AUS230 Trimester Recap

Brendan Muller

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This trimester has kept me very busy, mostly doing the things that I like to do. I’ve worked on writing and recording original music to a brief, location sound recording, lots of foley and sound design, voice-over recording, audio post-production, and regular live sound mixing.

As the first part of the webseries production my group re-arranged the song “Stuck On You” by Elvis into a half-time blues rock song. I think that the tone suited the show and we had fun making it. The next element to be created was a music cue for one of the episodes and we chose to make a heavy drum track for the fight scene in episode 4. This turned out quite well and we got a good sound from the Audient recording space. For another music cue we joined with group 7 and recorded a generic jazz instrumental in the Neve studio using an Amy Winehouse song as a template. This worked out really well also, and we were all happy with the sound.

In the last few weeks of trimester we joined with group 7 to work on the overall soundtrack for episode 4. This included gathering all the foley and atmos assets, arranging the music cues, editing the ADR and location OMF files, before making the final mix in 5.1 surround and a stereo downmix. This was a great opportunity to learn about production workflows, particularly between different operators and maintaining productivity across teams of people. At first there was a bit of uncertainty around what jobs could be done by each member, especially as the two groups converged. We fairly quickly sorted ourselves into 3 teams – Foley/Atmos, Dialogue, Music.

We each used the post-production template from Campus Online, conformed our work down to 8 or less audio tracks and imported them into the master session for mixdown. This all worked quite well, as we were able to bring together the final mix on the last day of production to a standard that we were happy with. There was definitely a crunch on the day of the deadline, particularly as our studio sessions were on Fridays and it was not an option for most of us to book a weekend session. The final mix was made on the Monday with Chris, Will and myself.

Outside the AUS230 projects I have worked on two film shoots this trimester recording location sound. The first was a Swinburne film called “Fugue State” which was a good experience for me as a mostly-solo sound department. I learned how to use the 788T recorder for the first time, and I’m sure there are lots of things that I was doing the hard way (or not at all), but the data wrangler was happy with the labelling and I was happy with the sounds.

The second location shoot was with some VCA students making a film called “Death By Chocolate” in the VCA soundstage and in a commercial kitchen location. I was boom-op for these scenes with Hugh Palmer as mixer. I always learn heaps from being on set and for the most part I was able to keep up and blend in. The biggest challenges were avoiding boom shadows in very close lighting conditions, and constantly switching on and off the many fridges. It was a long night but a good experience.

A big project for me this trimester has been the internship project with Craig Carter, working on the short film “Interference”. I have been recording lots of foley – mostly footsteps – and close-up sound effects. Hugh took on the ADR recording and editing, with Cam and Lucas creating the music cues and sound design. There was quite a lot of work to be done collecting and editing the foley assets, and I used a DIY vocal booth at home for most of them. I found it very challenging to capture useful atmos tracks and travelled to some remote locations with mixed results. It was very interesting to see how the different sounds came together in the mixing stage, especially that the combination of certain sounds can match the scene quite well even if they don’t individually. We got a lot of use from a recording I made of tall trees howling in the wind, as it sounded like the ocean roaring which is a recurring image in the film.

When I began this project I created an asset list, but as the work continued and the scope expanded the list was becoming quite intimidating. I was keen to get recording and turned to a scene-by-scene approach. While this was good to get a handle on some of the scenes, it left me open to gaps in the soundtrack and without a clear idea of a completion date. Having worked on my CIU major project planning I think it would be beneficial to persevere with the asset list and planning stages before diving into the recording stage. There have not been concrete deadlines for this project but I expect that there will be for most films.

In our consultation with Craig he talked about the idea of layering an interpretive sound along with the literal one to give the soundtrack more depth and meaning. We have tried to do this with a few key sounds and I’m looking forward to his response later next week.

I’ve learned a lot about workflow practices this trimester, especially the value of setting up a template session and labelling the busses in Protools which I never did much. It’s worth doing small things at the start that make lots of things easier for the rest of the job. In terms of teamwork I think it’s important to establish the roles and delegation early on so that everyone knows what to do and stays involved and productive. My time management skills have been tested this trimester and I could have performed better, although I have tried to fit a lot in and don’t feel that I have been wasting time. I think it’s a part of developing better organisational skills so that I can feel that I’m on top of the tasks I’m taking on. I’ve also turned down a few opportunities to try to keep my workload under control.

Next trimester I am looking forward to developing better post-production techniques, engaging new organisational and planning tools, recording more foley and footsteps, and making cool stuff.