'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
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