Guest Lecture – Ken Blair – 30/11/15

13421070 / / Audio Production, Guest Lecture

Ken Blair is a sound recordist and recording engineer who runs BMP sound recording. His company deals with recording classical, jazz and acoustic music.

His background is in the relatively controlled environment of recording studios and began for him 25 years ago – He compared the technicalities of the studio with the much more precise sessions in the world of classical recordings, with these recordings tending to be of multiple instruments recording straight to stereo. This requires what might be considered a distinctly old school approach of achieving a good balance of sound at source and live mixing on the way into the recorder which leaves very little room for error on the part of the musicians or the engineer. He also explained that recording portably in venues suitable for classical ensembles often requires unconventional problem solving in constructing a suitable workspace and cable runs.

Ken discussed how important musical academia and the ‘grades’ system is to his business model, as the alterations to the system each year offer the opportunity for regular, repeatable business. He also focussed some of his talk on the more mundane day to day work for his business, and moved on to dispense some advice about presenting yourself to potential employers and clients. He made the point that CV’s are often overly work-based and that it’s worth adding a little character to the front page rather than overloading it on skills and experience, which was particularly useful to me as I was in the process of updating my own at the time and recognized that tendency in my own.

– 263 Words

 

Guest Lecture – Katia Isakoff – 23/11/15

13421070 / / Audio Production, Guest Lecture

Katia Isakoff is a composer, producer, mix engineer, studio owner, academic and prime mover in the Women Produce Music organisation around which, along with the wider issues facing women in the music business, this guest lecture was centred.

She described WPM’s role as one of promotion and collaboration of female music producers, and Katia used several examples of the way in which even very big name female record artist’s (Bjork is an example) work on their own records is often marginalised in favour of the male collaborators in the eyes of the wider industry and the public.

WPM also exists to help eliminate the difficulties in sourcing female producers and academics for academic purposes. Katia explained that the academic aspects of music production mirror the commercial industry with very little female involvement as students or tutors. The industry itself has made some moves to present a changing picture but is currently projecting fairly obvious tokenism to hide ‘business as usual’, and that it lacks any meaningful institutional change – “The old doors are considered closed,”.

Her position is that the key to addressing the imbalance is not to focus on highlighting it or blaming people for it, but to concentrate on finding solutions and engendering real change.

– 206 Words

Guest Lecture – Dan Shepherd – 16/11/15

13421070 / / Audio Production, Guest Lecture

Dan Shepherd is primarily a radio producer and provider of training and teaching for people working in radio. He runs Far Shoreline Productions.

This guest lecture had Dan showing us examples of some of his more notable radio features, and giving us some insight into the production of these.

The first was an audio ‘feature documentary’ of an Australian train journey, recorded on numerous tapes in the pre-digital era for the BBC. He made the point that certain sounds on the journey were evocative, and capturing these enables the producer to build the world of the experience for the listeners…Interviews with train passengers both tell a story and evoke a sense of place, which is critical to documentary of this type, as well as a sense of the journey itself.  This is so important that some of the sounds used were taken from the library at the expense of authenticity, as it wasn’t always possible to collect the audio to a sufficient standard for later use.

This sense of place is particularly relevant to our film project this term as we’ve been consciously trying to collect as much ‘authentic’ foley sound from our sets, but these have often been unusable due to external factors like traffic noise necessitating their recreation which, in turn, has sometimes led to a better ‘fit’ with the picture than the authentic sound would have achieved. This is different from radio, where sound is all, but the idea of communicating a sense of place is similar.

For Dan, the key differentiating factor with feature’s is their enabling of depth and scope of approach. A ‘good feature will always be greater than the sum of it’s parts’ – a travelogue becomes more than that by telling a story and capturing the experience of others. Where news and current affairs programs condense data, feature documentaries allow the exploration of different dimensions of creativity around an idea.

Dan’s discussion of a second program on ‘cut-ups’, created for Radio 4, touched upon the importance of making your feature for a specific audience. This particular show featured a presenter working in an explanatory role as the Radio 4 audience were likely being introduced to the idea of the mash-up for the first time. For Dan, the question became how to make the subject relevant and interesting for a Radio 4 audience and this along with the prescribed format conventions when working for the BBC narrowed the focus of the show as it was edited. Thinking about this, it occurs to me that our directors for the Semester A film project have not referred to their target audience at any point, and that this would be a useful discussion to have with them.

– 446 Words

RESEARCH: Supervising Sound Editor

13421070 / / Audio Production, Individual Reflection, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

“Good sound design enhances the listening experience, but doesn’t get in the way of the story.”  – Eloise Whitmore

My role for the production of George is that of a Supervising Sound Editor. This is a hands-on role with involvement in the cutting and editing of dialogue, ADR, foley and special effects, as well as the oversight of the ‘deliverables’ for the film such as the various mixes required by the director, and making sure the mix meets any stipulated technical specifications. Responsibilities also extend to the sound budget, the work-flow and priorities of the sound team on the mix, and appointing and managing those responsible for each aspect of the post production editing.

 “On the average A-picture the first post production sound person brought onto the film is the supervising sound editor, who not only directs and coordinates the creative contributions of the post-production sound staff but also must handle all the related administrative duties like scheduling mixes. The tendency is to bring the supervising editor on earlier and earlier. The main reason is the changing demands for sound in early screenings. This practice has engendered the greatest changes in the logistics of post-production sound in the last two decades,” – (FilmSound.org)

Liasing with the artistic leads on the film (usually the director) is critical to the role, and supervising sound editors often double as sound-designers, directing the overall artistic audio tone of the picture to a greater or lesser extent. Again, this aspect of the role is relevant to ‘George’, as I am partially responsible alongside my colleagues in translating the wishes of the director into a functional sound-script and ultimately into a working soundtrack.

This makes the role very variable based on the scale of the film in question, and in the case of ‘George’ – a zero budget student-film – I felt the creative liason, sound design and the hands-on editing would likely be the most relevant aspects. ADR, for example, was unlikely to be required for a script which has ended up containing very little dialogue yet had engaged the services of a full location audio team, and the audio team personnel and roles were largely dictated by our modules requirements.It also became clear during preproduction (based on the original institutional deadlines for the work, at least) that the audio work on this film would need to be directed carefully and, as the evident lack of concept and storyboarding came to light, the liason with the director particularly would need to begin as any possible headstart on the more complicated aspects of the sound design would be necessary in order to be able to condense relatively large requirements for a piece into a short period of time.

This is somewhat at odds with some conceptions of the role in the wider industry as it tends to begin at picture lock and the beginning of post production for films with little budget, but this is usually due to the constraints of said budget. Larger budgets enable longer contracts and more responsibilities and involvement for a supervising sound editor, and whilst ‘George’ has no budget it was possible to begin work on it early due to the institutional context.

Forward planning and preparation is absolutely critical in audio work of all stripes and especially in the relatively complex world of moving image with it’s many interlocking roles working in a production line sense towards the end product. In the context of my post production role, this is important when considering the necessity for ample source material to work with in the edit phase, and I wanted to participate in the location recording of this project partially to make sure we collected plenty of useful wild-track audio for later use in our atmospheres. This documentary on the film Australia opens with the Supervising Sound Editor / Designer Wayne Pashley discussing his work on the film, the set of which he was able to visit in order to capture the location sounds because ‘…there’s nothing like it’, referring to the unique nature of the sounds of the landscape in Australia. Whilst the locations for ‘George’ are not in anyway similar to that production, I think it would be useful to collect ambience for later use in a similar way.

I’ve examined some of the work of a couple of well known supervising sound editors, one that is relevant to George and another who concentrates mainly on sci-fi and the fantastic, which is my preferred own specialism, in the form of Richard King. The work he directed on Christopher Nolan’s Inception is a personal favourite, and I would love to try to weave some of the nuance of his work on that film into this one in some small way, specifically the discussion of ‘transitioning’ the audience into a dream sequence from this interview –

‘…we also altered the pitch of all the real-world sounds when we transition from level to level (much like the watch ticks change speed in the first sequence). So all the sounds slow and change and become a different sound in the next sequence – interior jet roar becomes traffic when we transition to the first dream level, for instance.’ – http://designingsound.org/

This interview also supports the notion above of recording as much as possible on set, though not at the cost to the impact of the audio, as King points out:

‘…It’s so important to get the sounds which you feel and imagine could be there. There’s always a lot of manipulation afterward of course, but recording new raw material is so important. I’d love to record everything every time, but the most important thing is to find the sound which provides that feeling you’re looking for regardless of where it comes from.’ – http://designingsound.org/

Richard King is soon to receive an MPSE career award for his contribution to cinema audio.

Mark Mangini’s work is discussed in this post covering the influence of Green Mile on the sound design of ‘George’.

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 – 1000 words

KEY POINTS –

Overview of supervising sound editor role – Research, Individual reflection on learning and team role.

  • Assess the technical requirements of a production to inform the selection of appropriate tools, techniques and processes.
  • Examine and implement professional practices in their production work in relation to professional contexts, clearances, ownership, copyright and commissioning.