Tag: research

RESEARCH – Mark Mangini’s Green Mile + How it informed ‘George’.

13421070 / / Research

The Green Mile was suggested by George’s original director as a film from which she drew some influence for the piece. Released in 1999 (US), it was produced on a budget of $60 million and returned $290 million, and was a vehicle for a number of big name Hollywood actors including Tom Hanks. It is a supernatural crime drama adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same name.

The sound designer for The Green Mile was Mark Mangini, a 3o year veteran of Hollywood film-making and responsible for a broad variety of films from Shark Tale to Mad Max – Fury Road. He has run a post-production sound company in Hollywood for 25 years, and is currently a Governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

“A sound designer is, simply, somebody who uses sound creatively to tell a story,” – Mark Mangini

The audio in Green Mile is grounded in gritty realism of the classic prison setting but also portrays the abstract realm of magic or the brutality of execution, and the writer / director Frank Darabont said that audio played an even more important role than usual as that dimension of his film is ‘…all about special little sounds, or even enormous sounds sometimes…that are given place in the movie,’ – (Cinema Secrets). He asked Mangini to make the ‘Green Mile’ part of the set itself a central character in the film through it’s sound design.

Taking this onboard, I tried to ensure my own approach to designing and editing the atmospheres for ‘George’ involved something similar. The house in which the character lives was designated as his ‘safe space’ by the director, and we discussed making this explicit with the sound dimension, in support of the characters story. We built peaceful atmospheres whenever George was at home and highlighted these with the sounds of the outside world trying to get in as his level of tension and anxiety increased (I discuss the outcome of this component of the sound script in this post).

Elsewhere, I decided to follow Mangini’s lead in Green Mile with my own approach to some of our foley sound design. Some of the foley in the film was recorded at the original sets after shooting had wrapped, which Mangini points out offered them an ‘…identical acoustic space’ to create in, and was recorded and directed via fibre optic link to a local studio. It wasn’t necessary to remotely record our foley, but I did return several times to the house location in George with a portable recording setup when I was unable to satisfactorily recreate perspectives in the edit, most notably the sound of kids running away outside through the walls and door of the building and footsteps on the stone flags and oak floors of the house.

“My goal through that whole sequence was to re-purpose and recycle critical sounds as clues and metaphor.” – Mark Mangini

Here’s a final aspect of Green Mile’s design which we used explicitly throughout George. Our soundtrack is woven with reused references to the characters past in exactly the same way as the flashback sequence in the film, melded with action on screen both subtly and noticably, as well as with the music track to an extent.

Moving away from Green Mile but staying with Mark Mangini and in the context of reflection on George, the following interview quote is useful –

“In other words, it’s all about the context. If a scene is working, is truly scary, just about any sound you use could work. We struggled a great deal with the lecture hall scenes and tried exhaustively to create what became illusory goal: making what was meant to be ‘real’ exorcisms on screen sound frightening. I think this was our sonic “Waterloo”. By that I mean, there is always one sound, one elusive sound, on every film where an inordinate amount of time and resources are spent in trying to achieve a goal that will never be achieved and failure is inescapable, for whatever reasons; the filmmakers don’t know what they want or can’t decide, the action on screen doesn’t carry it’s weight dramatically, etc. As is typical in many post-sound endeavors, we accepted what we had as the best we could do and called it a day.” – Designing Sound

For me, the picture dimension of George does not manage to carry it’s weight dramatically in some key scenes, and reviewing the final product I get the impression of the soundtrack as somewhat ‘out on it’s own’ in trying to convey the themes in the script at times. Our own ‘sonic waterloo’ was probably the graveyard dialogue track, which doesn’t quite work in terms of perspective despite at least three different approaches to try and fix a problem which essentially arose from problems with our location audio and no potential for access to the actor for ADR after the fact. In the end with this, we accepted we’d done our best and moved on as described above.

– 850 words

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Key Points –

Research of the film ‘Green Mile’ and it’s sound designer Mark Mangini – 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

Reflection on specific aspects of the completed sound design of George informed by reference material and research – 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.
  • To manage the post-production workflow and direct the creative contributions of the audio team as efficiently as possible.
  • 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.
  • Individual reflection on learning and team role.

RESEARCH – Dialogue Editing For Motion Picture – J. Purcell

13421070 / / Research, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

The original script for George contained a great deal more dialogue than the final piece as it is presented, but I’d already embarked on the excellent Dialogue Editing For Motion Pictures – A Guide To The Invisible Art by John Purcell before these changes took place. Some of the information I gleaned from the book was useful whilst working on George, nonetheless, and I’ve precis’d a couple of things I learnt along with how I used them below.

Dialogue panning + depth

“People interact differently with dialogue than with music, sound effects, backgrounds, or Foley. We’re both more critical and more imaginative with dialogue, and when it’s panned, we’re not the least bit forgiving,” – (Purcell, 2008, 174)

Purcell dangers of panned dialogue above, and admonishes us to resist the temptation of ‘hyper-realism’ in the sense of placing the dialogue where the character is in the shot, simply because it doesn’t work for the audience (accurate, but annoying to be precise). He also points out that panning the dialogue will also pan any room tone on the dialogue, which is incredibly disconcerting, and that it can have seriously effects when mixing for theatre’s where the audience may be sat in a large area where it can alter the experience of the dialogue for different quadrants of the stereo field.

I have stuck to the mono/central rule with the dialogue editing in George except on one occasion when a line is spoken off camera. This line is slightly panned to the position where we presume the speaker would be, and I did this because the line seemed to clash strangely with some very intricate foley work shortly before it that places the emphasis on another characters movements.

His concept of ‘depth’ in dialogue is also useful. He refers to scenes in which every sound is given equal weight as ‘flat’, and applies this to the dialogue specifically. For him,  it is about keeping the tracks around the dialogue clean and uncompromised by stray effects which may remove the breathing room of the voice, and about dulling or brightening the overall tones it is surrounded by at crucial points to bring the nuance to the fore. This can, for example, enable you to focus the audience on one character in a group. He also believes that micromanagement of faders is crucial to achieving this, that compressors and limiters cannot make up for these and that a proper dialogue premix is crucial. I didn’t apply this level of work to the mix on George because there simply wasn’t enough dialogue (or enough problems with the dialogue) to warrant the investment of time by the end of the process.

The telephone split

“…another convention in film language allows us to hear both sides of the conversation, as though we were listening in,” (Purcell, 2008, 180)

Purcell’s step by step guide to editing a telephone split was useful to the answer phone scene in George for one small nugget of information. He points out that it’s necessary to edit the two dialogue-sides of a scene with two sets of room tone, which I’d never considered before.

This came about naturally with this scene in George (which is not strictly a conversation anyway), since the tone at the end of the line is literally recorded in another room and it’s designed to sound as though it’s coming from the phone in George’s hand to an extent.

Production FX (PFX)

Another useful industry concept introduced to me by this book is that of ‘production FX’. These are all the sounds which exist on the dialogue tracks but are not dialogue, and the book goes on to give an overview of the practicalities of using these as distinct from the standard procedure for the effects tracks. It is important, for example, to seperate these if a film is intended to dubbed into another language, as it saves a later mixer having to open the film’s dialogue stem audio. Many of these techniques can also help to wring the best out of any effects the picture editor may have added to the version the dialogue mixer receives, which are also often classed as PFX.

George’s track lay utilised these techniques, with PFX built into a subsection of our SFX section.

– 700 Words

KEY POINTS

Precis of specific points from book on dialogue editing – 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.

RESEARCH – Mix Requirements + Final Mix

13421070 / / Audio Production, Contribution, Learning Outcomes, Research, Role - Supervising Sound Editor

“Mix Stems are used to create the final print masters for film and high-end TV productions…If done correctly, mix stems will combine at unity gain without any adjustment.” – (Shepherd, Pro Tools for Video, Film and multimedia)

Our client did not specify any particular requirements for their files or mastering levels, so I suggested we deliver a single stereo mix and component mixes of dialogue, sfx and music tracks, to which they agreed. We also agreed with them to mix these using the BBC technical guidelines for audio which seemed appropriate for a drama of this type. An alternative would be to mix for theatre’s, given the intention to potentially show the piece at film festivals,or to the technical specifications of an average film festival. However, few of the major festivals I researched (including BFI’s and Canne) offer any specific technical guidance on audio mix levels, and it is difficult to mix for a large room without calibrating your mix environment to do so, and I’m unsure of the calibration in the LSM Sound Theatre.

Though my colleagues were still dealing with some of the specifics of the construction of our audio later in the piece, I spent much of our final two days on the project master-mixing each scene up to these standards and finessing the transitions. Again, this is not an ideal situation but we’d set ourselves the personal deadline of end of play on Saturday 23rd January to have completed the construction and mix of our hand-in version of ‘George’.

SUPPMAT - BBC Guidelines

The BBC guidelines above informed the mix of ‘George’, along with a passing reference to the EBU R128 recommendations, also mentioned above. Each master auxiliary – music / dialogue / sfx / foley – had it’s own set of automated processing, which was generally lightly compressed and / or limited in some cases. This fed another gently compressed master bus compressor. I’ve tried to be careful with the compressors as George’s audio is very dynamic – some scenes have little in the way of loud action, others are much more heavily layered – creating a ‘blocky’ mix visually. I wanted to retain this dynamic artistically, because backed off atmospheres and near-silence helps maintain a sense of stillness in some scenes, but balance this with the technical requirements above, specifically that nothing peaks above 6 PPM, and that the focus points of the mix remain roughly within the levels above.

Here’s a visual representation of the music mix structure in protools, blue tracks are the music components, orange the aux subs, leading to the burgundy master fader –

IMG_0361 IMG_0362

The final point in this process came after mixdown, with a thorough mono / stereo check of the final stereo wav before the audio was delivered to the director.

– Circa 400 Words

 

Key Points –

Interaction with the director to discover delivery 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.
    Application of skills and conduct in production

Research and application of delivery standards in the mix – Contribution, Research

  • Comply with legal and ethical codes of conduct; health & safety regulations.
  • Assess the technical requirements of a production to inform the selection of appropriate tools, techniques and processes.
    Application of skills and conduct in production

Conducting the mix – Contribution

  • To manage the delivery of the soundtrack at various stages of the production along with relevant paperwork, to the director and producer.

 

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

ROLE DIARY – Reflection on Picture Lock and Delivery

13421070 / / Audio Production, Individual Reflection, Learning Outcomes

Picture lock for George was originally scheduled for 4th of December and to be completed 12 days later ready for hand-in on December 16th. We have received the final cut of the picture on the 12th of January, leaving us 8 days to complete as much of the audio as possible in time for the film groups hand-in on the 20th, and with another 7 days in hand to polish up for our own hand-in on the 27th. Whilst this is, on the face of it, a reasonably similar timeframe for completion, it is complicated by the disruption to our workflow caused by the extension and the Christmas break, the fact that our advance facilities bookings assumed the earlier completion date which means it became more difficult to access the facility we have committed to technically, and the incoming pressure of organising our impending Semester B studies. This provision of multiple versions of the picture for different deadlines at different times was then further complicated by the unexpected request for a copy of the film with most of the key audio devices included and as much of the music completed as possible on the 16th, to enable the media production group to critique the film for their paperwork.

Taking the audio for a 16 minute film from 50% complete to around 85% complete in 4 days with limited access to facilities is obviously nigh-on impossible to achieve to any reasonable standard, especially given that the length of titles and credits (requiring hefty alterations to music compositions) were not made available until the day of delivery of picture lock. Due to the client-employee relationship of this particular project there was no disincentive for the director to begin requesting mixdowns earlier and earlier as soon as the edits were complete, all of which further interrupted our workflow and took the priorities on the project out of our hands. We managed to provide what was requested largely on time, and I was prompted to consider this situation as it would pan out in the real-world and the possibility of some kind of contractual stipulation on clients for recompense or renegotiation in the case of overrun’s of this type, as the complications here have impacted our planning for Semester B work and a similarly protracted project would likely cause problems for a schedule of work. I ran the question of whether such a thing is ever formalised past Grant Bridgeman by email for the benefit of his experience…He pointed out that this situation comes to pass on ‘almost every job’, and that he deals with it on a case by case basis judged on existing relationships with the client. For me, that’s about as succinct a description of the way creative freelancing works in practice as any I’ve seen.

For Grant, the malleability of deadlines as in the case of George is inevitable and it’s all about how you deal with it, and the relationship with the client. Practically, realistic projections of the amount of work that can be accomplished in the timeframe should be furnished to the client, which brings the whole point here back to communication. I was confident in our ability to deliver the bulk of the work even for the close deadline when communicating with our client, but should perhaps have been more cautious in my appraisal of specifically what we were able to deliver by certain dates.

As per my role within the production, I’ve tried very hard throughout to keep communication with the client about their audio requirements to a maximum, and I see this as a useful and successful aspect of the project from my own perspective, given the fact that the film has effectively had two directors (from our perspective that is, the film was co-directed by all four people in the group, but I requested a single point of contact with the team from the outset to minimise potential for confusion). The second director altered a number of the first director’s artistic decisions as far as the sound and music of the film is concerned, which meant essentially rerunning the process of the earlier spotting sessions with the second director to see if requirements were to change. I could have foreseen this likelihood earlier and discussed her requirements immediately when she agreed to be point of contact for us upon the departure of the first director as it’s critical to remind the creative lead for the picture they are also the creative lead for the audio team, to my mind.

More specifically on communication, I realised it is vital when (even basic) audio tracklaying work has begun in parallel with picture editing (an imperfect situation at best, but unavoidable given the circumstances of this production), to hammer home the critical nature of good edit logging with an editor who is working on the piece – The third cut of the film we received had no accompanying information on alterations to the footage we’d begun work on, which roughly doubled the time it took us to resync our audio. We did mention to the editor previously that we needed this information but didn’t receive it, so this must be communicated with more force in the future. Again, this situation is apparently fairly standard in film work and it tallies with the view of John Purcell,

‘It’s much more common to run into postlock changes than to work on a movie whose structure is set in stone,’ (Purcell, 2008, 239)

The use of temp music tracks is also worthy of note as the receipt of them by our director represents a classic example of something we were warned about in Lol Hammond’s guest lecture. The 2nd director had had little time to think about the music for the piece, was clearly surprised at the impact even basic composition can have on the picture, and rapidly became accustomed to the temp tracks we provided despite our admonishments not to do so as these were for suggestion only. This was fortuitous in a sense as she asked for the songs to be kept simple (like the skeletal temp tracks), which saved us a certain amount of production time, but unfortunate in that we had to back away from our plans for more complex original compositions for the piece. This is something to be very wary of in the future, as it could just as easily have worked in the opposite direction and caused us further complications.

– 1000 Words

 Key Points –

Reflection on post production interaction with director, and delivery requests – Process Management, Individual reflection on learning and team role.

  • To manage the delivery of the soundtrack at various stages of the production along with relevant paperwork, to the director and producer.
    Application of skills and conduct in production

Reflection on post production interaction with editor – Process Management, Individual reflection on learning and team role.

  • 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.
    Application of skills and conduct in production

Reflection on use of temporary music cues – Process Management, Individual reflection on learning.

  • To contribute extensively to the practicalities of creating and recording music for, and of recording location sound for the piece.