This last week has been interesting to say the least. There has been good, boring (but necessary) and bad throughout. And even the bad wasn’t necessarily bad it just left a negative imprint on me. On the plus side I did do the research I planned on doing.
To start with the good, I have further progressed on my A Quiet Place II trailer. Since the last update I have since edited the foley, Reuben and I recorded last week, and gone through the playlists to choose my favourite takes. I also took the foliage recordings and used them as the leopard crawl (a military crawl technique which I am hopeless at due to a previous shoulder injury) sounds in the montage. For the montage at the end I decided I wanted a sound that would support the action on the screen. This meant water sounds. I have a nice recording set up at home, which can be viewed in my Home Recordings post, however, this did nothing to supress my fear of microphone and water. I had filled up my kitchen sink partially with water and used a contained to splash it around. One of the main problems with the recordings was the metal ring you could hear occasionally, great sound just not for this. I circumvented this by cutting the recordings a little short, cutting off the metallic ring, and crossfading a few different splashes together. I then committed these together and pitch shifted them down a few semitones. This gave the multiple splash sound I wanted whilst removing the problematic sounds. I also added in some phone recordings I have taken at opportune moments. One of them was distant siren sounds that I thought could add to the chaos of the beginning scene. I live near a hospital and a police station, so I constantly have sirens however, I also get a lot of traffic. One day I was hearing the sirens like usual and after a few minutes of them not leaving, neither getting closer or further, I took out my phone scared that once again I would miss the recordings due to taking too long and set it to record. I did however bump my phone in the middle. To clean this up I found the best parts of the clip and used shuffle to cut the together once I removed the bump in the middle. I crossfaded this and it worked well as a background ambient noise.
The other phone recordings need a bit more work. Firstly, the recording is of an electric gate to a carpark that makes a clicking noise, but it is also near a bypass. Secondly, I wanted it to be the monster’s cracking joints. I started with RX7 Spectral De-noise. I initially placed it on as an insert on the channel and taught it to cancel out the traffic sound. I then adjusted the threshold and reduction until I got my desired sound. I then realised that it might run into issues with the Varispeed time-stretching I wanted to do. I then tried using it in AudioSuite however, it didn’t sound right. Thankfully, I had only bypassed the insert, so I quickly turned it back on. I instead created a new audio track and printed the original onto it allowing me to stretch out the clip without potentially messing with the de-noising. I also have placed all these sounds in place and started with some very light volume automation however, I will continue with this more later this week and next week as I have booked multiple sessions in the S6 studio.
The boring is literally just me booking studios and equipment for my next project which is coming up quickly. I have sorted out field recording gear for a time that suits with my film friend Ethan so we can go together. This is beneficial as Ethan has previous experience as boom operator on film projects of his, so he has a baseline of audio knowledge (aka hold mic here). For my client I have booked two sessions so far (one in the Neve studio and one in the Audient 8024) so that we have time to experiment with miking and recording. I have a whole heap of binaural recording and mixing resources ready, but I will place this in a separate post hopefully in a few days. Also the Project Plan can be viewed with the link below:
The bad is my continued failure at self-assurance in my work. I struggle with being the only female in the room. I find it hard to deal with it as male figures have always had quite a negative affect on my life. This means when it comes to sharing my ideas and plans, I feel like I always need to have arguments ready to fight men for thinking I’m unworthy. I know that this is not healthy and most men are not like this however, it does not change the years of emotional trauma I have experienced due to close male figures in my life from controlling the way I interact. I had again had an unhealthy conversation with a male figure in my life the day before pitches, I had taken my medication late so I was low on serotonin, am currently hormonal due to the problems with women healthcare, and was wearing a corset to use the pressure to calm me. This meant I was in a very unstable place that day and would have usually stayed away from everyone. I persevered and had a panic attack in the middle of my pitch. I then ran out of the room afterwards and thought I really screwed up this time. I then struggled to pay attention for the rest of the day, so my only class notes are the ones below:
Single band cut low
Eq - start with lows cut
Compressor - glue
Multiband
Verb from live send to SRCMST
Band pass to EQ
Brick wall always last
Honestly, it has not been my finest week. I have released some of this stress through boxing yesterday and I feel much more level-headed. I hope by this time next week I have finished editing my dialogue for the trailer and have it ready for the final mix and mastering for my following week. This is scheduled a week earlier than the due date, so I have time for any problems. Hopefully, next week the update will be more positive.
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