“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
Fool me three times, well...
All things aside Project2 has been one that was originally intended as a side project. The original concept was to compose three original pieces to be used as overtures for specific characters in a Sci-Fi short film.
There where many factors that led up to the decision to design sound for an Experimental short film, the first being that the scope of the scope of the Sci-Fi film was too large to conceptualise in the timeframe given. The next being in that lessons leaned from previous projects had not necessarily had been acted upon in giving benefit of the doubt to other members of the group in terms of creative process and commitment to the project. Not that the visual team wasn't up to the task, but the students that had asked to be apart of the project just did not commit the time needed and instead as with other situations before, had other priorities and commitments whether it be just an easy pass or to mark off a Learning Outcome. This time i was prepared though in having a major side project that i could use as my main project under the working title Idle Hands.
As with other project thus far as part of my time, the title of production lead was upon my shoulders, although this time from the start I had a clear idea of creative direction and workflow to achieve the desired outcome both for me and the client as I was free to re-interpret the original work in anyway that I saw fit. Learning from concepts in Project1 careful planning and time management was needed in order to successfully complete this project within the given time frame as even though from day one Project2 was supposed to be a group work project with myself and another audio student I was weary of previous projects where there where issues with either communication or commitment from team members so Idle Hands was disguised as a side project until the inevitable happened. This Project had two major iterations and a few different production stages where collection of assets, marking key frames or transitions, collection of assets, session management, data management, feedback/criticism, mix elements including panning and overall level, narrative just to name a few all played a huge part in the process.
Although this is only a basic sound design session, there is a lot of elements that go into making these sessions run smoothly particularly when you have multiple pieces of dialogue or sound design elements.
This project was undertaken as a supplementary to the main Learning Outcomes of Project2 as we all know how sometimes working with other people can sometimes lead to un-even workloads in terms of creative design. Fortunately though I thought well ahead and undertook 2 side projects in order to fill the last of my modules needed to pass Studio1, one of which being sound design for an Experimental Film, the other being audio for a Product Shoot (TV Commercial).
Pictured above is just one example of a workflow I use particularly when there is no dialogue, where the track list is arranged chronologically by scene. Although this is not the best practice it worked in this scenario particularly in terms of collecting audio assets. When arranging audio samples for film it is often handy if you have multiple audio tracks/samples and you haven't kept on top of name the files appropriately to set up a workspace window to audition these libraries.
Before arranging sounds into the Edit Window having Location Markers at key points within the piece will often help syncing key frames or transitions that you might have in the session, just be mindful when doing sound for film to have the correct Timecode of Frame for any edits you are doing which usual means having a copy of the final edit of the film you are working on and ensuring it is at the same Frame Rate, because if this is not correct when the audio is married with the film by the editor this may cause issues with audio quality and synchronisation. To make sure there is no loss of data within the session often an assets folder containing the source files of all the tracks will be created inside of the session folder, this is important to do first as sometimes if you haven't correctly imported files into the session you can lose data and audio files and are then asked to relocate files which can lead to having to re-edit sessions from scratch.
During the gain staging process once the whole session was finalised and even while the assets where being implemented the levels of each sample where adjusted using the individual clip gain and observed on two seperate mix channels being the main which was measured in RMS and VU
to give a more accurate representation of perceived loudness overall. Apart from a few samples being edited creatively most of the sounds where either layered or created with most elements being either a main part of the mix sonically or used just as a texture with most of the mixing being done on the master bus more so to sweeten the sounds overall and keep overall loudness in check
Overall for me this was a very successful project in helping me define my creative vision and set in motion a series of events on my way to specialising in Post Production Audio. Not only has it been my first true solo sound design project but having it as not my originally intended main project meant that i wasn't as emotionally attached to the project which i think helped in the creative process as failure didn't mean anything more than some film students having other audio to be used as part of their synergy presentation.