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Post-apocalyptic research – sound design for film – ‘Oblivion’

In the video interview, they discuss how important sound design for the post-apocalyptic genre is, especially in setting a scene. Oblivion takes part on earth after a huge war where earth is now desolated and baron. In the sound design they had to take into consideration there was very little life where there were very little insects or birds meaning the atmosphere sounds was essentially just winds which made the scene feel very sparse.

I can take this approach into consideration when thinking about the sound design for our film as it is too set in a post-apocalyptic setting, however with consideration to wildlife sound, there is no need to remove these as there is still very much a living planet in our film, as its set in rich woodland for most of the scenes. However, with regards to other human life there is very little which means there will be little outside sound of other human life again making the scenes seem fairly sparse and post-apocalyptic.

Furthermore, with the use of digital media in our film I will have to consider the possible addition of entities that require a complete sound design. I can take inspiration from the drones in Oblivion as they required such treatment. The sound design team used interesting techniques such as making the sound effects tonal and ‘evil sounding’ with the aspiration of making them sound like an ‘evil R2D2’ thus giving an inanimate object some form of emotion and adding another level to the sound design. This could be a good technique to use in our film if such an entity was added as with minimal characters a further level of emotion would be effective to add with the use of sound.

This research ties in with my second learning objective which states ‘to better understand and employ techniques to add sound to digitally created visuals making them sound realistic and in place with the genre’

https://gizmodo.com/5995064/how-oblivion-made-earth-sound-as-post-apocalyptic-as-it-looks

Today we began filming with a slight set back, as we had all actors on set today and although only two actors would ever be in a scene at one time together, life was made difficult by the fact we were unable to get hold of any radio mics for the remanding of filming this week. As there would only be two actors we decided to book out an extra boom mic and use one mic per character thus recording each vocal and ambience separately. This seemed to work well on set and the recordings came back clear.

We also took some time out today whilst the crew were filming a cinematic title sequence that didn’t require sound, to go out and record some wild tracks of the locations we had been shooting in. This would allow us to build some good ambience to add to the recorded tracks, or add as a backing if any ADR was required.

Today we began the first day of recording sound on set for the short film. The location was in Hartsholme park, and all the shots today only consisted of one actor (the main character) with little to no dialogue. Given the situation we knew that most of the sound captured today would be through the boom pole however we also decided to use a radio mic on the actor, as many scenes included a lot of heavy breathing and expressive action thus this was the best way to capture these without having to add them in, in post-production.

This was a good way to start recording as it gave us a bit of space to get a feel for using the new kit, such as the 633 and the rifle mics without missing any important dialogue. We didn’t experience any difficulties recording today and came out with some successful recordings.

Unfortunately, due to filming today myself and Aaron were unable to attend Dave McSherry’s lecture.

Today’s lecture was presented by Lol Hammond who works as a music supervisor on a lot of British films.

Lol’s main role was to source music for films along with the permissions to be able to use the tracks legally in films. Lol mentioned he sometimes is allowed to choose the music himself or have creative input in the choice. However most of the time he is just given a track list to confirm.

Lol stated that this is a great way to get your foot in the door for working in the film side of the industry as this is a great way to start working on short films. He also said a great knowledge and wide variety of genre or index of music is also a great help here, as although you can research it, initiate is a great help when selecting music whilst watching picture lock.

Today Aaron an myself went out to the filming locations to check the sonic environment and make sure there would be no problems when recording there.

The first location situated in Hartsholme country park didn’t have any initial problems that needed addressing, however it seemed quite a popular area for dog walkers so there was often some background noise from them. Although situated in the woods the areas where our scenes were filmed we prone to some high winds, so we must make sure we bring the correct equipment to filming such as wind socks. One further issue we had was due to the time of year there were a lot of dead leaves on the ground which added a lot of noise to a recording so positioning of the boom mics would be paramount when recording. Finally, in the time we were there we only heard one plane going over head, therefore this won’t be a massive problem on the day of filming, however we must keep this in consideration and keep an ear out for them before filming.

The second location was in an abandoned building, and there were no obvious problems with filming here, other than the high-speed winds coming off of the field opposite. Normally in a building this wouldn’t be a problem, however as this building had no windows or doors we had to take this into consideration in much the same way as the first location.

The third location was set in a house, the only problem we faced here was the possible echo of hard surfaces on the recordings and the noisy main road outside. Luckily on some test recordings we made we didn’t have problems with either of these, thus not needing to take measure to counteract them.