The Sound For The Movie

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Before we started making the film we knew that the sound and music was going to be big and complicated.

Look at it like this, scene one, we are on top of a five mile high tree and there is a storm, not a normal storm, a storm that has been invoked magically to do some serious damage. There are all types of atmospheric sounds mixed in with magical spell sounds, music is playing over and under the sound effects. At crucial moments we are introduced to a character who has his own theme which must mix in with the piece that is already playing. He walks over wet walkways which creek in the wind and rain. As our little character makes his way to a wooden lift that is held by a creaking rope he must enter inside the lift . All of the sounds must be muffled but have the same continuity inside. Magic is used to pull a lever to release a lock that will activate cog after cog as it starts to lower the inhabitants to the ground. The sounds continue getting bigger and bigger and more complex.

Only a few seconds have passed at this point in the story but it has taken months of gathering sounds, doing foley, writing and mixing music all to fit in with what is happening on the screen... the task of adding sound was as big as shooting the movie.

Were do you start ?.

Image: Pic Of A Clapper board With Wild Track Thingy Written On

After you record the live dialogue on set or location, the next step is to record an atmos track, wild track or as everyone liked to call it on the shoot... wild track thingy,
hence the clapper board . Alister Bell said the director used the word’ thingy’ a lot, so when it came to marking certain things down like the wild track the joke sort of stuck and the word’ thingy’ became an on set useful word or’ thingy word’.
So on location or on set after every scene the Wild Track Thingy is recorded. The reason for this is, as anyone will tell you , only about 15% of the original sound is used from most films, but it is a good starting point, then to hopefully help yourself out you do a wild track, you tell everyone politely to shut up as you record either the atmos around you or on set or wherever you are. The reason for this is, every building of location has it;s own unique atmos, if you need to add a pause in the dialogue you would notice it if it just stopped, that's where your wild track comes in useful, also if in our case with pungin eating we not only got the sound of the room, we recorded him eating and dropping bits of his food also some burps... Gather what sounds you can, you are going to need them.

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I cannot over emphasise how important it is to start cataloguing everything because it may be years before you come back to use it, marking with a clapper helps but you can also use a wipe board to write a message to yourself for something specific you need to remember in the future. Also write everything down on the tape index and anything else you feel at the time is important, it all helps when you return to it.

Again only a small amount of the original sound is used if you are lucky. Often this means dubbing, dubbing is very difficult to do and there are several different ways to do it depending on what equipment you have, what is important is you can watch the action as you record the dialogue. I use a Mac and the most useful program for dubbing is iMovie, you have a direct mic input you can watch your levels and most importantly you can watch exactly what is going on on the screen, you can do many quick takes and just drag them under the recording line and make it inactive until you need it, it’s frame accurate and you don’t even have to export it, you just access the take you want in that file and import it into your editing package, mine happened to be Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro is a very good editing program but the dubbing is much easier and quicker to do in imovie.
Again as with the shoot use as good a mic as you can afford, or microphones as the case maybe. For iMovie I used a Omnidirectional directional Mono Mic, when we were first shooting on video we used the same microphone, when we moved to DV we used a Sony stereo Omnidirectional mic.

Director Carl B Harrison talks about doing the voice performances for some of the characters.

Foley Sound.

Foley sound is also made very easy using iMovie, again you can watch the action and do all the foley sounds you need, again just drag the sound, take down and make it inactive and do a couple of more takes. It takes seconds to see which take is the best, also on play back it plays full screen so you can see if every little nuance of foley sound fits.

Image: iMovie Pic

What Is Foley Sound.

Foley effects are sound effects added to the film during post production (after the shooting stops). They include sounds such as footsteps, clothes rustling, crockery clinking, paper folding, doors opening and slamming, punches hitting, glass breaking, etc. etc. In other words, many of the sounds that the sound recordists on set did their best to avoid recording during the shoot.

Sound Affects.

Now your problems really start, the world of Marimdorph is a world of it’s own and this world has a lot of sounds that are unique to it. You can use sounds that are like our sounds in our world but it is not always the case and you must start to collect sounds, that if your lucky sound like what you want. But more often you have to listen to sounds and think what will they sound like slowed down , what will they sound like speeded up, if you mix one with another, reverse one played fast, the other played backwards or slowed down, pitch, eq, echo, reverb......... the list goes on.

What it boils down to is, start collecting sounds as soon as possible. The more variety the best choice you have when it comes to adding sound, such the internet, there are some good sound sites out there. Here is one to get you started.

Find Sounds

Alternatively you can record your own, go out into the real world and collect sound using the best mic and the best recording device you can afford.
Mini DV cameras using a good mic are more than adequate for gathering sound and it’s very easy to get into your computer, unlike some mini dv recorders that do not come with a USB or any type of interface to make it easy to get it into your computer.
Ok you have started to add your sound affects, your foley sound and all the other sound you feel should exist in this world, now what about adding some emotion, or drama and that's where music comes in, music is the soul of you film, you can take a still frame and without music it can mean nothing but add music and you could have people weeping, this is the power and effect of music when combined with images.

Music

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Image: Musicians Mark Houlsby Pic

Musician Mark Houlsby

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Within The Shadow Of the Tree utilised a lot of music loops for certain scenes of the film , although two music Writers and three sound engineers were employed too. Using the sound loops was out of financial necessity although we were very pleased with the result obtained, the emotion and action nuance were still obtained and we were still able to give some actors their own theme music.
Where the music needed to hold it’s own so to speak, this is when Musicians Mark Houlsby and Jim Callanan came in, also a final big sound mix was needed for the whole movie and that is when Andy Ludbrook who was responsible for the sound of the movie Dog Soldiers also came in and waved his magic.

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Image: Andy Ludbrook

Andy Ludbrook

Image: Andy Ludbrook Pic No 2 He Is Looking At The Small One On A Large Progector Screen

Andy Ludbrook used the Avid sync system at Imagine Post Production Facility in Newcastle Upon Tyne, North East UK. The system is particular good because the image is projected onto a large screen so every nuance can be synchronised, the image you work with is only an off line copy but the sound will be the completed work. Once the sound has been mixed correctly the sound is then laid over the Digital Betacam recording of the movie.

Image: Avid & Digital Betacam Pic