Meetings about Music

Alice Rose Asbury / / Film Process

As Music Supervisor I have been arranging meetings with the directors/media group about the music itself. Here is a brief analysis of how both have gone so far…

Meeting 1

My first meeting with the group was to discuss the music cues I had planned for George; this was before the film and with the first director (Lucy). Lucy didn’t have a lot of direction when it came to music which gave me the advantage of being able to experiment and create all my own ideas for it. The main thing I took from this talk was is that she wanted the music to have this element of forgiveness. That at the end of the film we were left feeling sorry for George and not disgusted/angry/upset. With this I intended on making the music flow with the film; having changes in pace throughout to fit the on screen but all in all leading back to the way it started. With this I had the idea of creating a motif throughout the film that is set to signify George’s past and begin to make the audience’s feel something towards George as a character. However for me to create the music I found it hard to create something without visual guidance as the script and directors notes didn’t give me a lot of help creatively.

Meeting 2

The second meeting in relation to music was after most of the filming which enabled me to have a few rough edits of the visuals. This helped me substantially when creating the music (as discussed in my blog on my methods) so therefore was able to record and edit some piano. This helped me establish the main motif’s and structure to the piece. This meeting was with Charlotte, Angelin and Shaun who are now co-directing the film. I had to explain to them how a lot of my original music cues had been scrapped or replaced – mainly due to scene changes or changes in the script. Although this made my first set of music cues unusable, watching the visual and being on set helped me create new ones easily through watching and composing. I showed them the rough music cuts which can be split into 4 separate pieces:

  • Title Sequence
  • Travel Song
  • Dream Sequence
  • End Compilation

(Obviously these need renaming)

When I played these to the group with the visual they were really impressed with how it linked scenes together and portrayed George’s character. They had no negative remarks or any constructive criticism.  I informed them of where the pieces may change and what other layers may be added of which they agreed. I also discussed with them the ‘dream sequence’ music; myself, Gareth and Rory were unsure whether it’s a little to dramatic or even needed at all. The directors however did say they liked the music for that section so I am going to keep working on it and see how it works with the fx in that scene. All in all the second meeting was a success and I know where I need to go from here musically, I also feel a lot more confident with the music as a whole.

Review of Location Recording

Alice Rose Asbury / / Film Process

Location Recording 

Whilst the filming was in process I attended the shoots and acted as a boom operative. Rory helped a lot with teaching me how to use the sound devices 633 mixer, which lead to me leading a few of the shoots. I have also had a look through the sound devices field mixer manual and now feel confident using it and will be sure to use it more for my semester B project. I enjoyed the role of boom operative and picked up some great techniques which I will use in future (for example boom and radio mic placement). Although there wasn’t a lot of dialogue within the film we tried to pick up a lot of ambient and movement sounds on set. Another valuable aspect I learnt from being on location was recording the shot and scenes that went with our takes – we set up the sound devices mixer so it would label the takes for us, but it was also very useful to take note of the location, date, microphones, take and scene when it came to post. This helped us find useful takes in post and all the takes for a specific scene’s easily.

I felt we worked well in communicating with the film crew, they always knew our needs and were told if we thought it would be a better to get another take. We also attempted to take care of the actor/s by making sure they were comfortable, this was what we felt a necessary part of filming as it made the whole process a lot more fun.

At the start of the process we did have some issue’s with the original director. A few examples being failure to give us scheduled breaks, then also failing to tell us when they were ready to start filming amongst other events such as lack of time schedule with shots and storyboards. However as a sound team we worked through this well by being well prepared with microphones and being set up before hand ready to record. This also led us to communicating more with the editor who was in charge of noting all the shots, scenes and takes to keep us informed of what shot we were on.

When the director changed and the rest of the group took charge there was a much better working atmosphere and with this we found it easier to communicate with the director.

All in all throughout the location recording I learnt a substantial amount about what it is like to be on a film set, how to use the field mixer and how boom op successfully. Although we had some challenging incidents within the filming process I felt we tried our hardest to help the film crew when needed through offering them our advice and opinions. As a sound team we worked well together all finding our own roles within the first couple of shoots and all performing to the best of our abilities.

Sound devices mixer manual http://cdn.sounddevices.com/download/guides/633_en.pdfbooming

booming 2

Graveyard scene
Graveyard scene

sound devices 2

Ken Blair

Alice Rose Asbury / / Guest Lectures

Today we had a talk from Ken Blair who is a recording engineer and founder to the company BMP. Ken specialises in recording Jazz and classical music across the UK. He goes out to various locations, often being concert halls, to record bigger scale orchestras. Ken gave a valuable insight into setting up microphones in an orchestra setting as well as setting up the recording equipment in a different room. He also spoke about the importance of knowing the venue before you arrive otherwise issues may arise such as sound proofing and running cables.

Ken’s work is of particular interest to me as for a later career I am partly interested in live music. Recording live music has many of the same elements. I also have a background in classical music and am able to read score which is vital to be able to follow along with an orchestra. I also haven’t ever done any large scale recordings before so it was interesting to know what goes into it – especially when they are on location.

Ken also went onto to discuss useful tips for writing CV’s, as an employer and employee. He said it’s important to be clear and concise, trying to stick to 2 pages max and discussing technical skills such as the desks and workstations we are used too.

I found Ken’s talk very useful not only for tips on CV’s, recording techniques and practicalities, but as another possible career path I may take after university. This to me sounds like the ideal mix between live sound and music production and I would definitely be interested in pursuing it later in life.

Katia Isakoff

Alice Rose Asbury / / Guest Lectures

Katia Isakoff is the founder of Women Produce Music (WPM), she is also a composer, producer, owner of a successful recording studio and an academic. Previously Katia has been to Lincoln to discuss her experience in a recording studio setting, this time she focussed her talk on the music industry itself. Katia Isakoff most recent endeavour has been to create Women Produce Music (WPM). This is set to improve the promotion of women who are producers music, as she believe that there seems to be a lack of women promoted within the industry. She used the example of Bjork produce most of her album and her friend who laid down the drums for her and got credit for producing.

To me, as a women in this industry, I find it important to look at these factors as it may be something that effects me in my later career. As Katia points out, the industry itself has already changed a lot over the past 10-20 years and is stepping towards gender equality, however the industry itself simply does have more men interested in it. Although this is not relevant to this project it was certainly relevant to me as a person who is a women in sound. WPM is set out to promote women in music and help them be noticed for there work. This will be most useful for me in the future and will be a good way of making contacts. I think the most important thing to think about when discussing gender equality within the music industry is that by discussing it we are able to learn more about why.

Dan Shepherd

Alice Rose Asbury / / Guest Lectures

For this guest lecture Dan Shepherd discussed his experience as a feature radio producer. He gave us two different examples of radio features and described the thought process into making these and the actual production process. The first piece is a montage piece on a train journey across Australia called ‘indian pacific’, he explained how a good feature will be able to exploit your imagination, this train journey achieves this through a mixture of interviews and sounds you would hear if you were on a train. The second was a different type of radio feature which was presenter led; this involved having the presenter as the main focus and then having layers of sounds behind the main focus.

What can be learnt from Dan Shepherds work is the amount that sound can actually do. The type of features Dan works on are essentially the same process’ you go through with sound for film, however with feature for radio you can go into a lot more depth with the sound as sound is the sole component to it. Sound has to do everything as there are no other elements. What I took from Dan’s talk is to be able to portray an experience it is important to experience it yourself. We have adapted this to our film through getting a lot of our ambient sounds and prop sounds on the film set rather than in the studio. Throughout the making of Dan’s feature indian pacific he had issues with some of the audio not being the quality he needed for the feature. What can be learnt from this as for any other production it is important to go in with a great deal of organisation and the ability to problem solve on set. Skills which I have learnt from our specific project through complications with our director.

Dan’s ability to make something interesting to listen to whilst tell a story all through sound can certainly be admired. A lot of his skills used will be taken into account whilst looking into my own project.