Upon watching the film back, I am proud of the overall sound package I provided for the film. I think it was a very ambitious task to manage the workload of three distinct roles. Because of the staggered nature of these roles, e.g. location sound and post sound, it meant that they did not clash too much. Having to record and mix the score and soundtrack was however very difficult to achieve in this timeframe because we recorded during the time of the visual edit. This was hard to avoid with the visual edit being part of our composer’s, Conor Mackessy, inspiration when writing the songs. To improve this in the future I would schedule more time overall for the sound edit to allow for an extended time to mix the score, as well as negotiate an earlier visual edit start date, potentially even an earlier film shoot. As is often the case with student productions, the script writing process is the one that is most relaxed as there is an abundance of time, before rushing into the production and post-production processes. There should be equal amounts of time allocated for the pre, post and production stages to allow the quality level to be consistent across all areas.
As a result I think my sound package was not as creative as I would like it to be, with ideas and experimentation not being able to be completed in such a short time frame. The score also did not have enough time spent on it in the mixing stage. I do think it sounds good, however I would have been far more confortable having a few days to keep coming back to it and reviewing it with a fresh pair of ears. This is quite personally critical as I like to complete everything I do to the highest possible standard. However that was not one of my defined objectives. Obviously it would be stupid to suggest that I would want to produce poor work, but the aim of the project was “to deliver the complete sound package, whilst facilitating key relationships to ensure our ‘vision’ is unified and delivered on time”. This aim has been achieved in that the sound package was done to the best of my ability, within the time given. Had I been given more time, the quality would have improved, but in terms of delivering the project on time in tighter deadlines than agreed, whilst still satisfying the ‘clients’ needs, this has been completely fulfilled.
Looking back on my objectives there is not a lot more I could have done to work towards these. I felt the director, the composer and I were completely on the same page about our understanding of the film, what music we wanted and the production style. Our communication was great at each stage of the process, utilising phone, web and face-to-face conversations for project updates, like rushes and score demos. Conor was fantastic to work with and his passion for the film really shone through in the recordings. I attended each location scout meeting, ensuring I was completely aware of the surrounding environment we would be recording in, and therefore any sound issues that could be apparent. My advice on what was best from a sound perspective was then factored into the decision for what location was chosen. We also did a few test recording sessions where we filmed day & night whilst indoors and outdoors, to prepare ourselves for the type of conditions expected during the shoot. It also enabled us to become very familiar with our equipment, something that was very important for me because I was using new gear that I hadn’t tested before. There were never any problems on set, other than with a backup Marantz that I had recording wildtrack, so was not needed in the final edit. I had used a Zoom at the same time, so the audio was still captured. I even used some new post-production tools like iZotope’s RX4 plugin, which was really useful in cleaning up dialogue and ambient tracks.
I think I have learnt a lot about my role fits into the overall film production. I tried to be involved as much as I possibly could in all aspects of the creative process, and I believe this shows through in the final product. However there could be more done on the producer / scheduling side, where sound needs to be more of a balanced part of the overall production process. When recording in each location I was extremely confident knowing that I would be capturing high quality audio because of the equipment and the way I used it. All scenes were shot with a lapel microphone for any characters with dialogue, as well as a boom capturing dialogue and ambient room / outside tone, a boundary microphone for indoor floor / table height recording and a zoom capturing room tone during shooting as a backup. The meant complete flexibility with how I chose to mix the film and how I could use wildtracks. The experience was extremely valuable and rewarding from a technical standpoint with the location sound due to the range of type of locations and the use of lapel microphones. The process of communicating with the actors and fitting the microphones at the start of the shoot, whilst managing batteries and levels was a great learning experience. I was just happy to see the resulting sound come out well! Our on-set practices were very good, we were able to try different creative ideas, but could have potentially done with more time to try more. If I were to write a new learning outcome now it would be to improve post-production process, to allow for more time for editing and reviewing.
