Category: research

Foley Research

Joseph Pallot / / foley, LO4, research

http://www.marblehead.net/foley/specifics.html

This blog highlights the importance of maintaining a distance from the microphone to give the recording a sense of space but also to reduce the risk of hearing breathing through the recording. I made sure to do this while recording foley because in my opinion slight distance between the mic and the sound gives the recording a more natural and so easier to mix feel.

 

http://foley-artistry.blogspot.co.uk/

The very first answer in this interview relates directly to some of the foley that we did, for the dinner scene we bought some saucy pasta and recorded the cutlery sounds using that so that we could get the authentic splashes and squelches from the pasta into the film, we did try for reference what it would sound like on an empty plate and this interview is correct, you can hear the difference massively, the cutlery sounds tinny, and there is a lot more clattering sounds coming from the plate itself without the padding of the food to dampen it.

 

https://www.sound-ideas.com/Page/what-is-foley.aspx

This final post helped me to get into the right mindset to act out foley. The importance of foley is that you are trying to control the soundscape, so in a way this relates to boom operation aswell. While I was operating the boom mic I was trying to get clear dialogue while avoiding excessive background noise, whereas in foley I am trying to reconstruct all of the noise that I was trying to avoid during filming, except by doing it this was we are able to have better control over the volume and characteristics of each and every sound in the film, giving us the opportunity to create a fuller soundscape with a range of depth and clarity.

Radio Mic Research

Joseph Pallot / / LO1, research

Again from looking at the sound bible there were some aspects that would either be too costly or just ineffective for a project on a scale this small.

But an important section on the book highlights how important people skills are when attaching mics to the actors. This is something I wanted to focus on in practise, because I feel that it is very important to respect someone’s boundaries and put them at ease while still doing your job effectively. The book mentions how you shouldn’t try and converse too much because you don’t want to break the actors focus on their lines but at the same time you need to explain what you’re doing if you are going to do something that might otherwise make them feel uncomfortable. Another important aspect was while mic’ing up someone of the opposite sex was to keep someone of authority present to back you up if the actor makes any claims that you have done something inappropriately. I made sure to keep this in mind and only mic up the female actress while the producer was present as to make sure that I always had someone to witness that I was acting professionally.

The last piece i learnt from this research was something I had been taught by Grant before but had forgotten about, was to make sure that I taped off some of the wire so that there would be less to no noise transmitted from the wire rustling against clothes, which was another technique that helped us to limit noise and improve the quality of recordings we had by the end.

Location Research – Boom Techniques and Job Role

Joseph Pallot / / LO1, research

http://filmschoolonline.com/sample_lessons/sample_lesson_sound.htm

This website helped to give me an insight into how I should be recording as a boom operator, giving me reasons why overhead booming is better whenever possible, but also what techniques I should look to when overhead booming isn’t possible.

From reading sections of The Location Sound Bible I was able to take some useful lessons in how to move and stand as a boom operator. The main theme throughout is that I have to keep my actions fluid and gentle so that the microphone isn’t picking up any noise from me while recording. Some of the bits in this book went a little bit too in depth for this project but certain parts like giving myself enough length on the pole and standing in a certain way to be able to move suddenly proved to be quite useful.

Another important section from this book was to make sure that I was paying attention and in a sense rehearsing at the same time as the actors, so I would be able to learn and predict the flow of the scene, allowing me to keep the mic pointed at whoever needed it and moving out of the way whenever the camera panned.

Music Research – Reading

Joseph Pallot / / LO2, music, research

https://wistia.com/blog/composing-music-for-video

 

I found this website to be helpful with getting into the right mindset to write music that wasn’t for my own personal enjoyment. It helped me to realise that the right music for the film needed to fit the general atmosphere of the story line.

By this time I had already watched through the film at least 15 times, because of the other aspects we were creating, and from this I had been able to work out that the main direction the film was going for was deception, so I wanted the music to be deceptive too, mixing together two emotions that wouldn’t usually be found together to create an uneasy track.

The main challenge in creating my own brief for the music was that I had very little direction from the director or producer. Before I created the tracks I was told that they wanted something “atmospheric” and “tense”. After showing the team the tracks for the first time I was asked to change one of the tracks to “something more different” and so created a different track using different synths while keeping to the same uneasy feel of the film.

 

https://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/using-ambient-techniques-for-composing–audio-4017

 

I found the introduction and first section of this post to be very useful to creating music that was designed to be in the background of the film. The main limitation I set myself for the music was to not distract at all from the plot and visual of the film, but rather to add to it. To do that I limited myself to creating my music using a maximum of 3-4 tracks for layering, this ensured that I would create music that was thin enough that it wouldn’t overpower the rest of the audio components of the film while also giving me an inspiration to only include music that would benefit the film rather that just going for the most fancy tracks that I could create.

Music Research – Inspiration

Joseph Pallot / / LO2, music, research

We wanted to recreate some music similar to what is heard in the series “Black Mirror”. The only direction we were given by the director was for the music to be tense and mysterious and we thought that Black Mirror fitted into that category well. We wanted the music to sound tense without sounding too sinister or unhappy so when creating ideas I used synthesisers and arpeggiators that weren’t too heavy or overbearing, without too much bass.

This compilation of songs and pieces in Black Mirror helped to inspire the main Basin theme, especially the first piece, as it has a tinkling piano or keyboard creating the melody behind the vocals. I liked this idea because although it is a very happy feeling song it still has a strong sense of uneasiness about it.

I also took some inspiration from this music, mainly for the track at the end, because the rhythmic chimes add a little bit of suspense without being too overbearing and I felt that this was important for our film because it built up to the end of the film without being too dramatic for the visuals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG9urgeWj1g