Meeting with Group 3

In this meeting the dates for filming were finalised, and we sorted out how we were going to get to locations, this was easy because Callum drives, so we arranged for Callum to bring his car to Lincoln so we could take care of our own arrangements.

We also informed the film crew that we would be using a boom microphone accompanied by radio microphones to give us a wider range of options for trying to attain the best possible audio from the shoots.

Home Nightclub Filming

For one of the flashback scenes, the actors are dancing at a nightclub, there was no foley or specific sound for us to record as the film crew wanted this scene to be artistically mixed to make it obvious that it is a flashback and not just another scene.

Instead of not recording anything though, we decided to record some random lines of dialogue and conversation to layer over the music, with relevant effects to add to a dreamy feel.

we did this by watching what the actors did while filming, then taking them somewhere quieter and reminding them of some of the things that they said before to get cleaner recordings.

Filming Day 3

on the final day of filming we repeated mic’ing up the actors, this time finding a combo of tapes and techniques that worked the best for us after looking through online forums for some better answers. we noticed that the quality of recordings improved greatly. we then set up recording equipment, tested everything, and were ready.

we followed the routine filming the last little bits, before the car scene at the end of the day, for this I crouched down in the back of the car with a zoom to get the soundscape of inside a moving car, then, while the film crew moved on to film some scenes with no sound, Callum drove the car around the same circuit a few times so we could get a good quality sound of the car engine approaching, again in the unique space, as well as getting some more foley recordings of the big main door and the car doors.

we also went back and refilmed some of the other scenes because the director wasn’t happy with the visuals of the recordings that they had, we realised at this point that the performance of some of the lines had changed, this was because the actors were still learning their lines over the weekend, meaning that the performance was quite different each time. this could work out to be a problem for us when it comes to editing together the best takes.

Filming Day 2

So today we started to film, we set up the radio mics onto the actors making sure there was easy access to change batteries and switch the packs to standby while they weren’t being used, this was to cause as little distraction as possible to the actors.

we filmed all day, trying different methods of taping the microphones to the actors to cause the least amount of rustle, using different tapes and attachment techniques. By the end of the day we had some very usable sounds but were still not happy with the final products, we knew we could get better results so once we were back home I researched into the types of tape that sound recordists usually used and found through multiple forums that medical tape was the generally accepted standard within the industry. This blog taught me the technique of “adhesive sandwiching” which means to make two rings out of tape and suspend the mic between them, this creates a hollow chamber in which the microphone is not rustling against anything causing unwanted noise.

we recorded some more foley such as dancing steps for future use because of the unique sound of the rooms that the actors were using. we did this because there was music being played at the time of actual filming so we wouldn’t be able to use any microphone recordings from the actual shoot.

Filming day 1

So on the first day of filming the media team did not have the correct cameras, so instead we used this day to block scenes, get soundscape samples, and record some ADR/B roll vocals, such as little improvised lines for the dancing scenes further on in the film.

This gave the media team the opportunity to work out where would be best for them to film, and gave us a chance to get some audio recorded from the rehearsals. we were also able to watch how scenes played out and make a mental list of things that would have to be edited in post production, such as removing any laptop typing sounds from the radio mic signals, and other loud noises that would have been picked up by all of the microphones.

this also gave us a chance to practise, with Callum focussing on naming our clips on the way into the 633, and myself focussing on holding the boom mic correctly, making sure that the microphone was pointing at the right area to pick up the vocals cleanly.

We were also able to start practising on attaching the clip mics to the actors, this proved to be a challenge because the tape we were using was too plastic sounding and made a loud rustling noise whenever the actors moved too much.