On the 16th December we mixed the Sound effects and foley with the dialogue. We did this in a variety of places based on two factors: Time constraints, as we couldn’t book out the studio for longer than 4 hours and the fact we wanted to mix on a variety of speakers to test that the mix would work on speakers of a lesser quality than the ones we were used to mixing with, but will most likely get played out on.
This was mainly an incredibly arduous process of tweaking small levels and adding different effects to make the project sound more realistic. By this stage we knew all the lines to the film and I’d even wake up hearing the lines in my head! So we were keen to get it finished whilst still not rushing it so it was something we’d be proud of. As we had added most of the effects as we went along again it was a case of adjusting them so it sounded as accurate as possible.
On the 17th we mixed the music in the morning which really brought the piece together and it was very nearly completed! We then got to the studio at 2pm and met with the media students at 3pm. We showed them a near final edit and the had a few more pointers of how to improve it so we worked really hard to get it perfect and we showed them again and there were even more tweaks to add! This slight tweaking process continued for the next 6 hours until finally at 9pm the piece was finished and we were all incredibly happy with it.
A factor that made my day was when Chris Hainstock came into the studio and we played him some of the film with our music and he said he really liked it. So much so he wanted us to play more and he seemed genuinely impressed by it! He said that our sound could take it from student film to broadcast which made us extremely pleased.
In the end, excluding music tracks, the final project had 153 tracks, none were wasted and each played a crucial role in the structure of the film. Here are some screenshots –
Here’s me mixing the final piece with director Tom Faulkner –
This just left us to collect the rendered file the next day and finish off the required paperwork and these blogs!