Sound Track

Generally during the "producing sound" process the people you would have on hand to help decide what type of music, effects you would like would be the director, sound designer, foley artist and any artists or musicians you would like help to plan. primarily you would have the director there guiding people and telling everybody the sort of track he would like to hear, compared to if he wasn't there nobody  would know what to do as they wouldn't know what the director wants without any sense of direction. likewise you would need the sound designer to work with the director discussing what he/she can do in terms of placing the sound in certain scenes and possibly playing with different mixes or play other similar tracks which could further guide everyone to deciding a soundtrack. you may also need the foley artist to help decide where and where not there should be foley sound in the scene, and also to discuss blending the foley with the soundtrack produced by the sound designer. if you would like a lyrical score also, musicians and artists can work with the sound designer to work on an idea for a song.

also during the sound production process, the director and sound designer will go through each scene and sound spot. this is where the director and sound team will devise a schedule which will organise what needs to be created or placed in each part of the scene.

once the sound has been produced and has been added to the scene  the sound team will picture lock the scene, which means that the team can no longer edit the sound in the scene and the scene or shot has been locked and ready for the team who edits the whole film together.

when recording sound it doesn't always go to plan, so generally on set there is always a back up plan. for instance if you decide to shoot an important conversation in Liverpool street station the sound team will have to consider the amount of people there but also the echo as its a big station so maybe a boom mic would be appropriate for this particular scene however if this fails somehow, a back up mic like a shot gun mic could achieve similar results as it is directional meaning if you point it at the actor it will only pick up what they are saying, its also big enough to be placed on the end of a boom pole.

planning what type of sounds you would like in the shots are also important as you need to know how you are going to record these sounds. so if you want to have explosion sounds you will probably have to record them on sight in a safe area or use stock footage, whereas if you want to emphasise somebodies walk you may want to ask the foley artist to record some foot steps in the studio using a shot gun mic which allows sound to be picked up from multiple areas but is directional so if you are recording the footsteps with a crowd behind you the mic will pick up more of the actual footsteps because the mic is facing the other way. if you have recorded dialogue on top of a mountain where its very windy you may want to ask the sound designer to record the same dialogue in the studio to be dubbed over the top of the footage, this is called A.D.R (automated dialogue replacement), during the process of recording A.D.R the actor which was in the scene will watch the footage whilst following with the script, after the actor is familiar with the scene he/she will begin to rein act the dialogue and the sour designer will match the dialogue being recorded with the scene until both the the footage and the sound sync.

Part of the Shot List for the Single Camera Drama

 First scene is black until. White screen fade to camera, which is out of focus.  Zoom out to reveal room and characters inside.

Keep focusing in and out to give the effect that the guy in the chair is waking up.

POV of the potato bag being shaken around 

Wide shot of the room and we see the anonymous character wall over to the bagged victim 

Close up on the victim in the chair crying

over the shoulder shot of the victim looking at the anonymous figure trough the potato sack

two shot of the two body guards looking at each other

over the shoulder shot of the guard walking over and handing the drink to Albert 

we see a POV shot of the bag coming off of the victims head 

close up of Alberts hand, Handing over a drink to Johnny (the victim)

over the shoulder on track and dolly of the conversation 

for the first flashback we see a car pull up in a multi story building 

multiple shot of  all the characters in the car including Johnny from the back of  the car

back to over the shoulder for another short conversation

medium shot of the characters getting out of the car. 

Part of our first draft for our Single Camera Drama

INT. CAR AT NIGHT

We cut to the first shot of the flash back, we see the passenger pull out 5 hand guns and hand them to everyone, Johnny looks shocked at the sight of one

JOHNNY 

This wasn't part of the deal dan

DAN

quiet john-boy it's just a bit of insurence, jeeze your acting like a tit

INT. INTERROGATION ROOM

We see Albert and Johnny in shot

ALBERT

So Dan gave you the guns, then what ?

JOHNNY 

Then it happened

ALBERT

That's a bit fuckin vague mate I'm gonna need a bit more than that

JOHNNY 

So...

Discussion and Single Camera Production Breakdown

today only myself and Johnathan were in to disscuss and finish the script as Alex H was ill.

In terms of the script we are on the penultimate scene of the production so we are now just wrapping up. so next wednesday (27th of November) all three of us will go over the script and completely finish and ready to use. as for the shooting schedule we need to wait until we've analysed our script and its perfect, but soon as its verified we can proceed with the production process. however we still need to finish some pre production documents like the proposal and treatment in which we need to  explain our plot and other specifics about the film.

Test Shoots and blocking

so today in class me and my group test shot a random scene from a script which someone in our group  wrote. the scene we chose was quite simple in terms of visuals but effective as we were able to test out different angles to make an all dialouge scene more visually pleasing and entertaining.

Instead of editing fast cuts throughout the sequence we were able to give the same effect by using a different technique called blocking, blocking is like a "substitute"for cutting but instead of physically cutting you compensate by brining in maybe another character or panning whilst the character you where focused on jumps out of the way for a brief second to replicate a hallucination. blocking can also tie into "choreography"as your literally "placing" your cuts in a scene with out physically seeing a cut, just like in the Indiana Jones Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie the opening sequence i fast, however it uses very little cuts but to compensate for that they use blocking which is very effective as it still gives the same effect of the car speeding through the desert with the camera following them onto the motorway.

our test shoot was excellent in the way that i thought i got a lot out of it from learning how to make my scenes more interesting and entertaining by incorporating the Blocking technique into it. the shoot also made me think more about future projects and how i will have to look more carefully and creatively.