The Bag – Creating the Soundtrack

The visuals of a film are essential for general experience of the viewer, but if they are not combined with a suitable soundtrack, they never engage the audience at the fullest. My responsibility for the film ”The Bag”, on which I am working for a couple of months along with the crew, is to record, edit and mix all the sound needed for the film and to compose the music. Because I am not a professional musician and I don’t have any past experience with composing music for film, I decided to ask Dora Gaitanovici for help, a young musician from Romania.

When I first heard her songs, I was amazed by her talent and I knew there and then that the music she makes can be very successfully turned  into film soundtrack. Despite the zero-budget of the film, she accepted to collaborate with me for the film for free, because she believed in the project. Together, we already came up with some rough ideas for the music and I would like to share a few demos with you:

 

 

SISE: Final Film

Hello, fellow readers and master chefs! It is my honor to present you the final film for the SISE module. After long days of work it is finally here! My group, nicknamed “Owl”, worked on a 2 minutes piece that shows the contrast between a hotel’s fancy restaurant and its kitchen. We mixed moving image with still images and foley sound to create what you are going to see.

Overall, we are satisfied with the final result, even though there are improvements that can be made in the sound design department. Have a pleasant watch and please leave your comments below! Any feedback will help us improve for our future work.

SISE: Group Work

The winter holidays are coming and the deadline for the final project in the SISE module gets closer and closer. For this project, my group and I have to present a 2 minutes film that contains moving image, at least 3 still images and well-recorded sound. However, neither dialogue nor characters are allowed, so basically we have to put together what we have learned from the individual assignments into a single film that shows a sense of place and blends the three parts of the module together seamlessly.

After a long debate over where to start, Christy Tattershall, one of the group members, suggested that the hustling and bustling of a cafe or pub would work quite nicely. At that moment, Craig O’Connor, another member, remembered that his cousin is head chef at a hotel’s restaurant.

The idea developed and we decided that we should make some sort of contrast between the inside of the restaurant and the kitchen, mixing the sounds of the kitchen with images from the restaurant. We wanted to show that everything looks like an act from a play, where what it’s beyond the kitchen door is made only to satisfy the clients, whereas the kitchen is dirty, people are rushing constantly, they yell, they swear, and, most of all, they are more human in that particular environment. This contrast between the two worlds, separated by a single door, became the idea behind our final project.

Unfortunately, we missed the days meant to be used for filming the project, due to some unexpected events that were taking place at our production’s location. Our access was restricted in that period, so we had to work together as a group to find a solution. Eventually, we focused  on planning every detail for the first day of shooting, in our hope to finish the production process in a single day.

When we finally got to the location, my group and I took every shot and recorded every distinguishable sound that we could. However, this happened late in the evening, and we had access only to the kitchen. I was the one recording the sound. I used a portable audio recorder and shotgun microphone on a boom pole to get the chopping and all the sounds the appliances produced. Christy took the shots, while Corinne Thomas coordinated us and took pictures of the location. At the end of the day, we only covered the kitchen and we still needed a lot more footage and sound.

A new day was required solely for production, but because we missed the free days, we had to attend tutorials at university in the remaining time until the deadline, so our group had to divide in two smaller groups. Christy and Craig went to get some footage of the restaurant, while Bethany Timms, Corinne, and I told the tutors about what we were planning to do and about our progress with the project. Their feedback helped us in getting an overall picture of how our film should look like in the end.

In conclusion, things didn’t go according to plan, for one reason or another, but good teamwork and constructive feedback put our idea in a new light. We hope that the problems we encountered are going to be solved soon and we are looking forward to reach the desired result before the deadline.

Research – Gary Rydstrom (sound designer)

 “It’s very restricting to always use a library for sound effects. It’s much more interesting and freeing to go out and record new sounds because you never know what you’re going to get.”

– Gary Rydstrom

Gary Rydstrom is a well-renowned sound designer who worked on films like Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Jurassic Park or Terminator 2: Judgment Day to name a few. He won Academy Awards for every single one of these films, proving that sound is as important as picture in a film. His methods of recording extremely realistic and varied sounds are an inspiration for every person who is interested in this field.

Sound makes the moving image alive and has a crucial role in filmmaking. After researching his work, I have reached to the conclusion that capturing good quality sound is a very challenging task, but it is also very a rewarding one. Dedication, patience and the attention to details are essential for sound recording. The editing and mixing processes demand creativity, thorough planning and a lot of hands-on experience.

In one of his interviews, Rydstrom says that it is important to have a very complex set of sounds for every scene, location and subject in and outside the frame, because the more complex the layered tracks are together, the more believable the film is for our ears. Fascinated by his theory of layering ambient and detail sounds, I have decided to try to create my own projects in a similar manner.

SISE: Sound Assignment

Here is the final product for the sound part of the SISE module. My project represents the soundscape of a construction site in Bristol. I chose to record this because at a first listen, all the sounds coming from a location like this seem chaotic and annoying overall, but by arranging them into a 1 minute sound piece, you get an actual sense of place and a glimpse of the today’s busy, hectic and perpetual changing world. I am always impressed by how noise and disharmony can have a peaceful and balanced result in the end.

The work of the ones involved in building something new, something that is needed by others, requires changing the old environment, the old rules that nature and man had set in the past. However, change is not always welcome, mainly because, until a certain stage, it is unpredictable. The messy look of a construction site represents the struggle between past and future and the power of man to overcome his difficulties, needs and desires, in order to alter his existence. The machines used are tools that have a single purpose, but are indispensable to mankind, as it becomes more and more constrained by its own choices. We build taller skyscrapers, better factories and bigger homes, but sometimes we forget that these have to be just means to reach a goal in our lives, not to be the goal itself. We destroy nature’s creation and the culture of our ancestors for just another record-breaking achievement out of our pride. And this is how it was, is and will be. The cycle continues. Out of wood, stone and metal, we shape our future, willing to face the consequences of our actions.

Working With Sound

Sound. We hear it anywhere and in every second of our lives. The role it plays is crucial for identifying the context of the particular place where we are at a certain moment in time. This kind of information contained in audio recordings gives a new dimension to every piece of work, provides new ways of interpretation and channels our attention to the desired details.

In this post I am going to talk about the sound we use in film, particularly the ambient sound. The most memorable sounds in a film are found in its soundtrack, but as epic and emotional music can be, it is not enough to convey the entire message of the story that unfolds on the screen.  Here is where sound design comes in. Every element in the frame (and even outside the frame) has its unique sound that the audience needs to hear in order to experience it in a natural way. Adding these layers of sound over the picture engages the audience by simulating reality or giving life to imagination. Moreover, sound can be used in a very creative manner. Adding unusual sounds to a common composition can shift the perspective of interpretation completely, giving a metaphoric meaning.

For the SISE module of my course, I am editing a sound project that has a large influence over my entire work for this year of university studies. After I have done my research in recording sound for films and due to the inspiration provided by the professional sound designers around the world, I have decided to portray the soundscape of a construction site.

Working with many audio tracks is definitely challenging for an outsider, but the work of others helped me in understanding the steps needed for achieving what I had initially planned. For my project to take shape, I had to constantly listen to every new machine and every new action that was happening at the site. I have recorded more than 20 tracks that I had to carefully edit in an aesthetic and realistic manner. Also, in order to portray through means of sound the size of the construction site, I had to record every sound from a great distance, but still acquire individual, detailed and isolated sounds. All of this on a windy weather and with hundreds of buses driving very near to the desired location. Still, I have learned a lot from this experience, like: don’t leave your assignments for the last days available. Weather can mess with your plans unexpectedly 😦 .

SISE: Individual Assignments

As the name says, SISE (Sound Image and Sensory Experience) is planned as a three-part module, that includes sound recording, photography and moving image. For every of these parts, we have an individual assignment which should be helpful for the following group project within the module. For all these assignments, we have the same main theme, called “A Sense of Place”. This means that through 1 minute of edited audio, 5 images and a 1 minute film montage alone, we have to portray only one specific location of our choice. In the next posts I will go through all these assignments. Please give me some feedback, guys! I would appreciate any comment from you. 🙂

Media Futures – Documentary

Hello, fellow readers and media aficionados! If you were wondering what I have done in the past few weeks for the university course, here is something my group and I can be really proud of. In this particular project, I had the opportunity to be one of the camera operators and also to record the sound used in our short film. After some long weeks of brainstorming, planning, filming countless hours in the cold and editing until the very end of our available time, we finally have something to show to you all. As you might already know, we had to make a documentary about Bristol’s media scene and our journey as newcomers in the industry, all this under the awesome name: Media Futures.

Our short film is based on our actual perspectives as new students, coming to the university to learn everything we can from people already in the industry, who share their experiences with us. We tried to make the documentary very natural and in a progressive manner. The first part of it is blurry and uncertain, with many different paths to take, as it was our own reaction when we first experienced what Bristol has to offer. The second part shows that our journey becomes clearer, as research and hard-work seems to be the rule of the day. We try to prove our abilities and search for any opportunities in the hectic environment of the media industry. The final part of the documentary is portraying us, the newcomers, as being established in the media world. Our energy and creativity is channeled into teamwork and the practical side of film and television.

In the documentary, we used the voice of Alex Holden, one of the technical coordinators from Icon Films, as the narrator of the story, because we thought this approach is closer to how we were introduced to the whole role ladder within the industry. The soundtrack was composed specifically for this film, and I personally believe it works very well with the whole atmosphere created by the moving image.

If you like it or you just want to express your opinion, please leave a comment below!