We have finished the sound replacement. It is so exciting and gratifying when you finish a project. I also get a little sad. Sometimes I don’t want to let go of my work into the world but then I remind myself that if I didn’t let it go no one else could appreciate it. So below you can view the final video.
One of the main issues that I noted near the beginning was the difficulty in contacting the member Zak. This did eventually become easier once I met Zak as I now felt more comfortable communicating with him. Zak, however, was able to make up for his lack of physical presence in other ways such as editing the ADR, which I had asked him to do, and the final mix. I realised through this how much I rely on body language to become comfortable with someone. This thankfully didn’t affect the schedule of the project. Though this did make me feel like Reuben and I had to make a lot of the creative decisions with foley recordings. Eventually we worked well together to work to schedule.
I have learnt from previous work that a clear project plan and timeline is essential for clarity in a project. We didn’t deviate too far from our project plan. We booked many sessions in the studio and partnered with our detailed spotting list it made it easy to record all the sounds. This meant we could plan around the spotting list outside the studio so that our time could be utilised efficiently. I even took photos so that I had the ability to double check the props in the studio to get a clearer idea of the potential sound sources. The effectiveness of the project plan was helpful with getting a clear vision of our reimagining of the soundscape. Although we weren’t changing the feeling of the original clip, we still wanted to create something that felt like it was ours. I felt like the pitch was strong though I think it felt slightly confused with our full vision as we were still figuring out our team dynamic. The presentation however, felt too talkative. I didn’t like how my other members kept talking about things that made sense to me, but I felt would be confusing to others. I didn’t know how react and stop them talking. I always struggle to feel self-assured in actions to stop others in situations that I am already uncomfortable in.
The creative process for this was interesting as it was replicating the soundscape. My last sound replacement was different as we created a completely different soundscape. This one was interesting as we created a large amount of foley. This piece required footsteps. I never realised how much time it took to get the right sound for ground. Reuben was extremely good at timing which made my editing later much easier. I had only a few transients that I needed to edit. Our ADR process instead needed improvement. We used a SM57, but it struggled to sound good. I know we should have used a large condenser however I didn’t mention anything because I was doing one of the voices and the other member of my team who supported that idea was not there for the first session. In the future I want to try the technique that I found when researching which is to use a Neumann U87 with a pop filter in omnidirectional polar pattern. This would definitely be interesting to see how this would help with ADR and also the realistic sound of the audio later.
I respect post-production audio people more however I am now certain that I only enjoy this work as a break from music. This piece is amazing, and I am glad I came at it with a fresh mind. In the future I will probably work in post-production more and I’m glad I have more experience to give me confidence moving forward. Please find below a link to a Google Drive Folder with our final asset.
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