Mini Update: Repossessing Tim wrapped

 

Repossessing Tim wrapped on Sunday, after three days of shooting.
A quick summary of the shooting days in the studio and on location in Wheal Mead can be found on the film blog: repossessingtim.blogspot.com.

The three days taught me so much. Preparing for the shoot and organizing all our equipment made everything run very smoothly. On Saturday, enduring rain and cold made our work difficult, and most of all pretty uncomfortable. Nevertheless we gave it our best and the end results are very satisfying. I spent the beginning of the week with Ed where I was able to see the rushes (which look amazing) and then to synch up all the audio we recorded on the boom. I now can't wait to get my hands on a first cut of the film and take it to the audio suite and have a play.

Sound man Jamie Romp with our gear.

Jamie Romp was a great help over the weekend and operated the boom mic for all three days (I was mixing on set). After going through and then synching the usable takes, I think I might not even have as much need of the lav-mic audio as I thought I would. Jamies recordings are all clear and rich, and once we edit them slightly they should work great in the finished film.

Location scouting and casting for A Clearwater Revival and Diorama is coming to an end and preparations are being made for the shooting days, both films will be shot around the end of February-mid March.

Casting trip to Penzance with Reuben Alexander (Diorama)

Bleak

On Saturday Reuben and me spent the day in the performance center visiting the "Ways of Watching Winter Dance Symposium". Our stay there began with a discussion on the artist and audience in a regional context and later another on ownership and authorship. I noticed that most of what these flexible people in tights were talking about was transferable to film as well as my own background and future. We saw a total of 6 performances by students and professionals, but to be honest I mistook one of the professional performances as students, so the difference there was not that great (to my untrained eyes, I guess).
The first performance called Echoes of a Lost Music featured music by Christopher Best (first song if you scroll down) playing a solo guitar in the middle of the room. The music was this one guitar played on separate delay tracks which repeated and overlapped throughout the piece. The music accompanied a wonderful dance which involved many strange contortions. The combination of the dance and music allowed my mind to wander and I began constructing nightmarish images with my imagination. There were slugs, people rolling on the floor on fire, bodies melting into each other, it was all very intense and at times it frightened me. Another performance which I liked involved around 17 or so dancers and was very energetic and evoked beautiful images such as a wavy sea of bodies...being washed back by the waves, then coming forward just to be washed away again.
I was really surprised at the quality of the work that I saw. I know several of the students in the second year and I never thought they would be this good and professional. Being inspired by their talent makes me even more determined to perfect my work practice this year, so that hopefully, the films I make will inspire people who see them and render them speechless.
We also handed out call cards and spoke to many of the dancers in hope of finding out lead lady for Diorama. This was a success as many of the students were interested and open to collaborate with us.

Reuben and me traveled to Plymouth on Sunday to scout out a location we had heard about and looked up. The square around the Plymouth Sundial is suitable for Diorama's key scene as there is a lot of pedestrian traffic around, many people sitting and waiting, the surrounding buildings are (above the ground floor) bleak and nondescript. The sundial itself is also a very interesting image.
I think Reuben is not fully convinced by the square, but I think we made much progress over the weekend.

Sunday night after a rather downcast and hung over journey we met up with Jamie for our second weekly mealting. We went over the scripts of Repossessing Tim and Clearwater Revival and talked some serious sound. The meeting was a big reassurance as I was getting a bit anxious about the projects. I am confident though that the three of us will collaborate well and that out sound design will enrich the films we work on. Here is a small sneak teaser of the dancer's leitmotif which Jamie pitched to us at the mealting. I think we're on to something here!

We had a second recce today for Repossessing Tim. We drove out to the location with AD Nicholas Raybould and I was able to walk around the location and record. I managed to get some good clips of the tunnel and the bridge area as well as some nice drips and drops down some of the deep holes spread out around the quarry. Helicopters flew overhead several times and I recorded these for some time, I might be able to use them in some way as they possess an interesting and dynamic sound. I also did some mic tests to see how they cope with the wind. Everyone is getting ready for the shoot this weekend.
I am just happy to be making films at the moment, this is what I am here to do.

Repossessing Tim recce

This morning we drove out to our location at Wheal Maid. It was my first trip there and I didn't really know what to expect. Of course, I would have to listen to the sound of the place to get a first acoustic impression and decide whether there were any issues we should consider. My decision is to focus on the dialogue completely during the shoot and then build the whole soundscape in post. Because the sounds of the actual location (lots of wind, cockerel's, birds and the lapping of the water there) are not what we are looking for, it will be up to me to design, build up a library, and construct an emotive soundscape which fits the image and story.
Ed has also told me that he wants me to try and use the techniques I am studying in my dissertation and create sounds which replace music in order to add emotion, movement and comment on the scenes. It's one thing to look at how the master Andrei Tarkovsky does this, but quite a different task for me to attempt the same.

Tim wakes up in a tunnel which leads into the Wasteland. This tunnel represents Tim's rebirth and has therefore been named "the Vagina" by Ed and Jimmy. Now, since water is the element of birth and life, the sound of the tunnel will be similar to that of Stalker's Dry Tunnel. I imagine drips and drops, very Tarkovsky. I have the chance to play around with some reverbs here as well to enhance the mood.
The rest of the film is still a bit of a mystery, but I think I will be working a lot with wind and enhanced effects which emphasize Tim's insecurity at first and later his comfort within the Wasteland.

The crew is set, the cast almost sorted, the location is ours, and the shooting days fixed:  only two weeks left before the first shoot! Off to the studio tomorrow to check the acoustics and some ADR practice in the afternoon. Things are really starting to get going.

I am really excited about all the projects slowly moving out of preproduction and into production. I thought to myself today that I have picked the right films for my portfolio, they offer a lot of variety and I am looking forward to and enjoying each of them. Most of all I am loving my crews. Jamie from 2nd year and Reuben have joined my sound team and we had a wonderful 'mealting' the other night, eating burgers and going through Reuben's film, now under the name Diorama. The film is well on its way and we have much of the sound design figured out for the moment. Auditions for Clearwater Revival are next Friday and I hope we find some great actors for the parts.

I wish everyone a great 2012, I'll post my new years resolutions soon (a bit late) ;P

Reuben Alexander presents 'My Film'

The following is a small brainstorming session I had to write down after a meeting with my friend Reuben. We met up in Weatherspoons and discussed for a sound meeting and I just had to get these thoughts written. Enjoy.

(Note: this is just very rough writing, the CAPS represent characters whose names I don't know. Also, everything is quite a bit all over the place!)

Part I: General Mood & Opening

To understand a significant element of Reuben’s film, a viewing of the opening sequence of The Conversation (Coppola, 1974) is recommended (if not necessary). My Film references this scene when the camera follows a couple through a square and the spectator wonders who this couple is and what they are speaking about. While designing the sound to My Film, I often thought of this scene as an inspiration for it fits so well with the theme of surveillance.

First, the sound space here is filled with the chatter of people wandering around a splashing fountain, some birds chirp away in the trees. This combination of sounds will become a leitmotif which will recur several times throughout the film, sometimes slightly altered in the mix to place emphasis on different elements, but the aim is that it will be instantly recognized as the sound of the first scene. Unlike the scene in The Conversation, however, there will be no music playing through the scene, and the dialogue of the couple will be made inaudible in the mix (either through volume or covering it with stronger sounds).

Second, point of audition is an essential aspect of both sequences (and will be considered and experimented with throughout My Film). When the couple walks through the square, it is my hope to present the soundscape as it would be heard from the place where it is observed (the hotel window from scene 4). From this distance the fountain, birds and chatter of the crowd would be audible, but it would not be possible to make out the actual dialogue. In my opinion, it is also not essential that this dialogue is heard because the audience will be able to interpret the couples feelings through their gestures (hugs, arguing, etc.).

Third, because the sound of this scene will be layered over the action, without any specific synch-points, it can be interpreted as part of the actual film which the CHARACTER later tries to create. He reinacts the scene, or this could still be his recordings, and layers a recorded atmos track of a square on top of the footage. Either way, I feel this constructed element and relationship between the sound and image works when considering the uncertain background of all scenes in this film.

Part II: Music

Similar to the scores of Ennio Morricone, My Film's score will attribute the TWO MAIN CHARACTERS with leitmotif's, short musical tracks which will follow the characters through the film, as soon as the first note of these tracks will be heard, the audience will automatically think of the respective character.

Music is significant in several scenes, not only to set a mood, but also to form a rhythm or beat for the scene to follow and even become a diagetic part of the scene. However, once again, the added music can be interpreted as an element which is added by the CHARACTER, is it the music he imagines to go with the specific scene/recording? The notion of the filmmaker and the editing, layering and manipulation of filmic material, both visual and audio, keeps recurring, it is the essence of My Film.

After speaking to Reuben, I have a good idea of what he expects the score to sound like. His influences are, funny enough, David Shire's score to The Conversation, and Jon Brion's to Synecdoche New York. From these examples I take that the score will be made up of mostly piano songs, a comination of jazzy tunes and melancholic, lingering, notes.

One of the key moments in the score is scene 11, when ALL THREE CHARACTERS are in the theatre stage in the cinema. Here, short cello notes will set a musical pace for the action, dialogue and editing. The ACTOR speaks his line, is interrupted by the DIRECTOR mid-sentence, who is then interrupted by the score, mid-sentence. The next few beats of the score will then follow the DIRECTOR's movement up on stage, the ACTRESSES glance to the ACTOR and so forth. If we manage to pull this off I believe this will become one of the richest and technically exciting scenes of the film.

Part III: Overall Mood 2

To go back on the overall sound design of the film, it will be very minimalist and stripped back. I will attempt to strip down the soundtrack to its essentials, if there is no point in hearing dialogue you will not hear it. The lines which will then make it into the final film will be emphasized. Each scene will be given a key sound which acts as the major sync point and mood-giver to the scene, be it the fountain in the square, the running film projector in the projection room or the soft patter of rain outside the dance studio.

As stated earlier, point of audition plays an important role in the film's soundscape and I am hoping to experiment with it in several scenes. For example, most scenes in the 'theatre area' of the cinema will have two points. One will be among the seats of the cinema, behind where the DIRECTOR usually sits. The sound from here will contain a looser foley and a wider room tone, e.g. the room tone will be clearly audible and the movement on stage will be heard, but not very clearly or emphasized upon. The second point is on stage level. The sound from here will contain a very clear, sharp, focused foley which emphasizes certain physical intimacies and cuts out any other unwanted movement sounds. The room tone here will be closed in to create a more intimate space in which there is space to hear the characters' movements and breaths.

Overall, almost all sounds used will be sounds that exist on set and are realistic. The only sound which clearly stands out is the sound of entering the DIRECTOR's subjective space which is heard at the end of scene 11 into scene 12. What Reuben and me were thinking is using a sound from the location, I used the projector as an example, and manipulate it so it becomes an alien sound, it moves from a realistic sound to a mood sound. When used at the end of scene 11, we would cut from this alien mood sound into the DIRECTOR turning on the projector in the next scene, the sound of the projector here would again be the realistic sound. Not only then does the alien sound reflect the DIRECTOR's mood as he comes up the stairs (accompanied by moody effect-lighting), but it would also act as a precursor to the real projector heard after the cut.

Overdue Post

Part 1: Studying Tarkovsky

There are not many things more inspirational than reading Tarkovsky by candlelight.

Most of my recent dissertation research has been concerning Andrei Tarkovsky (one of the biggest and most influential discovery I've made at university)'s Stalker (1979)¹. Tarkovsky's soundscapes are used as important devices which directly reflect the characters' mental and physical states while also being a non-human, location character in the film. Just like in Uncle Boonmee (Apichatpong, 2010), the natural "zone" in which the narrative takes place is alive with sound to an extent which is unusual in narrative film. I will be trying to figure out how and why these natural soundscapes are imbued with meaning and how this affects the film narrative and characters. 


Part 2: Cool Animations

I stumbled upon this wonderful animation by Allison Schulnik yesterday. It's really mesmerising and technically incredibly well crafted². I am getting more and more into animations, and am looking forward to working on some animated shorts for my portfolio. This experience will help me learn a different approach to sound design as well as add variety to my final portfolio.


Also, here is that small animation sting I worked on for my friend Hughey. I used sounds from sound libraries, mainly various typewriters and casino machine noises. Both me and Hugh are very happy with how it turned out.

Part 3: Project of the Week
 
I will be editing sound for an instructional sushi making video later this week. I am so excited about this project because I love sushi and cooking videos! (I've been really addicted to Chef John's foodwishes.com lately). I'll be lip-synching some recorded dialogue, which should be fun as always (!), recording a voice over to edited footage as well as adding music and mixing the whole deal together. Hopefully I'll be able to post the video here soon, if I'm allowed.



¹Similar to The Tree of Life (Malick, 2011), viewing this film made me realise that what I was seeing here was completely beyond me, a phenomenon which, through each viewing, rewarded me with unique experiences as well as insights both into my own person and into so many other aspects of life, not to mention (perfect) film (-making). I've been wanting to write about The Tree of Life  since first seeing it this summer (including my attempt to make it my most-viewed film in the cinema [which at the time was {embarassingly}, the first Pirates of the Caribbean {Verbinski, 2003}], plus my run in with Christoph Waltz). But that will have to wait.
²HD Version.