Reflection – Multi-film Audio – GB AUP 3rd Year SEM B

(Clickable learning outcomes throughout this post will transfer to a reference list at the bottom)

This post reflects on the successes and failures of the project in detail using my original learning outcomes as signposts.

Our group aim was to manage the process of creating five film soundtracks collectively, and deliver these soundtracks to a good standard and to the client’s specifications. We succeeded in this without any doubt – All of our clients were happy with the work we presented (feedback is available from all of them to this effect), the soundtracks are diverse and of good quality, work synergistically with the pictures, are produced to recognisable technical standards and follow client directions and specifications discerned throughout the project. This evidence also speaks to the achievement of learning outcomes GR3, GR4 and GR5 – all of our clients praised our professionalism on set in their feedback and several noted the quality of music or specific aspects of their film’s audio, and I believe our work in all the distinct audio areas of the films we’ve made is more or less up to scratch.

Only one film slightly lets down the artifact we have delivered in terms of audio quality, and this can largely be put down to the inexperience of the directorial team in choosing horrendously noisy locations and in ignoring our advice about these during recces etc. Beyond this, the raw location audio (which most of us had a hand in at one time or another on set) was also technically flawed in some areas, leading to some issues with dialogue takes in post which couldn’t be rectified to our satisfaction. The film was a dog from the word go, but we did everything in our power to rectify it’s audio problems and if any mistake was made this resides in taking the job in the first place, since there were misgivings from several sides about the script and team.

Addressing group outcomes GR1 and GR2 which are concerned with the internal processes and acting as a company might – I believe we have successfully collaborated as realistically as possible in the sense of a company or partnership in this academic context. Weekly production meetings, a centralised google calendar which was kept up to date with room bookings and workflow plans throughout, supervisors for each film reporting weekly and then daily on their responsibilities and requesting more resources as and when they require them are all testament to this fact.

As a part of the above, I believe I have also fulfilled my more specific research learning outcomes PER1 and PER2, which required me to develop a better understanding of the pros and cons of business structures, processes, regulations and agreements which might enable film audio producers to collaborate on multiple projects and the wording and content of contracts, rates and rate cards offered in the film audio field. We’ve also variously researched and applied many of the fundamental aspects of running a business, with my own focus being on furthering my understanding of the complexities of agreements, contracts and IP in a complicated partnership situation, as well as the more practical aspects of collecting consistent and useful client feedback and structuring data in a way accessible for others who may have to use it – in this last there is much to be learnt from the organisation techniques used in game audio.

The collective process was not without it’s drawbacks however. The administrative burden of managing multiple productions is much greater, and any issue can become a deluge of reorganisation very quickly indeed. The decision to appoint a supervisor for each film also had unexpected ramifications in two ways – the first was the tendency for supervisors to end up isolated with the preproduction ideas and planning processes, which we dealt with through an extra round of regular meetings to read through scripts and collectively input ideas, as well as involving as many of the group as possible in meetings with production teams. The second was the personal investment in what came to be seen as *their* film on the part of some supervisors, which meant that the supervisors tended to want to do the ‘credited’ jobs (such as the dub mix) themselves. Reflecting here, it would have perhaps been more realistic to appoint specialisms on the basis of our research roles within industry, and require that those specialisms fulfill a certain percentage of the work on x number of films within that specialism – for example, I only mixed Descent and some of Remember, to truly represent a dub mixer specialism in my work here I feel I should really have completed at least two full mixes.

Nonetheless, I can certainly say I have fulfilled learning outcome PER4 which required me to contribute extensively to multiple film productions. My contribution – encompassing preproduction input into all of the films, location work on three of them, and significant post production work on Descent, Immort and Remember as well as the ever present administration, ancillary support and meetings – should be evidence enough of this. This blog also provides ample evidence of the management process for Descent, which was arguably the smoothest of all the films until the later post-production phase which required some relatively minor remixing, allowing me to claim learning outcome IN1 as fulfilled. Improvements I would make here were mainly technical – mono mix on location – and, as usual, I would have liked to have had a hand in co-composing the music for the film, but there simply wasn’t time.

The final three learning outcomes IN2, IN3 and PER3 deal with my wish to expand my understanding of techniques deployed in similar works and I have succeeded to my satisfaction in two of these. In learning about and practising mixing to R128 standard I have expanded my knowledge of dub mixing in the post industry, and I have already referred to my contribution to the artifact in that role. My work on the sound design of Immort (street scene and some of the specialist spot FX) and the research which underpin these are evidence of me bettering my understanding of sci-fi sound design.

It is only in PER3 that I would have liked to have done more work. Whilst the study of the film Hannibal is relevant and represents a partial fulfillment of the criteria here, I have had the film Shutter Island sitting next to my DVD player for three months, unwatched. I had intended to draw influence for Descent from this film and present a similar comparative study to that of Hannibal but was unable to find an opportunity to sit down and watch the film.

In final analysis, the intention of the Omni-Gaffer project was to enable us to complete more work more effectively this term and we were fully aware that this would present it’s own unique set of challenges and requirements which I believe we have overcome and fulfilled. I think it’s fair to say the project was successful and justified, since it would not have been possible for this group of students to complete these films – the best part of one hour’s worth of diverse and complex picture – to the standard we have presented whilst working seperately or in smaller groups in my view, but that the extra group size was slightly more useful in the early pre-production and production stages for ideas and spreading the labour intensive production process more evenly, and towards the end as feedback and critical listening became important to drive better quality.

So, for Omni-Gaffer productions it just remains to say thanks for a great degree course and goodnight.

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——– Learning outcomes, for reference ,

Group Aim

To manage the process of creating the above soundtracks collectively, and to deliver these soundtracks to a good standard and to the client’s specifications.

Group Objectives

[GR1] To professionally operate as a small to medium size company (or other recognisable business entity) in the audio production / post-production field might.
[GR2] To organise and fulfil an operating strategy and schedule which deals with multiple productions simultaneously, and which maximises efficiency and minimises issues or risks to delivery.
[GR3] To provide a professional standard of service in respect to location sound recording and post-sound design / mixing.
[GR4] To conceive, compose, source and / or produce music to client specifications that synergistically supports the other components of their films.
[GR5] To produce soundtracks comprising of foley, SFX, dialogue, music and atmospheres to client specifications that synergistically support the other components of their films.

Outcomes and Learning in the context of Moving Picture Industry roles

[IN1] To successfully manage the provision of service by the business for the film Descent with regard the assignment of resources, specialisms and working time, liason with the director, editor and producer on a practical and creative level, and communication of information on their needs and requirements for the piece, in order to appraise the efficacy of the collaborative approach to working on the piece – (Supervisor and Company Officer)
[IN2] To develop a better understanding of the craft and industry of a Dubbing Mixer, and to contribute to the dub mixing required for presentation of the artifact – (Dubbing Mixer)
[IN3] To better my understanding of sound design with at least some reference to the science fiction genre – (Sound Effects Editor)

Personal Learning Outcomes

[PER1] To develop a better understanding of the pros and cons of business structures, processes, regulations and agreements which might enable film audio producers to collaborate on multiple projects.
[PER2] To develop a better understanding of the wording and content of contracts, agreements and rate cards offered in the film audio field.
[PER3] To expand my knowledge of the theory of and audio techniques deployed in films similar to or influential upon those we will deliver.
[PER4] To contribute extensively to multiple film productions.

(Outcomes in this blog – <IN3> – <PER 1 + 3> – <GR 1, 2 + 5>)

I very much wanted to tackle the sound design for the futuristic, post-nanotech city scene from Immort as part of my work on this project, and was able to make a start on this as the film was being shot thanks to early provision of an animatic of the film. Below is the evolution of the scene from my initial mockup to the picture lock version handed over to the supervisor who also mixed the film.

Immort’s supervisor had initially produced a detailed sound design plan for the film, which formed the basis of my initial approach to the scene’s construction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOPA2XrnVUg

I looked immediately to Blade Runner – which includes the great street scene of sci-fi film with an insanely complex audio mix carried out by Graham V Hartstone – but the feel for Immort is intended to be different in terms of the behaviour of the characters. Lot’s of the specific things seen on screen in Blade Runner have their own tiny, almost momentary sound narrative set against the extreme bustling of the city defined by sirens, wails and pulsing humanity. By contrast, people in Immort’s world are quiet and contented, even if they are constantly beset by their connectedness thanks to their constant HUD’s. My initial mockup backdrop tried to hit similar notes to Blade Runner in the sound of humanity being strongly signified, though it’s very difficult without the specificity of actual picture available to work from. The mockup below is constructed almost entirely of heavily manipulated samples, with a couple of simple keyboard drones from Protools soft synths. It’s ugly, but gives an idea of where I was going. <IN3>

I had to change approach after discussing with Immort’s supervisor during the session in which I constructed it. He’d just come off set for the film with a better interpretation of the directors requirements and the outcome of the actual shoot for the scene. His location experience with the film told him that the extras would be considerably sparser than first implied, so lots of humanity in the audio pallette would likely not work. We arrived at an idea of generally quieting the people with bursts of the sound of their personal soundtrack as they pass-by, and the base layers defined by the unearthly hum of a nano-technological city. <GR5 + PER1>

My first attempt at following this direction up was done to a rough, no vis-fx rough cut of the film, and can be seen below –

Seeing this actual picture, the visuals turn out to be much more down to earth. Both budget constraints and a lack of extras mean the scene has ended up much sparser and near-future than the one I initially envisioned even if we discount the lack of VFX in this cut for the moment. As such I retooled the atmos more in the direction of Invasion of The Body Snatchers (the 1978 version), muting the drone of the people and trying to bring out a sense of disconnectedness (largely using manipulated foley FX and further samples, in line with the protaganists desire to be unplugged from the matrix and the suggestion of enslavement to their technology causing them to take greater care as they move around the real world. <GR5>

Instead of solid footsteps the extras feet are muted and shuffling, for which I referred to multiple scenes from Bodysnatchers like the scene linked below which dispenses almost entirely with ‘human’ foley even in crowded scenes to emphasise the distinction between the protaganists and the masses. This feel was fortuitously enabled by the incredibly well regimented ‘crowd’ at the end of the scene. There is a nod to the Blade Runner approach however, in that the HUD’s of some of the extras are momentarily given life in the audio realm as the protaganist passes them. <IN3>

Finally, this work was passed over to Immort’s audio supervisor in stem form and was incorporated into his final mix of the scene, which is backed by a music track to heighten the sense of chase and sounds which relate to the new visual FX absent from earlier cuts. <GR1 + GR2>

Reflecting on this work, I think the whole process here demonstrates once again the power of picture over the audio dimension and the importance of finding synergistic balance between them. As such I think I may have wasted a little time attempting to construct anything useful for this scene from the animatic and should have foreseen that the production would not achieve the levels of production they desired, though the early work was still very useful as an opportunity to dissect the scene’s from Blade Runner and Bodysnatcher’s critically and take lessons from them, and it certainly informed the final piece in an overall positive way in the end. <PER3>

Furthermore, the process is an example of the way the group of audio producers collaborated on aspects of the films. If I had been limited to working on the film I supervised, which was shot entirely in one location, I would have been unable to build, experiment with and compare and contrast the atmosphere work in various films as I did here, a process with which I was able to usefully fill time prior to the arrival of work on my own film, which in turn benefited the group outcome. <GR1 + GR2 + PER1>

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Key Points

Examination of Blade Runner and Invasion of the Bodysnatchers as reference for work – Evaluate similar works

[IN3] To better my understanding of sound design with at least some reference to the science fiction genre – (Sound Effects Editor)

Construction and evolution of the audio for the scene – Application of skills and conduct in production

[PER3] To expand my knowledge of the theory of and audio techniques deployed in films similar to or influential upon those we will deliver.
[GR5] To produce soundtracks comprising of foley, SFX, dialogue, music and atmospheres to client specifications that synergistically support the other components of their films.

Reflection on the work – Individual reflection on learning and team role + Process Management.

[PER1] To develop a better understanding of the pros and cons of business structures, processes and agreements which might enable film audio producers to collaborate on multiple projects.
[GR1] To professionally operate as a small to medium size company (or other recognisable business entity) in the audio production / post-production field might.
[GR2] To organise and fulfil an operating strategy and schedule which deals with multiple productions simultaneously, and which maximises efficiency and minimises issues or risks to delivery.

Tag: Reflection

Final Summary

P + P Other – World Building – Street Scene