An Update on Work!

Hello to all!

I have been very busy as of lately with personal and university projects. I will firstly start off with some personal work I have been working on with my friend Chris. I have been working with some TV and Film students from Futureworks on some short films and a documentary. The shot above of me was taken for a behind the scenes section for a short film by Phil Cooper. This short film is to remain a secret for now but I shall talk more about this in the future. This next show was of the first shoot we did, including everyone that was working on the production.

These were shot on 2 different days and with the first shoot going smooth for audio. The second shoot was sadly run into a few audio issues. We planned to use two lav mics for the dialogue of the characters who were speaking. However radio signals were a problem and they could not have been fixed on the set. This meant that all the audio for the shots of the break in were all done by booming with a Rode NTG-2. The sound came through really well however there were some scenes that we decided to record some quick bits of ADR on set.

I have also been on a different set at a bar in Manchester called Cord Bar, who were very generous to let us film there. This shoot is also to remain a secret but I can show you a behind the scenes look as shown below.

This shoot went smooth with audio. The equipment that was used were a Zoom H6 recorder, a Rode NTG-2 boom microphone and also two lav mics which were working perfectly on the shoot. This made recording for the shoot go easy with no flaws. It was going too smooth for Chris and I. So we decided to record some boom shots from underneath the bar for some shots so we could get even closer to the talents without being in the way of the shot. This did involve us lying down on the floor of behind the bar but it was an experience which got us some great results in the end game.

Lastly Chris and I worked on the audio for a documentary presented by Jack Naven which included special guest Matt Bloom talking about the complexity of the film and TV industry. This was an interesting shoot as it involved us following Matt to start off giving food to the homeless of Manchester and then for me it was a strange task that I had to do. I had to both sound mix and boom operate whilst walking backwards throughout a section of Manchester whilst Chris was protecting the camera man form bumping into anything. I have been told sadly that that part of the shoot was not used, however it was pretty fun to do. There are no photos of this shoot however I will keep you updated on how this is going throughout the coming months.

With personal work out of the way I shall now tell you what I have been doing for my university course. I have been overloading myself with the threats of deadlines which start in April. However I have everything in placed to be put together and finished! Firstly I have been working on some game audio. This is the project that I have been enjoying the most because I am working with something I am passionate about which is games. I have learnt the basics of blueprint scripting in Unreal 4 and have been using a combination of recorded and library sounds to create some of the best sounds for a game level. The level I am working on is a Strategy Game Template which can be found on the learn section of the epic games launcher that comes with the engine. This template was strapped from all of its sounds and I have been working with different concepts of sounds and how to go around making a tower defence game fun to listen to. I made sure that the game level was not to be over saturated with sounds so the user can have a great listening experience as well as making sure no sounds repeat exactly the same which would be detrimental to the game. There will be a video about this very soon showing off what I have done with the level as I am right now in the final stages of mixing. There will also be a more in-depth review of what I have done on my portfolio which will be updated in the future.

For this next piece of work that I have been working on I have signed an agreement not to mention the film so I shall be talking about this in as much detail as i can but without mentioning the film, respecting the rights of the director. I have been working on the dialogue edit for a film which includes a lot of tense and action moments within the scene. My job is to get the best out of the dialogue and make sure that the dialogue is as clean as it can be. I shifted through 200GB of on set and ADR audio as I wanted to find out the best takes for the edit. However there are some parts that could not be replaced such as breaths that came after someone being injured. This made me go crafty as I created a track dedicated to breathing that could not be replaced and looped a longer breath sequence from another shot to try and make the scene flow and not sound jumpy between shots in the footage I am working with. I wanted to be creative with reverb making the space in the room well used as the scene was shot in what looked to be an abandoned office space. This would make the shots extremely reliant on reverb to create the best effect. However I wanted the reverb to be present but not too much when no one is screaming or shouting in the scene. When someone shouted in the scene I wanted the reverb to reflect upon the feelings that the character is feeling. This involved reverb processing on an audio clip that already had an inherent reverb to it without processing. I wanted to work with the audio clean however it could not have been replaced. so using the best take I could that portrayed the characters emotions well I made the choice to add reverb to it and worked with it. In the end it turned out to work well and when it was played back it made the feel of the room being full of anger and frustration which is what the character was felling at the time. 

This is all I can update you guys on for now! Stay updated right here with what I am doing as there is a lot more coming in the upcoming months!