concordant with the picture and the preferences of the director.
  • To successfully manage and conduct location recording to capture useful dialogue and atmospheres that will form the basis for some sound design aspects of the picture.
  • To create believable and relevant atmospheres and sound effects in post-production, and edit these into a full soundtrack using foley, location recordings, composed music and replaced dialogue where applicable.
  • To final mix the project and deliver it at a good standard.

Watching ‘George’ with a critical eye I cannot find an area where we have spectacularly missed the mark on any of the above objectives and we certainly fulfilled our main aim. I would make the following observations however –

Dialogue is intended to tell ‘the human story’ of the film, and the revised script’s lack of it is severely problematic in a film intended to tell one man’s story. My feeling is it fell to the music in George to attempt to make up for this lack of emotion, and as such I would have liked to have been able to increase the complexity of our compositions and recording techniques to make this more effective. This was an opportunity to prioritise composition we arguably missed in the early stages, though without picture to compose to it would have been very hard to do.

We found ourselves in the dreaded position of having committed detailed audio work to picture only to have the editor change the cut. I knew this wasn’t desirable as a method of working, but the pressure to get SOMETHING underway in the audio realm as the production lost coherence and fell further and further behind was overwhelming. This introduced a huge degree of inefficiency, necessitating spending some hours resyncing scenes, but was necessary in order to avoid having to condense the entirety of a month’s worth of work into a short period in January after picture lock was completed.

The axing of various complex audio ‘show-stopper’ scenes explains the ‘peaks and troughs’ of the audio dimension to my mind. Our more abstract sound plans were not always built upon similarly complex and layered foundations, and I think this means the sound in George is often found leading the image, but elsewhere feels somewhat strait-jacketed by the image as we were forced to use more ‘parallel sound’ than we would have liked by the picture. One could argue it’s a little inconsistent dynamically in this sense, and this will teach me to pay more attention to the core aspects of film atmosphere’s rather than getting carried away with the areas in which the team could show off.

In conclusion, production of George was a great learning experience and worked as an opportunity to really get into coordinating the audio side of a film production and problem-solving the inevitable issues, as well as providing ample opportunity for plenty of nuts and bolts audio production work. However, after making it the focus of our daily lives for almost four months, I can honestly say I’ll be happy if I never have to hear George weeping again and that I’m looking forward to seeing parts of the university which aren’t the Sound Theatre once more too.

– 1749 words

05/11/15 – Project Management – ROLE DIARY: Shoot Days 1 + 2

13421070 / / Audio Production, Individual Reflection, Learning Outcomes, Process Management, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

03, 04, 05/11/15 – ‘George’ Set Dressing and Shoot Days 1 and 2 – 

Production

The team has successfully completed the first two days of location audio recording for ‘George’ at an indoor location in uphill Lincoln. This has comprised roughly 16 hours of work time, with Rory Hunter taking the lead role as location supervisor and with Alice Asbury undertaking most of the boom op work. I have seconded Alice on the boom when required, and spent my time collecting secondary perspectives for action and dialogue, and wild tracks.

This has mostly been achieved with a combination of a PZM boundary microphone and a Rode NT4 stereo condenser, with the former recording into the main Sound Devices mixer and the latter managed by myself and recording into a Zoom handheld unit, as this enabled me to mix, manage and monitor my own audio without interfering with the main team. With these, I have consistently attempted to deliver a room / distance tone coloured by the set environment to specific action and dialogue for the picture, to enable us to have multiple audio perspective options for key scenes in post without having to build each one from scratch using FX or new foley work. An A/B example of our dialogue recording can be heard below, featuring the same scene from our “up close” boom mic and a second gleaned from a combination of secondary sources.

In terms of mic placement, I’ve found myself inverting a good deal of the technique used in studio work to avoid or cut out reverb or room-tone because that’s precisely what I’m after, and thus sticking a Rode NT4 into corners, out of windows, in corridors, stairwells and under beds…Having never handled a stereo mic or worked location audio before, this entire process was a trial and error learning experience for me. I spent much of the setup day prior to shooting listening to the rooms and testing mic positions relative to them as the production team organised the set, as well as capturing ‘base’ atmospheres and specific foley or SFX from the local environment.

Obligatory photos of the shoot –

Distant perspective - Living RoomStereo running waifsBedroom from cupboard

The NT4 is a stereo mic (two capsules at 90 degrees over and under one another) and seems exceptional for ‘immersive’ captures and was often placed a considerable distance from the action, often in another room altogether. Whilst this did away with a couple of moments where I might have captured a ‘live’ stereo aspect to the action, it tended to create unusual and slightly unbalanced stereo atmospheres as the reflections travelled from room to room and struck the pair of mics relatively unevenly. I judged this would be more useful to the team later, as what little action takes place in ‘George’ can easily recreated if necessary, but that these various perspectives would be harder to obtain.

We used the boundary mic to take advantage of the exclusively stone and wood floors of the set-house – we located it under furniture for concealment, under the floorboards themselves at one stage, or either directly on the floor or taped to the underside of a table or bed. This really enabled a pre-synced and consistent ‘chunkiness’ to footsteps, furniture motion and prop motion, which I expect will come in handy later. The mic-heavy ‘live’ approach above was arrived at through a group decision as a method of getting us ahead of the game with some of our requirements for foley and atmospheres for the picture.

Logging the collected audio properly when using a second recorder was naturally critical as it lacked the convenience of being recorded in sync with the 663 audio, though this was somewhat complicated by the haphazard nature of the picture teams workflow. This necessitated annotating each days shooting scripts carefully with filenames etc, and rapidly editing and renaming these after each day’s recording was wrapped.

Team and communication management

Whilst our team’s audio outcomes were positive, it has been reasonably difficult to manage our interactions with the film crew.

Prior to shooting we had pushed for a ‘dry run’ style test phase in order to be able to establish some idea of the workflow on set, but this was not possible. The knock-on effect of missing the opportunity to meet, brief and dry-run together as one team was a rather optimistic shooting schedule which in turn meant that some important shots were dropped or moved to later days as they were beyond the time that was realistically available, and this despite a surprising number of ‘got-it-one’ takes. The time issue was exacerbated by a habit of shooting in ruthlessly sequential order, necessitating the technical setup for audio and video for shots in the same scene to be unnecessarily rigged and de-rigged. The audio team variously offered the director advice on these matters but were ultimately required to defer to our employer’s method of working.

The location audio team are making communication on set a key issue going forward. As well as the issues outlined above the production team appeared reticent to inform us (or indeed their actor) of schedule changes or even when they had returned to work after lunch, and maintained noticeable distance from us. This made for several rushed set-ups on our part and we’re keen to build a more cohesive team approach for the rest of the shoot.

All told, these first couple of days have gone reasonably well from the perspective of results. The dialogue and action collected is clear, and the multifaceted perspectives collected at source should help minimise the amount of foley work necessary in post production. However, I realise that I will have to revisit the set at night for further collection of atmosphere audio as traffic noise was a key issue with this location, a fact we had established during recce. The general audio atmosphere’s for the piece during these scenes are intended to be quite important and as such it’s necessary to collect some ‘noisier silence’, which simply cannot be done during daylight hours or indeed with a working crew present.

1000 words

KEY POINTS –

Technical process for ‘secondary sound’ on-location recording – Contribution + Role, Individual reflection on learning and team role, Application of skills and conduct in production.
Learning Outcome – To contribute extensively to the practicalities of creating and recording music for, and of recording location sound for the piece.

‘Artistic’ and overview decisions for secondary sound on-location recording – Process Management, 
Learning Outcome – To have a good degree of creative involvement in the conception and direction of the soundtrack for the piece.

Team management and interaction issues – Process Management, Professional Practise.
Learning Outcome – To successfully manage a three person team in delivery of the entire soundtrack to a new piece of visual media efficiently + To successfully manage the audio team’s interaction with film’s director, editor and producer on a practical and creative level, and ensure the audio team’s work is delivered on time and to a good standard.

 

PLANNING – Sound Script Elements + Reflection

13421070 / / Audio Production, Individual Reflection, Planning

The sound script we devised and communicated to our client contained a number of ‘key’ audio scenes. This post will discuss a few of these and how they panned out or didn’t, as the case may be, and as such the post will make considerably more sense if tackled after you have watched the piece.

One of the main motifs of the sound design in ‘George’ was intended to be the sound of the outside world encroaching on the protaganist’s home as a metaphor for his level of anxiety or distress at any given point in the film. However, we rapidly discovered it is very easy for audio devices such as the sound of people passing by outside the walls of the kitchen to be distracting when there has been no visual suggestion of their source. In the end, we attempted to turn the constant traffic noise which plagued our location recordings (and which is, coincidentally, perfectly setup visually in the opening scene of the film and reinforced repeatedly throughout by fortuitous edits) to our advantage by using it to signify the threatening outside world encroaching on George’s anxious existence. In reflection, I think we convinced ourselves that this worked better than it did because we didn’t do enough detail work to the films atmosphere layers – whilst the outside does very much burst in on occasion, for me the question is ‘on what?’. That suggests I didn’t do enough to bring out the sound design of the base atmospheres, such as incorporating small details ala Green Mile. This is in line with Mangini’s idea of –

“…the sonic equivalent of LIGHT and SHADOW. I learned from Joe Dante how painters use a touch of blue to make white seem “whiter”. An old visual trick to give texture to something that is textureless. I extrapolated this idea to the silence of the MILE. To create silence I needed to “define” the space with little sounds that highlight the emptiness.” – (Mark Mangini).

George’s textures have plenty of shadow but not quite enough light, in my estimation.

The bread and butter scene is the most infamous of the project, and was initially supposed to be a chance for the film to hint at the dark past of it’s main character. We’d planned to refer to his previous, violent crime with the audio landscape around the slicing of a bread loaf by making the sounds associated with this action a little more visceral than realistic, and by subtly weaving the scene with screechs, yelps and whimpers in a process often referred to as ‘sweetening’. Unfortunately, this scene was axed due to health and safety evangelism on set and replaced with a shot of George buttering pre-sliced bread. We felt it would be inappropriate and off-putting to attempt to apply the same audio components to the new scene, feeling that no amount of audio work can add an undercurrent of menace to Kingsmill, and opted for the music cue becoming the focus of the scene.

Upon George’s final return to his home in the evening after the graveyard scene, we were asked to provide the sound of music being played at high volume through the walls of the house from next door (ostensibly by the teenagers who are introduced earlier in the film). We had developed a complex system of audio segues from one scene to another rooted in the idea of having ever-present music pumping through the walls, including morphing the bass thump of the beat into a heartbeat and then into a variation of our main score and a variety of interesting perspective shifts depending on George’s location in the house, as well as weaving further references into the music choices themselves, if possible. The entire plan proved unworkable as the directors failed to film any visual reference to a source for the music, and we collectively abandoned the idea in concord with the second director during post.

Finally, the BBC report playing on the radio after the opening credits was a late addition because we felt the scene was just too devoid of activity and needed something to invigorate it and give it a focus which didn’t overwhelm or detract from the very stilted visuals. Talk radio makes great audible wallpaper, and we requested and were granted use of the Radio 4 piece in the context of this film by it’s producer at the eleventh hour (though not before recording our own re-scripted version in a similar style to get around the potential copyright problem). The dialogue in the R4 piece encapsulates some of the premise of the film right at it’s outset, and very much supports the story and character development of the piece.

In reflection on these points, I think it can safely be said that no battleplan survives contact with the vicissitudes of filming and I found it necessary to be extremely flexible as some of the plans were forced to change, without compromising the overall audio arcs and themes of the piece.

– 800 words

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KEY POINTS

Planned aspects of the sound script – Planning, Application of skills and conduct in production

  • To judge the initial direction of and maintain the consistency of the overall tone of the audio team’s work on the piece, and liase with the director to ensure this is concurrent with their vision of the piece.
  • Develop creative, original, and innovative strategies within an audio production project.
  • Structure intellectually rigorous and coherent ideas to an advanced level in order to communicate ideas through the integration of form and content.

 

AUDIO CONSTRUCTION – The ‘Bread + Butter’ Song

13421070 / / Audio Production, Individual Reflection, Learning Outcomes, Research

The story of the song on the radio in George’s ‘Bread and Butter’ scene is worthy of mention as it’s an audio device demonstrating use of diagetic to non-diagetic audio, an example of which exists in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, and which was developed over the course of post-production in a way which better served the story than the original plan for the scene.

This was one of the few music cues that was supplied by George’s original director, requesting the use of Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger’s ‘Cheek to Cheek’ as the trigger for one of the characters fits of weeping, which was initially included as a nod to the movie Green Mile. The song is potentially out of copyright because it was written over 70 years ago in 1935, but as it was written for the film Top Hat there was some question as to whether copyrights could still be active, though research rapidly uncovered that Irving Berlin retained the copyrights for the songs in the film rather than the commissioning employer assuming them, in something of a landmark case. We were in the process of trying to clear this matter up with PRS when the first director departed the project.

As such, and precisely because I didn’t want the production team getting too attached to the inclusion of Fred and Ginger’s Cheek to Cheek (and because our original temp music for this scene was the Star War’s Cantina Band theme), I subsituted a temp track – ‘One More Kiss Dear’ by Vangelis from the soundtrack to the film Blade Runner – in a scratch mix I supplied to the new, incoming director before Christmas. I’d selected this track because I felt the lyric supported the story of ‘George’, it being suggestive of a final seperation between lovers.

The new director became enamoured with it, saying she much preferred this piece or something very like it to replace the original music cue and so we found ourselves trying to license a piece of music which was definitely copyrighted for our film’s use.

Initially the soundtrack used 35 seconds of the piece for quite an important aspect of the film which is very much brought to the audience’s attention. We felt that we were unlikely to get license to use the original piece in that context (and PRS obliquely agreed) and as such the music supervisor felt that constructing a cover of the piece was the best way to go. She made this enquiry to PRS, and received the following –

Prog As Completed - One More Kiss PRS Release

Our music supervisor deconstructed the track to its piano component to create a guide, and we rerecorded the song’s other instrumentation seperately. I played the bass and we asked a local vocalist to sing the version for us before I recorded and mixed the minute or so of the piece we’d created, of which we ended up using 28 seconds, and which is available in this post. Furthermore, our use of the piece in the transition from diagetic to non-diagetic audio can be construed as a nod to the opening of Shawshank Redemption which uses a very similar device.

I learned three important things from this whole process:

“For many composers, working with a temp track is the creative equivalent of a straightjacket. After weeks or months of cutting the film to that amazing John Williams theme, the director has usually fallen in love with his or her temp score and nothing else will do.” – Trueherostudio.com

First, temporary music tracks are to be used sparingly. We were warned about this phenomenon in Lol Hammond’s guest lecture and this scene proved to be no exception to the rule, but in this case I think the result was worth the effort of recording an entirely new cover of the song and this was likely a simpler process than composing a new song in a similar vein which would then have needed recording anyway.

Secondly, I think it would have been more efficient to pick up the phone and call the PRS with our requests. We were dealing with this particular cue towards the end of a very short period of post production and, whilst fairly prompt, the combination of the email turnaround time and a couple of miscommunications as we tried to clarify the situation was inefficient.

The final thing I’ve taken away from this is that Star Wars Cantina Theme can brighten up ANY scene –

https://youtu.be/boPpfiaUNsw

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Key Points

Research and contact with PRS – Planning & Research

  • To expand my knowledge of the theory and audio techniques deployed in the films influencing ‘George’, and in drama as a genre more generally.
    Examine and implement professional practices in their production work in relation to professional contexts, clearances, ownership, copyright and commissioning.
    Comply with legal and ethical codes of conduct; health & safety regulations.

Involvement with production of cover version for the soundtrack – Application of skills and conduct in production

  • To contribute extensively to the practicalities of creating and recording music for, and of recording location sound for the piece.
    To have a good degree of creative involvement in the conception and direction of the soundtrack for the piece.
    Assess the technical requirements of a production to inform the selection of appropriate tools, techniques and processes

Reflection on the process – Individual reflection on learning and team role.

  • Critically reflect and evaluate individual learning outcomes

 

RESEARCH – Naked by Mike Leigh + How This Informed ‘George’

13421070 / / Individual Reflection, Research, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

Mike Leigh’s Naked is a British, semi improvised drama starring David Thewlis. It is a favourite of mine in the drama genre, and I thought it could be useful to study it’s audio dimension with reference to ‘George’.

Most aspects of the piece are very realistically constructed, and the audio as no exception to this rule. I felt this would give us some useful pointers for the sound design of George’s static sections.

Graham Fuller, interviewing Mike Leigh, pointed out that he is ‘economical with the camera movements in his films,’, and watching the scene below we can see how audio is used to enhance the power of the actor’s performance where the camerawork simply allows it to happen. The audio however tells a different story, walking the line between enhancing the mise en scene without compromising the realism of the environments, with the objects that are active (the postcard, for example) in any shot are given a sound focus to draw attention to the actors interactions with them. The postcard signifies an aspect of the two character’s shared history in the story, and the audio is used to draw attention to this, but without compromising realism of the scene.

We attempted a similar thing with the radio in the second scene (post titles) of George. The report being broadcast from the radio (cleared for use from the BBC’s The Report on Radio 4) pertains directly to the story of our character, and slips in and out of the audio ‘shot’ throughout the scene as well as remaining tied to camera perspective.

As for further observations on Naked, dialogue is a massive part of the audio and in most cases the rest of the scene is very much subordinated to it, and it is here that it digresses most substantially from our project. What is useful however, is the way the people’s bodies are put into the scenes even when they’re not speaking through the sound of mouth movements, breathing and the general sound of the physical. Considering the fact that, as post production of ‘George’ advanced we realised that the main character’s lack of dialogue (and corresponding lack of bodily movements etc in our location takes) meant the character often doesn’t seem ‘present’ in the film, I decided we should pass over the entire film and record an extra track of these. Most of the sounds the character makes in the film are additional if they are not dialogue.

The film had no specific supervising sound editor, but it’s dubbing mixer – the person who would have handled the final mix of the various audio aspects – was Sue Baker, who apparently worked in sound design for film fairly sporadically from the 1980’s to 2000, but worked as a supervising sound editor on both Donnie Brasco and Four Weddings and a Funeral. The scene from the former below is interesting from a props / dialogue mix perspective (ignoring the music) – A sense of threat and claustrophobia is suggested by the close perspective of the moves and breathing of the characters.

– 461 Words

Key Points –

Research of the film ‘Naked’ by Mike Leigh – Planning & Research

  • To expand my knowledge of the theory and audio techniques deployed in the films influencing ‘George’, and in drama as a genre more generally.
    Assess the technical requirements of a production to inform the selection of appropriate tools, techniques and processes