Portfolio Piece 5- Raskto Documentary

Available At: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb-OtTKA1u8

I am aware this piece takes me over the 40 minute mark so please view this as my last portfolio piece and only count the desired minutes to take my portfolio to the 40 minute cut off period.

I worked with Marina Ivanovic on the production and sound editing of her Documentary about Rastko Dance group. I helped her film some of the more recent footage of the dancers performance (Marina filmed the interviews), and this included recording a backup audio track on my Zoom H4N. I found this process a little challenging in itself; as there was only me to film it and monitor the sound at the same time. Unfortunately; both the backup track and the recorded camera audio, suffered from noise distortion. The lady in charge of music playback at the rehearsal often changed the volume in accordance to the song, but all were very loud and despite being quite far away from the playback speaker, both my camera and Zoom struggled and the distorted quite badly due to the volume. Because I was trying to film the dancing, this clipping was only noticed during the sound edit. The 'quieter' dances had recorded cleanly on both my camera and my Zoom when played back to check the quality. Over 30 minutes of footage had been recorded and we weren't able to sit and watch/listen through it all which was why this distortion went unnoticed until it was too late.

In all honesty, I found this piece particularly challenging, due to the quality of the video footage that the film is predominantly made up of. The editor; Marina, had been given permission by the Rastko dance teacher Nada, to compile very old footage and use it in her documentary. All of this footage was originally recorded to VHS and at some point transferred onto DVD, so the audio quality was horrendously bad. Marina had to copy the video onto her computer and edit it down into the core clips so there was a lot of miss matched music and audio quality. These clips were edited in two different editing programmes and later compiled onto one so I wasn't left with much room to edit the audio. An example of what complicated things quite majorly was the lack of 'handles' on the clips. This meant I could only work with the immediate audio that was there and not deviate from this where I have been able to on other projects. Being able to extend the audio clip either side would have allowed me to create some much cleaner fades. Another difficulty faced came about with the age of the footage, some contained an awful lot of 'noise' which was difficult to edit out. I EQ'd some of this and on some clips; was able to almost completely mute out the 'hissing', but it was replaced by a very high pitched sound instead. This wasn't as noticeable though so I felt it was better to use that instead of the original. Due to the version of my Pro Tools programme, I was unable to import the OMF I had created in Premiere, to try and allow me more editing options. I attempted to open it in Logic and even Sound Track Pro, but for some reason it kept displaying error messages. I was left with the only option of editing it all in Premiere Pro! This in itself was a challenge as the interface is poorly designed for audio editing. The fades were very specific and did not allow for much change in the way that Pro Tools would. I had hoped to create smooth transitional fades between each clip but it was difficult to do this as the programme is quite unresponsive where fades are concerned. The faders on the mixer did not respond as well as those on Pro Tools, and without a audio control interface like a Command 8 I had to make do with using a mouse. On the voice over, I tried to keep the volume levels equal, and EQ'd her voice so that it sounded less boxy. I also added a low level of reverb to give the audio some depth instead of it being completely flat (see fig 1)

Fig. 1

Marina had stated that she wanted the documentary to have a really retro vibe to match the footage, but working with the older footage with no audio handles really meant I was limited with what I could do and this would be the same for any sound designer who had worked on it unless they had access to higher version of pro tools. Overall Marina was happy with the piece. As a Sound Designer it was a big learning curve and I learnt that upgrading software; if an expensive outlay at the time, is always worth it, as it could affect your abilities at some point costing you a job. I also learnt that if the editor is using footage taken from a dvd and cropped down; where possible, ask them to 'over crop' so that there are some audio handles available. 

Portfolio Piece 4: Disappear

Available at: http://youtu.be/ConTvg12tdY
(Unlisted due to it needing to be private before being released at Film Festivals

Disappear is a film directed by Greg Anthony James, about three contestants who sign their lives away, in the hope to win a competition that will make them rich. It is set in the present day, and revolves around the characters Damian, Ross and Alice, having to secretly give up their identities and find ways to survive. The piece is very naturalistic and I found this to be an interesting concept because one may assume it would be set in a dystopian future or set fictional world, but instead it takes place in modern day London. I worked alongside another Sound Designer- George Anckorn, and we had initially agreed to split the 15 minute video in half at the musical montage. It was later decided we would take a specific role for the full 15 minutes in order to keep the consistency of effects and mixing between the two halves. George was in assigned to recording and editing the Foley/ Sound Effects and then editing (including EQ'ing). I was assigned to editing and EQ'ing the dialogue and atmos. Once we had completed our individual tasks, we combined the two components and edited some of the parts together. I then took this piece and mixed all of it mainly using a post production edit suite as I found it much more effective for monitoring levels and increasing my work flow speed.

Upon first inspection of the video, it seemed like there wasn't a lot that needed doing. Most of it had been recorded on Sennheiser Radio Mic's and there had been a location sound operator present using a Sennheiser 416 shotgun microphone. It then became apparent that the spill of noise from each location they had recorded in, would make it difficult to find atmos to match. A lot of the dialogue was quite 'clear' but other parts had a noticeable background 'hum' or some slight muffled or distorted qualities. This was mainly due to the radio microphones used, being on the actor's clothes and under jackets etc. To try and work around this, I extended the audio handles on most of the clips. From here I edited the in and out fade points; so that the jumps between locations weren't so apparent, and any hum faded in and out only lasting for a short period of time. I tried to EQ the voices in relation to the character's location; so for example in the opening scene, I wanted to keep the 'bassiness' to the Adjudicators voice. As it is set in an ominously lit room, I thought keeping a sharp but 'bassy' timbre, make him sound more threatening and powerful. I didn't need to use any reverb plugin's because the radio mic's captured the rooms ambience optimally. but sometimes the recordings that were a bit muffled already, didn't greatly benefit from being EQ'd.

Another role I undertook was track laying and organising all of the foley George had recorded and the editor Naomi had organised in the OMF file. Before I did this, all the audio was quite jumbled up; with some foley on the rough dialogue tracks and vice versa. I went through each line of audio and then separated it all out into character order; starting with the first person in the scene, followed by Foley 1, 2 and 3 etc. I then colour coordinated all related tracks and this was so I had a quick visual aid for when I was mixing. I tried to keep tracks to a minimum but due to the two types of microphone being used on set, each character had 2 tracks and 2 lots of audio options rather than one. Some of which contained full vocals from microphones and other's lacked any audio where the microphone hadn't picked up any sound. George and I decided to mute some and keep others, as it was sometimes useful to have another file to 'pad out' the dominant microphone and enhance it slightly or use to extend and merge atmos. Below (Fig 1 and 2) are two screenshot examples of before and after I had organised the tracks.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

The task of implementing and blending in atmos took quite a lot longer, due to there being lots of audio breaks, location noise spill and blunt cuts. An example of this found during the cafe and restaurant scenes; where the music and general background chatter was often quite overbearing but then abruptly would come to a stop when the character's line was over. there were no matching location ambience recordings to go with it so I had to find atmos that could play on top, and work as a natural progressive element when there are breaks in voices but the scene is still happening. (See Image of Cafe audio breaks)

When I was given the piece, there was a lot of differentiating volumes in the sound due to it being shot in different places; such as traffic congested roads, or totally quiet houses. This meant that mixing became more difficult than I had initially anticipated. The combination of choppy shots; that switched between almost total silence to loudness, required me to keep going over small sections at a time to make sure it all flowed naturally. An example of a particularly tricky part was whilst they the character's were on their phones or in public places. I firstly had to be mindful of how I EQ'd the character's voices and secondly, try and merge the location atmos overspill, with my added atmos. Damian's vocal recordings in the cafe scene were louder (due to the cafe music and chatter), so I kept this running continuously, even when the edit changed to show Ross or Alice speaking on the phone. I dipped the cafe atmos' volume down and placed a high pass filter on top; which was automated to only kick in when the shot changed to Ross or Alice. This made it sound like you could hear Damian's location quietly through Ross's or Alice's phone (See fig 3). I used this technique later on when Damian stands on the motorway bridge.

Fig. 3

During the montage scene, George and I decided to use some null extensive techniques for example when Damian is in the phone box. The montage music is playing over the top, so you do not hear any atmos or other sound effects; which we could have left like this, but decided there were a few single effects that we wanted the audience to hear. In this scene you only hear him hitting the handset against the telephone. Later on you hear Damian dump his bags down and Ross flick his lighter switch; but not any of the other sounds, to imply that they are completely lost in their own solitary world. Overall the piece was more challenging than I had anticipated but I think the edits that George and I made have made the piece sound a lot more natural and therefore appropriate for it to be entered into a film festival; which Greg, the Director, intends to do.

Portfolio Piece 3- Monty Python 'The Why Factor'

Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j-00UmSlBk

Animation as a visual medium; is very different to that of standard film with visuals from cameras. Sound Design can help bring realism to the fictional world created by the animator. For 'The Why Factor' video, I worked with Kamil Burniak a third year animator. He had been granted permission to animate a 20-30 year old Monty Python sketch. Kamil also gave me a sample of 5 different short scores of music and the original sketch audio. He set the sketch in a tunnel, and wanted me to insert any sound effects that were present through the animation and manipulate the audio already given to me to make it all more realistic to the setting. On the surface, the narrative appeared quite stereotypical of a modern day Reality TV singing competition. But the way in which he has presented the judges through the animation actually makes the whole piece more satirical and the fact it was originally recorded 20 years ago, ironic. For this reason I made sure sound effect of the judge filing her nails was present from start to finish. It highlights how little the judges think of the act, which plays up the way in which real reality TV shows mock or ignore bad contestants. One of Kamil's requests was in regard to the introductory music. He wanted it to sound like it was coming out of the radio; which was located inside the tunnel, and he wanted the volume to increase as the camera zoomed closer to the source. In Pro Tools I used a combination of a 4 band EQ (see fig 1) and D-verb.

Fig. 1

The EQ was automated so that when further away from the source (at the start) it would be more muffled. This was achieved by increasing the Low Pass Filter for baseness but also increasing the high pass for a tinniness synonymous with an older style 'radio' sound. As the camera panned closer, I increased the slope angle of the High Pass filter making it louder. I then used a 'Small Church' reverb setting and automated this so that it was a little less intense when inside the tunnel. This was because the music became a little 'muddy' when the reverb mix level was set to 100%. Changing this to 62% instead meant that you could still get the atmosphere of the music being played in a tunnel without losing the music clarity.

From personal experience, animators early into their career don't always realise the importance of sound design. Countless times it has been hard to find animation work because they do not advertise a need for help and feel that they can do it themselves. Trying to sustain a sound design career early on may not be easy if animation work is not being promoted. As with video editors, the animators that do use sound designers will tend to be working up to their deadline and pass it on to us at the last minute which is highly ineffective when trying to record your own foley which is often necessary when trying to help build the world that their animation is representing. Kamil however, gave me a reasonable amount of time to work on it which meant that I was able to record the majority of the foley myself i.e. ambiences, nail filing, finger tapping, tape playing, drips and head scratching to name a few. I only resorted to sourcing sound effects for parts of the train.

The animation was intended to go on the Monty Python website and blog but there had been talks in the early stages of it being put onto DVD. With this in mind I used the PhaseScope plugin to monitor the volume levels. Mixing to BBC PPM 6, was useful because it meant that I could see where any effects were too loud and therefore unacceptable for any possible broadcast. The final part of the animation saw a train speeding down the tunnel. I wanted a cacophony of sounds from a quiet train in the distance to the whoosh of it getting closer. I layered two of the same train sounds on each other, one starting before the other, to make it seem more calamitous which was enhanced by using the D-Verb Small Hall reverb plugin in Pro Tools. There were 4 tracks in total to allow for sound layering and when played back, the approaching train effect constantly peaked at 7 or more on the PhaseScope meter. I tried lowering the volume but this wasn't effective. The sound was supposed to get louder as it got closer to the judges, to facilitate a realistic awareness of space as the train got closer. I considered remixing the entire project to a lower volume but I decided to compress the sound effects that were causing the peaking. Muting each of the train tracks to find the culprit it was denominated down to the two layered approaching train effects. There were two sharp train rail 'screeches' that sent the PPM Meter soaring. I used the Pro Tools Compressor/ Limiter Dyn 3 Plugin, and altered the Threshold level; “how loud the signal [had] to be before compression [was] applied” (Vincent, 2012), the Ratio “how much compression [was] applied' (Vincent, 2012) and the Knee ”how the compressor [reacted to signals once the threshold [was] passed.” (Vincent, 2012) (See Fig 2). Compressing the audio signals meant they maintained their volume but lost some of their intensity which had caused them to peak on the PPM Meter. After these were inserted on the track, the PPM PhaseScope meter registered 6 as its highest peak and I didn't have to re- mix anything.

Fig. 2

There were occasions where I was unable to control things for example the dog. It one of the few sound effects within the original Monty Python voice recording. It had been panned harshly to the right despite the vocals all being full stereo. A quote by author Brent Edstrom on this subject said that “Panning is often used to provide some breathing space between signals that share a similar range of frequencies”(2011, p108). This may have been true but I think it more likely that the original video footage of the sketch placed the dog in the right hand corner and the animation didn't account for this. The character's spoke throughout the parts when the dog made noises and therefore anything added had to be identical and this was the case for the shotgun reload and shotgun bang. Older projects I have completed; such as a Radio Drama production of Doctor Faustus, enabled me to understand working with panning. I proceeded to record myself impersonating the dog as closely as possible in stereo; which surprisingly matched up pretty well! I then panned this to the left ear, but because the right ear was the original it was still slightly different in one ear to the other. I split my recording into mono left and right, panning the 'left' track harshly to the left, the right track to the right (to blend with the original) and then kept the stereo recording panned centre to try and cover all bases. This gave a much better sound than I had expected!

EDSTROM, B. (2011) Recording On a Budget. New York. Oxford University Press Inc. P108

VINCENT, S. (2012) The Beginners Guide to Compression. Online. United States of America. Available at: http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mixing-mastering/the-beginners-guide-to-compression/ Accessed May 3^rd 2013.

Portfolio Piece 2- Mother, Father, Me

Available At: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI8Wbmr0tig

'Mother Father Me', was a short produced by Scriptwriter Jack Hayward as an entry for Sundance Film Festival UK. One of the reasons I was drawn to doing the sound for this piece, was because it had no speaking it in and I would be allowed to be quite creative. Jack's vision for the overall film was for it to be more artistic; poignantly standing out from the other entries, and making it less like a student production. Some of the other people involved were: Luke Weller as the video's Editor and Simon Allison as the Composer.

This piece was physically and mentally challenging for me for a few reasons. Firstly I was very ill with flu when I was given the piece. Secondly the deadline was extremely short. Normally I would like at least 4 days to work on a piece 5 minutes in length, but for this I only had 2 and a half days. I was unable to make much progress on the first afternoon due to having a bad migraine and sickness for most of the day, so did the planning of which Sound Effects I needed to record and then recorded the atmos. The day after this was spent recording foley solidly throughout the day, and then editing and mixing it in Pro Tools. By the deadline, I had managed to finish a piece of which all of the sound effects were made, edited and implemented by me. The only sound which was not mine was the Mother character's gasp at the end. For me this was a big personal achievement as I had never previously completed a video consisting entirely of my own foley and effects. It was also finished in such a short time; which in all honesty was enormously stressful but I was happy with the end result.

Mother Father Me had no spoken narrative; so the sound was a lot more important than it would have been had it had speech in it. I had been told to pay particular attention to the scene where there was to be no music. This was when the Father and the family were around a table whilst he rolled a cigarette out of a money note. When recording the effects, I tried to think in detail of all of the sounds that you possibly wouldn't notice but would be present, for example when he has rolled the cigarette, he puts it to his mouth to go and smoke it. I went as far as recording the small sound created when I put a 'foley' cigarette near to my mouth. This was because the scene was so gritty and naturalistic that any little sounds like that could be more noticeable and possibly uncomfortable to listen to; which was in keeping with the uncomfortably awkward nature of the scene.

Foley was sometimes a challenge to record, having not got access to a sound proof room at the time. I chose my bedroom as the most acoustically suitable room in my house. Unfortunately sounds that wouldn't normally interrupt my day to day life, suddenly became obvious I.e the consistent flurry of cars during the 'School Run' in the afternoon and recordings had to stop for this, central heating had to be turned off, any time anyone else was in the house they had to shut all the doors and not move around as my microphone was sensitive enough to pick up sounds my ears couldn't even hear! This has always been one of the downsides of not having regular access to a professional studio space.

The film is quite intense and the sound effects were meant to reflect that. One 'style' that was considered, was 'Null Extension'; which in film sound, relates to the viewing audience being able to hear the sounds that one character in particular hears (Pisters, 2003, p274). An example of this was in Saving Private Ryan; after an explosion, there was a loud ringing telling the audience they are hearing what the main character hears. I had learnt that Null Extension was only relative to one character but in a way, the scene in Mother Father Me around the table; with no music, is very close to it as you are so focused on what the Father is doing that its almost like you are hearing what one of the nervous characters is.

PISTERS, P. (2003) The Matrix of Visual Culture: Working With Deleuze in Film Theory. Stanford California. Stanford University Press. p274

Portfolio Piece 1- Lively House Radio Drama

Available to listen to at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJU1I3zSuBQ

My idea to create a radio drama stemmed from my love of supernaturally base cinematography. I felt that horror films regularly contained unnecessary amounts of violence and gore which would immediately ruin my ability to immerse myself as a watcher of the film. In my opinion; if written well a film could be just as gripping without a single drop of blood, in a way that Alfred Hitchcock was able to do so. A quote that particularly interested me when looking into writing a supernaturally based piece, referenced Alfred Hitchcock and his use of suspense. “There is a distinct difference between 'suspense' and 'surprise', and yet many pictures continually confuse the two” (Hitchcock, 2011, p27). So instead of creating a film with the aim of instantly scaring someone through surprise, I wanted to create something with suspense to keep the audiences attention. I thought this would be more of a challenge to do with audio only. I also felt that the age range for radio dramas sometimes excludes younger listeners, so I made this with a view to it appealing to a younger demographic. I wrote the script myself and utilised a feature I had read in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, of storyline guidance through a poetic description. The poem's throughout 'Lively House', functioned as a guide for the audience of the mood and tone for the each scene.

The key emotions I wanted to portray before embarking on the project were: Unnerving, Supernatural, Confusion/ Apprehension, Social Isolation/Rejection and Realism. Obviously in 11 minutes this was hard to encapsulate, and I actually felt that the story itself had real potential, and that it would be a shame to cut it short, so I decided to write the script as Part 1 of a series. For this individual project I have only made and am only submitting Part 1 (See Fig 1 for script breakdown example and organisational material used prior to recording).

Aside from the 4 actors I used for each character; in terms of organisation, I enlisted Scriptwriter Craig Busek and Composer Marina Ivanovic. Craig reviewed my script and advised me of changes that could be made. This was useful where the fluidity of sentence structure were concerned. Marina was then pivotal in helping my vision come to life. Her music helped me to aurally pinpoint changes in the tone of each scene. I gave her a very precise and detailed break down of the style of music I wanted for each scene and how long each should be, as it was to be broken down scene by scene. This was effective in guiding the suspense. (See Fig 2). After this had been done I was able to distribute all the scripts amongst the participating. Actors. I highlighted their individual parts and printed these off for the recording so that they had a better visual aid for their parts.

Using a sound proof studio for vocal recordings meant that the clarity of each character was sharp, therefore providing the perfect 'blank canvas' to place that character within the designated room per scene. Doing the majority of the foley myself was challenging because; unlike a film, I had no visual reference and despite creating an extensive SFX/Foley list per scene, often thought of new things that needed to be recorded! I tried to keep sound effect library usage to a minimum. The mono SE Electronics SEX1 microphone used, was an ideal condenser for vocals, as it's cardioid polar patten kept the chance of spill from any externals noises like people talking quietly in the studio, to an almost unnoticeable minimum. Foley/SFX recording with a Zoom H4n was necessary; as it needed to be done at home. Despite the light recorder noise; when in a room that was as acoustically dead as possible, it provided quite clean stereo audio that was ideal for foley and effects. Using a studio for foley would have been ideal but for this project I was limited to doing it at home. I don't think the piece suffered at all from having to do this and using a Zoom H4N was quite a practical way around having to rely on sound libraries.

I tried to keep plugin usage simple; as I wanted it to sound naturalistic to the location in the scene. Therefore I used different EQ and Reverb settings to take my 'blank canvas' audio and make it sound less like it had been recorded in a vocal booth! I took multiple takes of vocals so that I had a choice, I learnt from previously having made a Radio Drama of Dr Faustus, that recording multiple takes, gives you more options creatively. I was then able to swap and merge clips together which was good when a whole take wasn't said in a way that I wanted. When initially starting out, I recorded a guide track to estimate place markers for each scene and work out how long each musical segment needed to be. I then double checked this with a stop watch and collated a document for Marina to base her music around. This planning meant that when it was recorded everything was labelled and ready to be synced up to the guide track and Marina's music fit with each scene.

HITCHCOCK, Alfred., LEITCH, Thomas., POAGUE, Leland. (2011) A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock. 1^st Edition. West Sussex UK. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. P27

Fig. 1

- Script 

- Plot Summary 

-  'Who was in each scene for recording day'

 - Recording Day Equipment 'Tick off'  Checklist

Fig. 2