Process Management – Film Audio Project – SEM A

FINAL SUMMARY

13421070 / January 27, 2016January 28, 2016 / Audio Production, Contribution, Individual Reflection, Learning Outcomes, Process Management, Project Overview, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

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

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 / January 27, 2016January 27, 2016 / 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 –

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.

20/11/15 – Project Management – ROLE DIARY: Shoot Day 3 + 4

13421070 / January 26, 2016January 28, 2016 / Learning Outcomes, Process Management, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

11, 12/11/15 – ‘George’ Shoot Days 3 + 4

Audio for two of the final five locations was collected without problem, though the project has now fallen behind schedule as shooting was supposed to complete by the end of this week due to a spate of eleventh hour cancellations which have severely impacted the schedules of both groups.

This was concurrent with the abrupt departure of the film’s director from the working group just prior to this week’s filming.

It appeared from our perspective that the outgoing director did only the bare minimum to smooth the picking up of slack for the rest of her group which directly led to them cancelling a reasonably complex location shoot, use of the location for which had been offered on goodwill and only for a limited time. Nobody appeared to know how to contact any of the key people outside of the production team (location owners, the actor etc) in her absence, suggesting that this information wasn’t shared in an organised fashion within the group to cover such an eventuality. As such, it became necessary for me to liase with the rest of the production team, and to relay information to the rest of my group as decisions were made and the schedule changed, as well as replanning our own working schedule in response and trying to schedule in some kind of useful work on the project with no picture or storyboard available.

Unfortunately, in the longer term, the loss of most of two days shooting required a large amount of rescheduling, which in turn meant it was impossible for both groups to access equipment for at least the two following weeks. This has put the production back by at least three weeks, taken us from ahead of schedule to badly behind schedule and has required an extension to our institutional deadline which has now been granted. At this time, we’re told we’ll still have a picture-lock version of the film by December 20th, giving us a month to finalise the audio in time for the new deadline on the 27th of January. We’re attempting to fill the down-time this has created constructively by getting a head-start on the music and atmosphere work required for the picture.

A positive aspect arose from the uncertainty of the situation as, in the absence of the director during the full day’s shoot of the 12th which did go ahead as planned, the workflow, communication and creativity was much improved on set as the production team split the directorial duties between them.

The first director appeared to be no longer involved with the project after this.

— 500 words
Team management and interaction issues – Process Management, Professional Practise.

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.

15/12/15 – PROJECT MANAGEMENT – ROLE DIARY – Post Begins

13421070 / January 2, 2016January 27, 2016 / Audio Production, Learning Outcomes, Process Management, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

Despite the production problems, we have still received a version of ‘George’ with all the scenes complete before Christmas, though this differs noticeably from the film as originally discussed in terms of scene and shot lengths and is not a ‘picture lock’ version as we were originally promised. We’ve already had to start the post-production process proper even though the film will still be undergoing edits and other alterations into January, as we will be unable to complete the work to a good standard if we wait for the picture lock version to begin the finer audio work, mainly due to inability to access facilities for the required amount of time now the critical period of post-production has shifted into the new year. Considering these factors myself and the team decided that some slight changes of audio direction were warranted.

Some plot devices which our original audio plan had relied upon have not made it into the picture, and the overall feel of the piece has changed to such a degree that I feel the picture now dictates the arc of our audio work much more than we had originally planned, mainly due to the differences in style of the multiple directors who’ve created it and the way these have been constructed across the film. For example, the picture is very static early on but becomes much more animated in terms of shooting style later, a result of the two different directors shooting styles, and this provides a very definite ‘arc’ to the technicality of the piece. This provides the audio the opportunity to work with this overall arc or to counterpoint it, or a combination of the two. Whatever the choice, we feel our sound design should certainly account for the fact in some way, and in doing so enhance the synergy between the audio and the visual.

Also, in referring to my original briefing and synopsis, it is noticable that several devices used in the original script for the picture to hint at the dark past of the film’s protaganist have been removed. Our original audio plans, particularly with reference to our musical score, had looked to represent this theme strongly in intending to present a reasonably ‘normal’ drama style soundscape with an undertone of dissonance. Indeed, the film overall has generally been simplified and is less rich in references to the character, which has also altered the balance of the themes the script originally portrayed.

All this meant I felt we should seek some guidance and run some new ideas for the audio past our new director as the new creative lead on the project, as well as enquire which themes within the piece were now to take primacy given the changes, and particularly to check that the mood of our music was still relevant to the vision of the piece and to their taste. As such, we touched base with the new director and the rest of the team just before the Christmas close-down of our facilities to demonstrate our work in progress and outline our plan for alterations to some of the more complex scenes. This meet was very useful with feedback on the work in progress being uniformly positive, and we used the opportunity to agree when a picture lock version of the film would be provided (8th December), and gave some advice as to what we need if further edits are to be made now we have begin the fine detail audio work, such as close foley editing. Specifically, we need the exact scene, shot, take and time information of any cuts, fades or additions to enable us to catch up with these in the context of our audio track-lay as quickly as possible.

Nominally, we have agreed to try to have the music for the piece completely recorded by the 10th of January and agreed to deliver as close to a completed film as possible by the 19th.. This leaves us a few extra days to tweak and QC our final hand-in and double check our paperwork etc.

– 670 Words

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Critical and artistic consideration of the rough cut version relative to the original audio plan – Planning & Research
Team management and interaction – Process Management, Professional Practise.

Learning Outcome –
Structure intellectually rigorous and coherent ideas to an advanced level in order to communicate ideas through the integration of form and content.

Personal 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.
To manage the post-production workflow and direct the creative contributions of the audio team as efficiently as possible.

PLANNING – Location Selection and Recce

13421070 / November 2, 2015January 27, 2016 / Audio Production, Learning Outcomes, Process Management

Location selection for George was well underway by the time we agreed to get involved but, as a local to Lincoln, I was able to make a couple of suggestions.

We decided to make George’s home a residential house which is currently empty of tenants I’m aware of. This seemed sensible because the original suggestion was a student house of one of the crew and I felt that an empty house would present less obstacles for dressing and less likelihood of interruption to the filming process, and a more controllable environment for us to work in in general. The film crew concurred with this point of view upon seeing the house, as well as feeling it was a stylistic improvement that fitted the script more naturally.

We next performed a preliminary reconnaissance of all the locations bar one, as per Grant Bridgeman’s repeated admonitions in our earlier lectures.

The sound team and I performed a reconnaissance of the house from the perspective of problems for the location audio and the obvious issue, with a reasonably busy road outside and old style, single glazed windows, was traffic noise. This noticeably worsened at different times of day, and led to us advising that the few scenes with dialogue were scheduled in the quieter periods.

The graveyard in the script was also checked over well in advance, and again suffered from traffic noise even though the shoot location itself within the context of a large site was as far from the road as practicable. We also noted the lack of cover from the weather, and the relative distance and inaccessibility of the location if the crew attempt to reach it on foot, which was being mooted at the time. Again the timing of the shoot was clearly to be an issue, as it had an effect on both light levels for working and traffic volume.

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– 300 words

KEY POINTS + LEARNING OUTCOMES

Reconnaissance of locations – Planning, Process Management, Contribution.
Learning Outcome – To contribute extensively to the practicalities of creating and recording music for, and of recording location sound for the piece.