LO2: Create audio material for film makers through professional collaboration.
LO3: Apply professional Pro-Tools editing and mixing techniques in a Audio Post Production situation for a film project.
Within February, me and Ed would team up once again on a project, this time providing sound services for a short documentary on a local kick boxer. For this project, we would be required to film sound on location in two locations; a studio and the Fight Factory, a combat sports gym within Lincolnshire. We would also be required to do the sound post production on this piece as well.
As this was a project we were informed about quite soon before the recording, we didn’t end up meeting with the team prior and were instead briefed online on what they’d be requiring. As the first few days were spent at the Fight Factory, we decided to just use a Boom and a Zoom to capture impact sounds such as kicks and strikes. This is done on the recommendation of Matt Hibbard (sound design) who recommends using shotgun microphones for loud impact based sounds. We did briefly discussing using a lapel microphone on the kick boxer to capture heavy breathes and such but we decided against this due to the drastic amount of movement that would be happening. We did end up getting a radio microphone out for the talking head interview done on the third day though however as we had more freedom with the subject.
For the first day of recording we were alone in the gym with him, for this we would capture key impact based sounds such as kicks to punching bags and workout cutaways such as tire flipping and weights. As we got out the Sennheiser MKE3000 as posed to the RODE NTG2, we were able to avoid picking up the sound of the rain crashing on top of the tin based building, this is due to the fact that the MKE3000 has a much more direct nature. The second day we spent recording the kick boxer leading a session to trainee’s in which he would also be sparing in the boxing ring. For this day we were much more fly-on-the-wall esq. Capturing various sparing sessions and not intervening. This was a day in which we had to constantly be on our feet as the director could tell us to switch on and record at any given time. We also made sure to capture general atmosphere on both given days so we’d have sound to layer over, this proved helpful in the final mix as I would go on to use it as a way of smoothing rough cutaway transactions together.
The final day proved to be very short for us. The vast majority of time was spent helping the camera man set up various different shots as we had a decent space to record in and superb lighting. All we would have to do for this was mic up the subject, get a level and record. This was a very short process but we did however need to record at the right level and constantly monitor to ensure no peaks.
When it came to the the post production stage, we didn’t have much to do in terms of external recording such as foley and voiceover, this was due to the fact that we were very much fly on the walls and the voiceover would come in the form of the sit-down interview. This overall edit would only take two days with the vast majorly of time spent levelling tracks out. As we had a lot of impact based sounds, we had to level this out so it flowed properly at a consistent level. There was then the issue of adding music, for this we sat down with the director and went through various tracks that he had bought in. We left the decision up to the directors dispersion in the end and he decided against a music track all together as he felt it took away from the impact sounds and often went over dialogue. Another key issue we would have to tackle throughout this process is removing any form of white noise from the sit-down interview. This process was done through using multiple 7 band EQ’s as a method of rolling off specific frequencies. From this point on, it was mainly a case of us consulting with the director on stylistic choices, such as when a certain effect should come in and how quickly should it fade, this was done in the second day after we created a mix.
Overall this documentary was a 10 minute piece where the main bulk of work went into ensuring we captured clear impact sounds that we were then able to construct together to create a sort of rhythm and overall pacing. The post production stage was relatively short due to this being a documentary and therefore, having less constructed reality based elements.
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