Mixing Stop/Eject

Mixing Stop/Eject at Alchemea College in Islington
Mixing Stop/Eject at Alchemea College in Islington

Yesterday I travelled down to London to sit in on the final mix for Stop/Eject. This is the last part of the filmmaking process as far as the audio is concerned. All of the disparate elements – dialogue recorded on set, dubbed dialogue (ADR), ambience, footsteps, effects and music – must be combined into one seamless whole.

Guiding the audience’s ears through the soundtrack of Stop/Eject was Jose Pereira, re-recording mixer. Alchemea, the college in north London where he works, very kindly gave us the use of their postproduction room, a very nice little studio with a big screen, cinema seating, surround sound monitoring and more knobs than Nobby the Nobber’s Knob Emporium.

The film sounded great already, thanks to the talents of sound designer Henning Knoepfel and Jose’s diligent pre-mixing. It was a very painless process to do the necessary surround sound positioning, adjust a few levels here and there and arrive at a final mix.

It was a world away from Soul Searcher, my first real mixing experience. Yes, Soul Searcher was a feature and yes, it had a lot of action, but looking back I can’t help but think it would have been much easier to mix if I knew then what I know now. Back then I was doing my own sound design, and I was convinced that quantity was quality, creating layer upon layer of noise which took an age to sort through and balance in the mix. I obstinately foleyed every footstep even when it had no hope of being heard under the music and gunfire. I believed logic was the key to every decision, that the same location had to have the same ambience every time we returned to it, even if the story and emotions would have been better served by something a little different. And I was determined to make as much use of the rear speakers as possible, even at the risk of confusing or distracting the viewer.

Now I know that less is more, that a few well-chosen sounds trump fifteen tracks of poor ones, that the rear speakers should be use sparingly and that you don’t always need to hear every clothing rustle and every footstep.

Anyway, with Stop/Eject’s sound mix in the bag, it only remains to grade the images, and I hope to have a date set up for that soon.

Mixing Stop/Eject

The One That Got Away

Meet the star of my next film, a Virgin Media Shorts entry called The One That Got Away.

Say hello to Henry
Say hello to Henry

He’s being made by my wife Katie, on whose idea the film is based. As usual, you can follow the making of this project right here at neiloseman.com

Meanwhile Stop/Eject is within reaching distance of completion. All the music, sound and VFX are in place. This weekend the final credits roller will go on, and on Monday Jose Pereira and I will do the final 5.1 surround sound mix at Alchemea College near Islington.

Work is gathering pace on my next major production too, the title of which I’m still keeping secret. Currently the script is at fourth draft stage, and I hope to reveal some of the behind-the-scenes talent attached soon. Stay tuned.

The One That Got Away

Stop/Eject DVD Sneak Peek

It would be nice to be able to hand out DVDs and Blu-rays to the cast, crew and sponsors at the premiere of Stop/Eject. That means finishing the discs pretty sharpish after the movie is done. I’ve been working on the discs on and off for a while, and yesterday I shot the menus. Yes, you read that right. I shot the menus.

I feel that DVD/BR menus should be an extension of the world of the movie, and I figure: what better way to do that than to use footage from the film combined with new shots that appear to be in the same locations? So, for example, the Special Features menu is a shelf in the charity shop, where each item of junk represents one of the special features. Some of these were found in real charity shops, some of them were made by Sophie, and others were borrowed from friends (thanks to Colin, and Joel at the Rural Media Company). Before long I hope to officially announce the DVD and Blu-ray bonus features, but for now I’ll leave you to guess what each item might represent.

Special Features part 1
Special Features part 1
Special Features part 2 (Blu-ray only)
Special Features part 2 (Blu-ray only)

 

Stop/Eject DVD Sneak Peek

Back to the Future

The first day of shooting on Stop/Eject. Photo: Paul Bednall
The first day of shooting on Stop/Eject. Photo: Paul Bednall

Like Janus I’m looking forwards and backwards today, the first anniversary of Stop/Eject‘s shoot beginning. First of all, here are a few key things I’ve learnt from making Stop/Eject:

With the project drawing near to completion, my thoughts are turning towards my next films. As regular readers will know, writer Tommy Draper has been working on a feature-length version of Stop/Eject for some time.

However, I feel that trying to get a feature financed with me as director right now wouldn’t be much easier than it was a couple of years ago when I was trying to get The Dark Side of the Earth made. So I intend to make another short film first. It’s too early to reveal any details, but I can tell you that after advertising on Shooting People I’ve teamed up with a writer called Kevin O’Connor who is currently working on a third draft script based on a one-line idea of mine.

I’ll also be entering Virgin Media Shorts again this year, and my wife Katie is hard at work on a puppet for that. Intrigued? You ought to be.

Stay tuned for the latest news on all of these projects, and I’ll leave you with a reminder of what we were up to this time last year.

Back to the Future

Recording Stop/Eject’s Music

Lorna Davies on cello. Photo: Owain Uylet
Lorna Davies on cello. Photo: Owain Uylet
Heather License on violin. Photo: Owain Uylet
Heather License on violin. Photo: Owain Uylet

Yesterday saw the recording of Stop/Eject‘s score at Worcester College of Technology with four members of the Film Orchestra.

Recording music is similar in some ways to shooting a film. Time is precious, and the composer (or director) is constantly having to make judgement calls: do we record another take, or do we live with what we’ve got and move on? Shall I play that take back to check it’s okay or is it quicker just to record another one? Do we go from the top again or pick it up part way through? Can I fix it in post? Am I giving the performers what they need in order to do their best work? Is what we’re doing going to work with the other elements it will be combined with later?

As is often the case, recording started very slowly and gradually sped up (out of necessity!) as the day went on, eventually finishing just in time before the caretaker locked up the building. It was fantastic to hear the score come to life and, as with our first collaboration (Soul Searcher), Scott provided more than one musical moment that made me all tingly. He will now mix the live violin, cello, flute and clarinet with a sample-based piano and other instruments to create the final music tracks.

You can see a very brief video clip of the music being performed on Stop/Eject’s Facebook page (Facebook account not required to view).

Engineers Kurt Teale (left) and Billy Craythorne in the control room. Photo: Owain Uylet
Engineers Kurt Teale (left) and Billy Craythorne in the control room. Photo: Owain Uylet

Big thanks to everyone who made yesterday possible: composer/conductor Scott Benzie, cellist Lorna Davies, violinist Heather License, flautist Sue Salsbury, clarinettist Jack Suttie, WCT staff Max Alexandre, Billy Craythorne and Craig Ward, student Kurt Teale, behind-the-scenes camera op Owain Uylet, and Jane Whittle, Simon Munn, Paul Bellamy and David Staiger for helping me get in touch with the right people to arrange everything.

If you’re in the Worcester area and you’re a musician who’s into your film scores, check out the Film Orchestra’s Facebook page.

Elsewhere in the world of Stop/Eject, the last of the visual effects shots are being mopped up, I’ve just heard the first draft of the sound design, Andréa Kristina’s song for the end credits is almost finished, and the last two pick-ups have been shot by Chris Newman and Sophie.

Recording Stop/Eject’s Music

The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things

Paul Bellamy rehearses Colla Voce ahead of the choral recording for Soul Searcher in January 2005. Photo: Mike Staiger
Paul Bellamy rehearses Colla Voce ahead of the choral recording for Soul Searcher in January 2005. Photo: Mike Staiger

Next week we record the music for Stop/Eject at Worcester College of Technology with players from the Film Orchestra. I think it’s a shame that many low budget filmmakers are content to let the composer create the music in their home studio, often without using any real instruments at all. It’s true that it takes a little more organisation to record a score with live players, but the richness and authenticity of the sound you get is well worth the effort.

Let me explain how I was able to arrange this recording session, because it demonstrates the importance of building your contacts.

Once the score was written, I started with a simple shout-out on Facebook for musicians. This was seen by Simon Munn, who is part of my social media network because I gave a talk at the Worcestershire Film Festival, which he organises, last year. There are many benefits of giving talks, paid or otherwise (which I touched on in a previous post) and making contacts is one.

Simon put me in touch with Jane Whittle at the Film Orchestra, a group of amateur musicians based in Worcester. Several of their members expressed an interest in performing the music, so I knew that I needed to find a recording studio in Worcester to make it as convenient as possible for them.

Recording Colla Voce. David Staiger can be seen at the keyboard (top right). Photo: Mike Staiger
Recording Colla Voce. David Staiger can be seen at the keyboard (top right). Photo: Mike Staiger

Years ago I hung out with some friends while they were recording a demo for their band (King Monkey) at Worcester College of Technology, so I knew there was a studio there. I contacted Paul Bellamy and David Staiger, both Worcester-based musicians who were involved in the recording of Soul Searcher’s score back in 2005. I figured one of them probably had some link to the college and I was right; Paul works there. He put me in touch with the Head of Performing Arts and Music Technology, who was very enthusiastic about the whole idea, and from there it was just a case of working out the details. In return I offered to give a free guest lecture at the college, citing my prior experience at Hereford College of Art, the SAE Institute, etc.

There are two morals to this story. One is the value of networking, making new contacts and maintaining those contacts (which Facebook makes it really easy to do now). The second is, if you’re a young filmmaker struggling to get stuff made, remember that collaboration not only benefits your current project; you could be sowing seeds which will help your future projects too.

The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things

ADR Podcast

Here is a video podcast from the ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement / Additional Dialogue Recording) session on March 15th, in which the actors explain some of the challenges of recreating their performances in a studio.

This is a belated public reward for passing the £1,400 mark in Stop/Eject‘s crowd-funding campaign (over two months ago!). See my earlier blog for more info about how the session went.

Thanks to Gerard Giorgi-Coll for filming this and Soundtree Music for the use of their studio.

ADR Podcast

Adiabatic Demagnetisation Refridgeration

Adiabatic Demagnetisation Refridgeration, or ADR, is a cooling technology based on the magnetocaloric effect. I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Automated Dialogue Replacement, which is what ADR stands for in the film industry.

Georgina does some ADR
Alternative Democratic Reform

Last Friday, Georgina Sherrington, Oliver Park, Therese Collins and I all got together for the first time since we shot Stop/Eject – almost a year ago. Along with sound designer Henning Knoepfel and behind-the-scenes camera operator Gerard Giorgi-Coll, alumni of The Dark Side of the Earth, we descended on Soundtree in East London to re-record some of Stop/Eject’s dialogue.

Henning looks on as Ollie takes to the mic.
Applied Data Research

Recreating a performance in the sterile environment of a studio can be difficult for an actor. I remember struggling with a line of Kate Burdette’s on Dark Side where she was crawling backwards along the floor while a seven-foot-tall wooden robot with a massive sword bore down on her. Standing still and alone in an empty, soundproof room, it’s hard to summon up the same energy.

If I’ve learnt anything about ADR it’s that – as with any aspect of directing – you have to figure out what conditions each actor requires to do their best work and then try your best to provide those conditions. So while Georgie’s years of ADR experience on The Worst Witch meant she was quite happy acting and lip-syncing at the same time, Therese’s performance was best when delivering the lines wild, straight after hearing the production audio. Your sound crew has to be up for this, though. Kudos to Henning, who recognised and accepted that this was the best way for Therese to work, even though it would mean extra graft for him manipulating the audio to match the picture.

"Any good?"
Artificial Disc Replacement

Breaking further with convention, I had the actors feed each other lines sometimes. You have to be careful; at one point they started to overlap each other, which is exactly why we were ADRing the scene in the first place. (You want each character’s voice to be on a clean, separate track when you come to mix.) But even just rehearsing the scene a few times before recording can help recreate the performance. That’s why it’s always good to have all your principal actors present at the same time for ADR, if at all possible.

After wrapping the ADR we recorded the People’s Choice Reward, which you have probably seen already, followed by the cast commentary for the DVD and Blu-ray. With the music written, many of the VFX complete and now the ADR done, it is really starting to feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel for Stop/Eject.

Adiabatic Demagnetisation Refridgeration

More Random Updates from the World of Stop/Eject

Here are some more disjointed updates from the post-production of Stop/Eject:

Scott Benzie has written all of the score now. A few cues just need tweaking before we start to think about the logistics of recording it with live players.

The ADR session has been organised for next week. Standing variously for Automated Dialogue Replacement or Additional Dialogue Recording, ADR is the process of dubbing lines because of intrusive background noise or to adjust a performance, or even to add entirely new lines to clarify story points. This will be the first time the principal cast have been reunited since the shoot almost a year ago, and we’ll be taking the opportunity to record some extra bits and pieces for podcasts, DVD extras and sponsor rewards. Lots more news on that to come in the near future.

A VFX shot in progress by Mary Lapena
A VFX shot in progress by Mary Lapena

Work is well underway on visual effects. As expected, there has been a certain amount of attrition amongst the VFX artists, as paying projects understandably take priority. Nonetheless, several key shots involving frozen time and cloned cassette tapes are finished or nearly finished.

The opening and closing titles are being designed by Andy Roberts of speakersfive, who recently laid out the lovely illustrated script books for sponsors.

Two of the main extra features for the DVD and Bluray are near completion, with work on the menus underway and some commentaries to record in the coming weeks. Sophie Black and Chris Newman will soon be shooting another featurette in their part of the world, along with a last couple of pick-ups for Stop/Eject itself.

On Sunday I gave a talk about the whole process of making the film to the lovely folks at CEMRIAC in Worcester, and next Monday The Courtyard in Hereford will screen the trailer as part of Borderlines Film Festival.

In a nutshell, it’s all happening.

More Random Updates from the World of Stop/Eject

Falsification of Precipitation

Yesterday I had to shoot some fake snow. Ironic, I know, given the weather lately, but it had to be composited over a pre-existing shot. Various software plug-ins are available to add snow to a shot, but I’m of the school of thought that says it’s always better to use a real thing. Even if it’s a fake real thing.

A few years back, Col sent off for some free samples of artificial snow from a weather effects company called Snow Business. (Eternal winter in Narnia? That was them.) When Miguel pointed out that a snow-covered shot of Belper’s bandstand in Stop/Eject looked like a still photograph in the edit, I saw a way to make use of these samples to bring some movement into the frame.

From the box of samples we picked one that appeared to be made of shredded carrier bags, because it floated the most realistically as it fell. I suspect you could make some of this yourself with a lot of patience and a few trips to Tesco. I set up black drapes with a redhead poking over the top to ensure that the snowflakes would be backlit without any direct light falling on the drapes. Then we rolled the camera and started sprinkling.

Afterwards it was a simple case of using screen mode (or ‘Add’ in Final Cut Pro) to combine the footage with the background shot. This mode gives exactly the same results as double-exposing a traditional photograph would: the black areas naturally become transparent because they have no brightness.

Must resist temptation to use snow-based puns...
Must resist temptation to use snow-based puns…

Several years ago, Col and I did exactly the same thing with rain, filming water from a hosepipe in his back garden against a black night sky, then layering it on top of scenes from Soul Searcher.

Must also refrain from rain puns. Uh-oh, I said "refRAIN"...
Must also refrain from rain puns. Uh-oh, I said “refRAIN”…

We also shot one scene for Soul Searcher in “real” rain – real in so far as it was actually there falling on the actors, but not in so far as it actually came from clouds. Perhaps I’ll upload a behind-the-scenes clip of that for my next post.

Meanwhile, if you’re going out to shoot in real snow, check out the tips I posted a couple of weeks ago.

Falsification of Precipitation