Tag: Audio Production

PLANNING – Location Selection and Recce

13421070 / / 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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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.

SUPPORTING – Director’s Audio Guidance

13421070 / / Supporting Material

The original document comprising the directors guidance for reference material, music and audio for ‘George’, annotated with impressions of the songs by the Audio Supervisor. The latter part is a request for paperwork for their submission.

 

SUPPMAT - Directors Audio Guidance

ROLE DIARY – ‘George’ Early Planning and Liason

13421070 / / Audio Production, Process Management, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

Our group agreed to work on the film ‘George’ roughly three weeks ago, and the main priority over this period has been to work with the film crew to solidify a shooting schedule which will enable us to properly cover the requirements for location sound for the project. This has been largely achieved by liason between myself and the director as single points of contact for managing our respective teams, and we now have the dates and our equipment and availability confirmed for shooting and location recording.

We also insisted that a rough schedule for post production be agreed, which has enabled me to plan and book facilities we will require for post well in advance.

Since we are required to score, compose and record the music for the piece as well as managing location recording and all post production in a relatively short timeframe, I am aware we should begin work on music and atmosphere prior to the beginning of filming as the schedule is tight. After receiving some basic guidance from the director on her requirements and an early draft of the script, we arranged several meetings with the crew to thrash out some more specific plans for the film’s audio.

The first part of this process was the discussion of the themes and motifs deriving from the story and script, and to what level these can or should be represented in the audio. In this case, the film addresses loss, sadness, institutionalisation and the rights and wrongs of judging others.

We were also informed that the director required ‘a lot of music’ which – practically speaking in the context of a short film, means ‘more music than not’ – and that this music should be rooted in a ‘classic’ score utilising acoustic instruments and tones, but should retain an unsettling, electronic edge. It is immediately apparent that this will constitute the largest and most challenging aspect of the project if we are to create the music to high standard, and that the 7 week timeframe for completing the entire project will mean we must begin the composition almost immediately, and before even basic rushes of the picture are available. This is unfortunate, and was specifically flagged as something which can cause problems by professional music supervisor Lol Hammond in a guest lecture to the AUP contingent this year, but is unavoidable if we’re to complete the job on time.

To this end, we requested further reference tracks and films from the director, and attempted to get to the heart of what works for her about these pieces. Since it is difficult to convey complex ideas in music and sound we worked to simplify these ideas and looked for ways to bridge the meaning the director intended to convey into music.

The information collected during this process allowed us to set about constructing a basic outline of our audio plan with reference to the script, roughly split into the areas of music – foley – atmosphere, whilst also taking the opportunity to document as many of the ‘physical’ (translating roughly to foley – atmos – dialogue) aspects of the script as possible, and arranged all this into several rough planning documents, with each group member concentrating in a particular area as dictated by their chosen role for this project. We checked a number of these ideas over with the director in conference as we worked.

This process of discussion and feedback enabled us to create rough outlines of the arcs of the audio components of the film which we fed back to the film-makers at our final panning meeting a week before shooting commences, which in turn will enable us to begin work on our contribution as early as possible.

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KEY POINTS – 

How decisions pertaining to overall artistic direction were made, and why. – Contribution + Role

  • To manage the post-production workflow and contribute substantially to the sound design, construction and editing of the piece.

Process of liasing with client and discovering their requirements. – Process Management

  • 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.

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Guest Lecture – Bryan Rudd – Project Case Study – 19/10/15

13421070 / / Guest Lecture

Bryan Rudd used this lecture to take us through his experience constructing a 5 part radio drama for BBC Radio 7 in 2007 to demonstrate a method by which we might present the details of our own project’s and the learning outcomes we achieve whilst carrying them out.

He reflected in detail on the problems he encountered stepping into the project at the 11th hour, the decisions he took to enable it’s completion and why they were taken, and how some of these translated into the positives or negatives of the piece as broadcast.

A key point, given the high pressure nature of the project he described, was deployment of effective project management and Bryan demonstrated how the constraints of the project and it’s brief effected the direction of research and decision-making, and how this was used in-turn to inform creative decisions such as recording locations, perspective choices and edit selection.

He also highlighted a couple of errors in the final product’s audio and explained his view of the judgement calls or pressures which led to them being missed in the final quality control process.

Given that my role of Supervising Editor in my group’s semester A project is similar in some respects to the multi-role Bryan adopted for this project – in that it entails key creative decisions, project management and research to fulfil both a brief and the artistic vision of the director and that project itself is relatively ambitious given it’s short time-frame – I would expect the case study he discussed to have more relevance than simply a demonstration of his reflection on the subject.

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