Recently in Sound Category
I am currently in Savalas doing the foley for I Love Luci. So I thought I'd do a live blog to cover the event a there is quite a bit of sitting about and just watching for me in this process.
I am away from my on computer so you'll have to do without photos for now I'm afraid. I'll try and describe what's going on:
I'm sitting in a booth with the sound recordist watching little snippets of the final cut pop up on the screen. We watch it back and forth and the foley artist decides on what kind of implement is best to match the sound of the picture.
Our booth has a huge window looking on to the foley artist in a studio that is not too dissimilar to most sound studios, but, it has pits in the floor with different types of road surface, floor surface and anything else you might find underfoot. There is a back room with bikes, cutlery, pots, different kinds of shoes, cloth, glass, metals etc etc. All necessary for replicating the rich tapestry of sounds that surround us every day as we wonder through the world, and of course for making sounds from other worlds too.
We will be spending the next few hours shaking old bike frames, rattling tea spoons and rubbing bits of leather against and an old shirt. We even have a dog we can record of necessary.
I am away from my on computer so you'll have to do without photos for now I'm afraid. I'll try and describe what's going on:
I'm sitting in a booth with the sound recordist watching little snippets of the final cut pop up on the screen. We watch it back and forth and the foley artist decides on what kind of implement is best to match the sound of the picture.
Our booth has a huge window looking on to the foley artist in a studio that is not too dissimilar to most sound studios, but, it has pits in the floor with different types of road surface, floor surface and anything else you might find underfoot. There is a back room with bikes, cutlery, pots, different kinds of shoes, cloth, glass, metals etc etc. All necessary for replicating the rich tapestry of sounds that surround us every day as we wonder through the world, and of course for making sounds from other worlds too.
We will be spending the next few hours shaking old bike frames, rattling tea spoons and rubbing bits of leather against and an old shirt. We even have a dog we can record of necessary.
"We use the three beeps system here at Savalas...", Iain's opening gambit to the start of each ADR session with an actor begins with a brief explanation of what they will hear in their 'cans'. Three beeps and then they begin talking, hopefully in sync with the picture on the screen.
Yesterday we had 3 of our cast in to re-do and in some cases re-invent some of their lines. We started with Sanjeev Kohli, a very well known Scottish actor and ADR veteran judging by the way things went.
As with all the cast we got some real gems but they didn't happen where I was expecting them.
Colin Harris was next up, followed by Camilla Rutherford. In both cases the covering of the original lines was a technical pursuit, trying to recreate the performance from the shoot and while interesting wasn't nearly as fun as discovering the stuff that we could add to enhance the shape of the film. This largely came in the form of laughs, breaths, sighs, coughs, audible shrugs and other minutae. This stuff was great fun to do and it was a real pleasure to be afforded the opportunity to do this level of detailed work.
Many thanks to all involved:
Cast:
Colin Harris, Sanjeev Kohli and Camilla Rutherford.
Technical:
Recordist: Iain Anderson; Sound Designer: Douglas MacDougall; Voice Coach: Ros Stein
The last person I would like to thank is Joe, the night security guard at Film City Glasgow, who very kindly allowed us to interrupt his rounds to come and do a line that I hadn't put in the script. The line covers a security guard at the end of the film - a nice authentic touch we thought, and a great voice.
NB There will be a few crap photos to follow, I promise.
Yesterday we had 3 of our cast in to re-do and in some cases re-invent some of their lines. We started with Sanjeev Kohli, a very well known Scottish actor and ADR veteran judging by the way things went.
As with all the cast we got some real gems but they didn't happen where I was expecting them.
Colin Harris was next up, followed by Camilla Rutherford. In both cases the covering of the original lines was a technical pursuit, trying to recreate the performance from the shoot and while interesting wasn't nearly as fun as discovering the stuff that we could add to enhance the shape of the film. This largely came in the form of laughs, breaths, sighs, coughs, audible shrugs and other minutae. This stuff was great fun to do and it was a real pleasure to be afforded the opportunity to do this level of detailed work.
Many thanks to all involved:
Cast:
Colin Harris, Sanjeev Kohli and Camilla Rutherford.
Technical:
Recordist: Iain Anderson; Sound Designer: Douglas MacDougall; Voice Coach: Ros Stein
The last person I would like to thank is Joe, the night security guard at Film City Glasgow, who very kindly allowed us to interrupt his rounds to come and do a line that I hadn't put in the script. The line covers a security guard at the end of the film - a nice authentic touch we thought, and a great voice.
NB There will be a few crap photos to follow, I promise.
...or ADR or whatever term you like to use is happening today.
We will be in Savalas all day and night trying to get tiny little bits of dialogue just right to match with location sound and in some cases alter the performance to fit the now slightly different story. The process is covered in the comprehensive little video below courtesy of the encyclopeaodic blog from King Kong.
This is very exciting, my first time doing proper ADR and also being reunited with the cast after all this time.
Of course, it also means that we are nearing the end of the making of I Love Luci. Which I'm pretty glad of too, I can't wait to see a finished film and we're getting very close.
Here's the wee vid of them re-recording the dialogue on King Kong...
We will be in Savalas all day and night trying to get tiny little bits of dialogue just right to match with location sound and in some cases alter the performance to fit the now slightly different story. The process is covered in the comprehensive little video below courtesy of the encyclopeaodic blog from King Kong.
This is very exciting, my first time doing proper ADR and also being reunited with the cast after all this time.
Of course, it also means that we are nearing the end of the making of I Love Luci. Which I'm pretty glad of too, I can't wait to see a finished film and we're getting very close.
Here's the wee vid of them re-recording the dialogue on King Kong...
As promised to Helge, a long time supporter of our blogging exploits, I have been talking to Peter Brill (pictured left) about our sound and some of the technical details that people might be interested in. Peter will be the head of the sound department on location, in charge of getting all the necessary location sound for the film.
The brief exchange went like this:
C: I am about to write a post about the sound department and just wondered if you would be happy to comment and suggest some inclusions in the piece.
e.g. what do you record on to these days, do you sync up with a timecode generator or is the board still the most brilliantly simple and effective way of achieving sync sound, how many people are in your team, how do you relate to other members of the team - camera dept and editing dept in particular.
Many thanks Peter. I hope this is helpful to people out there trying to make stuff. I am often surprised to find that most people don't know what a clapper board is actually for or that sound is recorded completely separately. We are obviously going to be using fairly sophisticated equipment but the principles would be just the same even if you were using rudimentary kit. Robert Rodriguez recorded all the sound for El Mariachi completely wild on an old Marrantz tape recorder. As soon as they had finished shooting a scene he would ask the actors to gather round and repeat the dialogue into the little mic as close to the way they said it during their camera performance and then he would sync it up later. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. He just cut round the problems when they came up. His book, Rebel Without a Crew is fantastically inspiring as wellas full of helpful practical info.P: I will record all location sound to idented WAV files, with time of day time-code, on to a 40 Gb hard disk recorder, delivering to the Editor on 4 Gb Compact Flash cards.
This way I maintain safety back-ups of everything recorded.
I shall confirm with Savalas that my recorder is set to their preferred formats for post-production work.
The simplest and easiest way to sync the sound to picture is still, thankfully, the old faithful clapper board, so long as one can both see and hear those two bits of wood banging together! The board clapping tells everyone in the vicinity of the film set to be still and shut up!
An ideal location sound crew would be 3 people, with the mixer concentrating on acquiring the cleanest dialogue, effects and atmospheres to match the pictures, reducing unwanted noises by whatever means, and through a mixing desk, saving to a reliable recording medium.
The audio is also transmitted from the desk to various members of the crew with radio headsets. The sound mixer logs all the shots with notes for the Editor, detailing and identing all "wild" tracks recorded without picture for use in the sound editing and track-laying process.
The boom operator quietly concentrates on getting the microphone into the ideal position to capture the actors speaking clearly, maintaining the perspective that matches the lens, but without causing shadows or letting the mic dip into the frame. Not an easy task!
The sound assistant helps route cables, replace batteries in headsets, and generally look after all the equipment. When radio mics need to be used, they must be concealed from the camera lens but still maintain optimum speech quality without any clothing rustle from the actor. The sound assistant and costume department normally take care of this. Extraneous unwanted noises are invariably the ones we bring with us, be they squeaking asthmatic cameras, humming and buzzing lighting ballasts, rustling waterproof coats, mobile phones left on, unit vehicles needing to move just as action is called, the list is endless............but all can be anticipated and almost silenced!
Enough waffle for now Colin.
If you really are nuts for sound then you should also read anything with Walter Murch in it and you should try and see a doc made by Vincent Hunter, the Colour of Sound. I'll go and find out a bit more about that and how one might get to see it.
