Roll Sound!

I think...if I had to work on set for film audio, it would be a short career. Maybe I could do it every now and then, but not all the time.

These past couple of weeks I've been working with a team of film students on their short film project. There were about 9 film students and 3 of us from sound design...there were three group projects total, and no, we didn't get to pick our films. Our film was called "Couple" and, I kid you not, consisted of 2 actors and about 5 lines repeated in about 4 different scenes. They were something like "I'm ready", "Don't please", "Why?", "Just Because", "What time is it?", "Does that matter?". Quite the riveting source material. When all is said and done, it'll be a 10 minute film...and I guess...about falling in love, and falling apart, and then fixing it. At any rate, if you ever see a short student film and you hear these lines...just fast forward to the credits to see my name...I'm sure that's the best part. ;)

But yeah...my FIRST credit!! I think I'm way more excited about that than the work. It wasn't the easiest thing at times though. We were supposed to be learning about recording production sound. For the audio crew, it's a lot of hurry-up-and-wait. I think I spent about 39 hours on set (in 3.5 days) and maybe...worked...for about an hour of that. Ok, maybe 2 or 3 hours...but that's the absolute maximum. I got a lot of reading done. And I sat at the beach for it...sat at a temporary art gallery...squashed myself in a studio apartment with the rest of the crew to get a kitchen scene...and watched a set get put together and torn apart on a sound stage. Certainly could have been worse if I'd been in a classroom! Oh, and I watched my first set of "dailies" (screening of footage shot for a day and reviewed for picture and sound...I have to say, sound was pretty good!).

Most of the work i did involved connecting audio gear and listening to the location for problems (I mean, at the beach, you want beach sounds...not planes and dogs and beach yelling!..but you can't do much about that)...and booming. I think holding the boom mic was my favorite job. If you were the "mixer", you basically listened to the volume levels and hit record. Ooooh...exciting! uh, not. Our film guy who was the audio go-to guy seemed to be enthralled with the mixer, so we let him do it (even though he seemed to have problems with that simple task). Booming...well, your arms can get tired holding the mic on this long boom pole...but most filming shots are only a few seconds...at least on our set. To me, that was the challenge...to strengthen my arm muscles and to keep it in the right place to catch that stellar dialogue. That's all you really want on production sound. The rest...you fix in the editing room...ocean noises...whatever. And a lot of the time, if it is too noisy, you still record the dialogue later in a sound proof room, and sync it up...to get rid of those untimely dog barks, etc.

Also, with the boom, clearly, you have to keep it out of the camera's shot, and if it's on a dolly and moving a lot, that can be tricky to keep up. I think that was the most fun...it's like crazy choreography! We had a very long dolly shot at the end that required me jumping on the dolly track, then quickly moving the boom over the actors, then back. Someone had to wrangle the cables behind me so I didn't trip on the way back out of frame! I think it worked out...but I won't know for sure until they edit and we work on the sound next term. I think I was too noisy getting out of picture...oh well! There was an entire crew doing the same thing with lighting and what not..so I wasn't the only noisy one!


There were a couple of things during filming that cause problems other than the extensive waiting around. Mostly, my sound team quit half way through. sigh...we weren't being graded and the boys really hated being on set. I think it was a great learning experience, but if you hate it...it's hard to blame them. One guy at least talked with the teachers and worked it all out. the other just left, so being the ONLY sound person with the one film guy doing sound...not fun. Especially because part of our guys' complaint was that the film audio guy was...annoying is the best thing to say. Mostly he suffered from being young and over-zealous. to me, he was just super nervous and constantly trying to hit on me (NOT cool)...but when I wasn't there (we all had at least 1.5 official days of set), he was rather bossy and a bit rude I guess. Anyway, there were a lot of political issues, and it just sucked that at the end, I was left alone to work through it all. but hey, I still had fun. We have to work on the sound next term with the movie, so ...guess what my two boys will be doing...more work than me! hee hee

Another problem was we had to film around our actress one day (not bad, but it's only a 5 day shoot) because she got an audition for "Smallville"! I guess good for her (but to be honest, I think she's lucky the part was a non-speaking role ;)...but ugh, we had a call time of 6:30am (ok, so other crews had 4am and all night shoots, I shouldn't complain...but I will)...and they didn't plan lunch because originally we weren't working until the afternoon. For her, i hope she gets the part...but I may never know. I watch "Smallville" anyway, so when there's an episode that seems like the Mr. Freeze plot from Batman & Robin, I'll keep my eyes open for her. she read to us from the script, but some of it was blacked out. I can't imagine spoiling a thing more than what I already wrote, but eh...it's not too exciting, so no point in saying more.

Enjoy the picture...I may not have all the titles right, but here you go... From the Left, in green, Luke, our um..Director of Photography? That may be wrong..he was in charge of call sheets, and running the slate before filming. On the ground, but out of sight, was Jeremy, one of our camera guys. In yellow, is Ron, our lighting guy...lighting takes the most time on set by far! In bright green, our director, Scott. He also wrote the film...they all write scripts, and the faculty chooses which will be filmed, so that student directs, and somehow they all pick the rest of the roles. Then oh! look! a familiar person on the boom mic... =D...Our actors on the bench (don't you love how all that stuff is around them while filming, but you never see any of it!)...Marie and Jarett (aka Madeline and Marcus in our film). And then there's Ginevra (back turned) who did makeup. And honestly, the first person I've met with that name...I'd only otherwise heard it as Ginny's full name in Harry Potter! that's not everyone from set, but it's a nice pictures...and check out that beach mountain scene! Not bad for a day's work!