Short Film: Project One

Today’s lecture was from Luke Pickering and was all about his job working in Chapel Studios in London and how he got and maintained his job working there.

This was a highly informative lecture for someone such as myself who is thinking of trying to get into this side of the music industry.

Luke gave some great advice about working in studios, some of the advice that I thought was really useful consisted of things such as applying for the job you are going for. For example, although you would have engineering experience its highly likely we would apply for a runner job first so when applying don’t say why you’d be a good engineer even though that’s a career goal. Furthermore, Luke also mentioned his time doing work experience with Miloco and how his persistence with them eventually landed him his job at Chapel studios.

One further thing Luke outlined was some attributes that would make you a desirable asset to a studio. These were, being switched on, having a strong initiate, not being annoying or pestering people above you, and wanting the job and putting in the effort whilst you are there especially on a placement as they may even offer you a job afterwards.

Finally, Luke mentioned that this type of career is really a lifestyle over a job and that it does really consume all your attention and this is a point to take into consideration.

Today we had a lecture from Emily who spoke about considerations for experimental projects.

This lecture was an extremely practical lecture on how to get your work out and on display for people to experience, especially for the more experimental approaches to work, which followed on from nicely from Jez Riley French’s lecture from the previous week.

Emily outlined some key processes to remember including concept, process and realisation. Whilst these don’t apply to me right now, or my current project these will be important processes to remember in the future If I did decide to create any experimental works.

Today we received a lecture from Jez Riley French, who gave us an insight into the fascinating world of location sound recording and experimental approaches to it.

Whilst not highly interested into this area of work I found it extremely interesting which surprised me. Jez’s techniques using contact microphones and hydrophones to capture some unexpected sounds from very unexpected places got me very interested.

The other thing that surprised me was the pure duration of the pieces that Jez created, some spanning up to 8 hours long. The pieces consisting of the hydrophone on some pond weed and the other mic that allowed u to literally hear the earth turning really got me thinking.

Whilst having not been interested in this approach at the start of this lecture, Jez has managed to sway me to his side and has me considering booking out some contact microphones and seeing what I personally can achieve with them.

Meetings with the client –

Today myself and Aaron had our initial meeting with our clients. They have informed us verbally of what they need from us and explained to script and genre of the film. After discussions, they are going to provide the script and written sound requirements. We also have been given the outside filming location so Aaron and myself are going to take the recording devices out there and do some test recording to make sure there are no complications on the days of recording. Furthermore, we aim to do some genre research into similar films and take note of any techniques they have used to achieve their sound design.

Learning outcomes:

Taking lead in the post production work in this project there are a few things I will have learnt by the end of the project;

• Work under a client/producer/director and fulfil their needs in the post production process ultimately keeping them happy and providing the service they require.
• To better understand and employ techniques to add sound to digitally created visuals making them sound realistic and in place with the genre
• To better understand and employ techniques to add depth and the illusion of busyness to a film with minimal actors but the need for a scene to sound busy