Sound for Film Production Roles -

Within the film audio project there are several roles which I have undertaken to compile the audio recordings and produce the audio tracks for the accompanying film. These are roles what constitute the production chain of audio for film in industry workflows, These roles include :

Sound Designer (Foley Artist) -

For the project we required some backing sound effects to match the action on screen. This process is known as Foley, where sounds are created with unrelated or identical objects which are used in performance to recreate a soundscape to seamlessly accompany what is on-screen. Within the clip there are scenes with walking, doors opening / closing, busy sets including extras in crowded rooms, and handled props.

All these elements required the accompanying audio to emphasize the presence of each que action and to do this the recording studios and foley equipment was utilized. For the footsteps we needed a group of us walking, therefore we set up a shotgun Senheiser condenser mic and dynamic SM81 close mic to capture the audio, distanced and orientated them appropriately to the camera angles on screen, and used the audient mixing desk alongside pro tools recorded to the project file. The utilisation of these two microphones was to provide two varying recordings of timbre qualities, one being closer to the source and lower-freq focused to provide an lower impactful sound with the dynamic bringing the viewers attention right into the focus shots of only walking, contrasted then to the lighter and more spacious and top-end focused recording with the condenser for its higher frequency response giving the auditory imaging effect of being further away, matching the longer camera shots across the rooms in the film sequence.

For the accompanying door sounds we needed heavy tones, using the foley technique to mimic what would be expected from the on-screen sound source, we used heavy concrete flooring with a sturdy metal sheet sign and connected chains to mimic what was needed, as the prison doors were a weighty visual which were slow and distinct in there movement to emphasis the falsely entrapped prisoner and the audio to accompany that needed to fit aesthetically with this. When it came to the post-processing stage with this sound, it had an uneven pace to the turning which I smoothed over using short interval high feedback delay which was then cut as the door stopped, this filled in the uneven tone and blended it out to match the fixed mechanical movement on screen.

ADR Recording -

For the lead part we had decided we had to re-record the dialogue audio so that the lines were more present in the mix later, and so that they could be balanced correctly in relation to the other pre-existing lines of dialogue. For this recording we had set up a condenser microphone, for the high-frequency response pickup on the voice to add clarity to the dialogue, routing into the audient desk and pro tools session project, we then went through and did takes of each line, one per person to find the most suitable voice match for the lead character. As the actor Tim Roth is english and born in the south of england some of the auditioning voice actors were to throw in a southern accent to try fit better to the actors existing film material to ensure some consistency to previously released films. With that in mind after the individual lines had been recorded, we went back through the full list of lines with the dialogue done by classmate Jack as he threw in the most convincing southern drawl.

Mixing Engineer -

When the audio assets I needed had all been recorded and compiled, the project then needed several sessions to ensure that the sonic quality of the piece was high, most importantly matching timings of the on-screen action visuals for audio cues, and balancing between different dialogue sources and backing ambience / sound effects to create a compelling mix which helps to draw the audience into the scene. Using reference from a show with a similar setting, Brooklyn 99, I aimed to get a decent understanding of a professionally done finished audio balance and mix of characters conversing in a prison / police precinct with similar backing going on in the scenes.

With my mix I brought the character voices forward and balanced them to their respective levels to match, starting with the lead lines as the focal and working outward to the two other talking characters. These tracks then sat atop of the backing room ambience and foley sound effects which were automated to correspond to the movement of the sound sources on screen, with room tone added and reverb to blend the sounds subtly into one concrete acoustic space.