From the 11th – 13th December Ben and I worked on sourcing and placing all of the sound effects and foley in the mix whilst Luke edited the Dialogue. For the majority of this we were together in the sound theatre, while Ben and I recorded Foley Luke would edit with his headphones on. This was great as we could have everyones direct input with the big decisions. If we wanted Luke to check something we’d say “what do you think of this?” and vice versa. It was a really good set up.
I didn’t find anything majorly artistic with these sessions apart from the live foley work Ben and I did with footsteps and coats. It mainly centred around being very specific with our sound effects and being extremely precise with there placement. We employed many effects on our sounds to make them sound like they were recorded live. This included reverb which was used to emulate the rooms that the objects were in. We made sure we kept the same reverb for each object / effect / voice in the specific room it was placed in for continuity and just applied a different level of wetness and volume to place it in the mix. We used a great lexicon reverb plugin for the most part and spent a long time going through the hundreds of presets to find the specific reverbs for each room.
We also applied pan when it was required, this was particularly useful on the cars as we could automate the pan and volume to make a car pass from one side to other and get quieter and louder depending on its distance.
I also employed E.Q. when it was necessary, I found as the project developed my knowledge of E.Q. has improved as well. I could hear a certain sound in the mix and say that needs to be brighter or muddier and know exactly how to get those sounds with notches and high and low pass filters. The high pass filter was extremely useful for the radio at the start and the low pass could be used to produce a noise that was perceived to be outside e.g. bells ringing. These would also be automated so as the shot changed, so did the background sound, for example when faith runs back to the window and the bells get louder and less filtered as the window is open.
I also used pitch shift and denoisers when appropriate to alter a sound such a keys jangling and denoisers to get rid of any extraneous noise respectively.
Ben and I also wanted to leave our mark on the piece so I recorded him as the voice on the phone in the kitchen scene and he recorded me as the radio presenter in the same scene. We were also even able to apply the Wilhelm Scream at one point! We blended it in with other effects to create a heavy window opening. We used it as a nod to other famous films that possibly use it ironically and because most importantly it works!
The foley was also extremely successful and we used the Rode NTG2 again as well as the SeX1 condenser mic. We broke our usual tradition as the microphone provided a large diaphragm so it would capture more accurate detailed sound with a potentially better high end.
Luke’s dialogue editing also went well and I pithed in with my thoughts whenever I could. Here’s a screenshot of all the dialogue together.
I’m looking forward to starting on the music now! The project is really coming together!