I’m back to school after a rather busy 3 weeks. Over the break I worked on two location shoots, taking me to some unusual places and occasionally physically demanding situations. The first project was a short film called “You Deserve Everything” which follows the relationship between two men as one is to be married. The shots were mostly outdoors on very cold days, and in challenging environments for audio. One wide shot in particular put my full-tilt booming to the test, especially as the director was keen on rolling through takes without cutting. I see the benefit in doing this, as it seems to keep the actors in the moment and there is less downtime for reseting and slating. However it can be a strain on the arms after a while.

The next day on location for this project involved a partly-improvised handheld tracking shot along a beach with the two main characters stumbling around. This was a very tricky shot to boom as there was no warning which way the actors – or the camera – would turn next. I kept the boom as close to the actors as possible while staying out of shot, and this often meant moving a lot faster than the camera operator to pre-empt his next turn. Hugh was on deck as recordist for these shoots and he had to stay mobile as well. It was quite exhilarating on a cold evening and I was thankful for the exercise.

The other film project was called “Real Lust Inc” which is a pilot version of a longer film to be crowd-funded. The genre is a  sex-comedy which took place in a Toorak hotel room set as a master bedroom. The actors were very professional and understanding of the sound requirements which helped me a lot. I was running solo on this shoot as recordist and boom swinger and it was a good test of my workflow. The main obstacle I found was placing my sound report clipboard nearby for each shot – I mostly left it on the ground next to me and had very tired legs from crouching down after each take. I think I will investigate the iPhone apps as an alternative.

This week we’ve had a session with the new S6 console which looks very promising. I already feel more comfortable using this control surface than the D-command, although I still plan to learn that console a bit better too. The scrolling waveforms on the S6 are an excellent idea and I could get used to that feature very quickly.

This trimester involves the development of my major project for the course which will be completed in Tri 6. I have a couple of ideas that could work, but I’ll think them through a bit more this week and see where it goes.

Thanks for reading!