First and foremost, me and Ed split up the 4 days of recording between us and went through every single track and renamed so that the editor could sync it all up and use it for editing. To do this efficiently we titled them by there scene, slate and take as shown below.

(Files from day 4 of recording.)

 

After doing this we would be giving the tracks to the editor who would be then be tasked with editing the piece to picture lock by the 5th of December, giving us 10 days to finish the final mix which was plenty of time. We took the advice of Lucy, our week 9 lecturer who recommended that we ask for an OMF file from the editors. This allowed us to work on a project where all the audio was already in place and separated, allowing optimum editing to every single element of sound within the film.

 

As my colleague was in charge of post production, I often took a backseat but still offered help with creative decisions whilst also capturing relevant foliage for the film.

 

 

For the final guest lecture of the year I was unfortunately was ill, this lecture was lead by Helen McCarron and Claire Butler. Although I couldn’t make it, I thought it’d be beneficial to ask Ed for a rundown of the lecture. The lecture itself focused around working freelance as a self-employed engineer.  Important factors to consider included; income, tax and registry. This lecture seemed like it followed on from the Lucy Mitchell one quite well and is one I regret missing.

 

 

After the 4^th day we were finished and I thought it would ben beneficial to tie all the days back to my initial aims and objectives as a method of checking what I’ve gained from this process so far.

 

For this project I would be included in both the on location recording and the postproduction edit. I would however take the lead on the recording side of the project. This meant on set my responsibilities included listening over the takes constantly. I would also be operating the boom whilst constantly monitoring where the best location to shoot from would be.

 

By offering a location sound service to our clients we tackled one of the three aims of the project. One of the key factors to completing the aim however was to stick to the initial genre of this film which was post apocalyptic. To ensure the recordings fit in with the film brief, I made sure to be constantly wary of external factors when recording such as people passing by and vehicles going past.

 

Upon finishing recording on location I thought it’d be beneficial to go through my personal project goals and check how this project had helped my develop my skills

 

“To better familiarize myself with on location recording equipment such as the F8 and 633”

For the shoots we would exclusively be using the 633 on field recording device, as it was the device that Ed and me had both been taught on in the second year of University. As we were not entirely familiar with the device though, we saw it fit to take it out with us on our sound reconnaissance so that we’d fully comfortable when it came to actually recording on set. We soon grasped the basics of the device and could easily get an active signal path straight up. Navigating the menu’s proved to be quite tricky as if offered a very different interface to other sound recording devices (such as the Zoom H4n) but it soon became second nature to us. Although we got to the point where I was quite satisfied with how much I’d learn about the device we were informed after finishing our shoot that the 633 offers the ability to rename files. Retrospectively this would of saved us the few hours it took to rename all the sound files to the relevant scene, slate and take names but it wasn’t that detrimental to the overall process of becoming comfortable using the 633 deceive.

 

“To improve my skillset when it comes to work with clients”

 Throughout this process I would constantly be in contact with both the directors and producer of the film ensuring when and where I’d be wanted. It was important to the overall film that we kept constant contact with the filming group including going to meetings with them. This was due to the fact that it’d give us more of an idea of what they wanted and what they envision for the final product.

 

“To place a lot of effort on pre-planning, making sure that every stage of production goes off without complaints and overall, to improve my organizational skills.”

To ensure I met this goal I put a lot of emphasize on staying in touch with the team on a regular basis. By going to a lot of the meetings I would constantly be in the know when it came to the overall schedule of the project. Going to each location before filming also offered a chance to speed up the process on set, ensuring that Ed and I would be able to set up and transition between scenes a lot easier without taking away valuable film time. We would also constantly communicate before and after the set, setting out what we needed to record to guarantee a much easier overall editing process.

For this weeks lecture we had a visit from freelance post production sound engineer Lucy Johnstone who has worked on various huge TV shows and films such as Eastenders as a dubbing mixer and sound editor. This lecture was heavily focused around the steps Lucy takes as a freelance editors, including how she gets work and the relationship between her and the other staff members within certain pieces of work.

 

This lecture was incredibly valuable to me personally as it went into detail about the process of becoming a freelance audio engineer but also included great technical input when it comes to post production. This included how to deal with recording ADR which proved to be incredible relevant as this was something I would be doing only a few days later. The tips included the importance of having a load of pre planning when it comes to waiting including thourough testing on various factors such as talkback levels, headset levels and pre amp settings. She also put across the importance of removing breaths and lip smacks in these ADR tracks, these are factors we plan on implementing when it comes to editing our final piece.

 

This lecture was very vital as it offered advise to going into freelance work in the future. Its was important as it offered useful technical advise when it came to editing including dealing with effects and how to manage them within the mix.

The final day of recording was exclusive to our final location, the abandoned building. As this recording was a bit later on in the week we would finally have access to the clip microphones. One of the issues we faced early on was the fact that one of the radio microphones had no clip attached to it, the way in which I fixed this was attaching two hair clips either side which managed to attach to the actors shirt quite well. On reflection though, we should always check the kit given to us before we head out to location.

 

We also had a fair amount of trouble the 633 recording device as we struggled to get all three channels recording for certain scenes, this would prove to be an issue we’d need to troubleshoot when it came to track dialogue. We notified the director early and managed to secure ADR sessions with the two actors for the following week, ensuring that any dialogue tracks that suffered from technical difficulties could easily be reconciled.

 

Another factor we had to face was the extreme weather; although we were inside a building the wind itself would also ripple through the building and created a warp sound through the boom microphone. This meant we had to take into heavy consideration the locations in which we would film from. This included shooting from between pillars and staying clear of the open window spaces.

 

We would also constantly review our recordings after to ensure that we got the correct results. Although this day had a lot of technically and external difficulties, we managed to come away with useable recordings that’ll factor into the final mix.