[26/04/2022 - 05/05/2022] Post Production Sound - For Crimes Forgotten
After setting up my project and making sure that I had all the audio that I recorded on set, I began my sound design process by going through all the dialogue within the film. Finding the cleanest microphone for each line of dialogue and making sure everything was correctly synced up (which it was because Dori is great!) Some of the dialogue occurs with characters not on screen, so in these sections of dialogue I had even more freedom as I was able to look trough all the takes we had that included those lines and choose the best option. In some cases the delivery of the lines were slightly different and so gave different connotations to what was being said. In cases like this I would keep the original audio from the take that was used in the visual edit, but added the take I preferred to a different track so I could run the options past Maddy. Some of which she liked, and others she didn’t but by having the options on different tracks it was easy enough to audition the different options and remove the ones that Maddy wasn’t a fan of. Some of the dialogue needed to be taken from other takes, but I made sure to go for ones in which the delivery was fairly accurate to the take used for visuals. Plus my experience with ADR from The Toll meant that if there were any issues with syncing, I was able to fix them through cutting the audio up and matching obvious waveform sounds with the facial movements associated with them. Something that I feel was successful.
Whilst I was doing the dialogue pass, Maddy re-watched the edit and wrote some notes that included the type of thing she was looking for within the sound design. This was mainly to make sure that we were both on the same page with how the final film should sound.
I then began working on the atmos for the different sections. This is my usual process when it comes to sound design as this is often the quickest part of the process, and provides a good base layer to add the rest of the sound to. The base layer atmos for the three different locations was audio that I recorded on set, though I then went through and sweetened it further with audio I sourced elsewhere. Within scene one Maddy wanted the location to ‘sound hot’. This was something I was struggling to make happen originally, though I eventually decided to use sounds of water fizzing, an electric heater, and audio recorded in Yellowstone national park of a wild fire (the last two being very literal interpretations of sounding ‘hot’). All of these sounds were very low in the mix and barely noticeable, though they seemed to give the vibe I was looking for.
For the second location (where The Informant begins his time-loop), I sourced audio of a frozen lake ‘singing’ (also recorded in Yellowstone National Park). I made this choice because I wanted this location to sound windy, yet there is a very fine line between making wind sound purposeful and not just like you have recorded your location sound badly. The more tuneful sound of the frozen lake was much nicer on the ears yet still believably tundra wind.
The Prisoner’s forest was the final atmos I did, and this one is entirely comprised of audio I recorded on set, including the creaking tree that I managed to record on our first day filming.
I then listened through to the atmos on its own and removed the more obvious sounds of birds.
The next thing I added was the ticking clock within the first location. Automating the volume to link with the distance the camera is placed from The Informant, as well as to change when the watch is opened and closed. I chose to use a fast paced ticking to add to the tension of this scene, especially as at this point in the narrative time is very quickly running out for The Informants long vigil. At this point I also intended to add a slower ticking to the scene in Glenshee, once The Warden arrives to give The Informant the watch. Though I then got distracted by adding spot effects and did not get a chance to add it in time for the crit.
I then added the bulk of the spot effects to the film - a lot of syncing footsteps, crawling, and chains rattling. I also realised at this point that I didn't get any wild tracks of the watch opening and closing. But that was fine as I have the watch and was able to record it while I was doing the sound design.
When adding spot effects I worked in 2 different ways - doing a pass of the whole film focusing on a specific type of sound, and going through a scene and adding things as I noticed it needed them. This is mainly because I have big ADHD energy and often impulsively switch methodologies. There were positives and negatives to both these ways of working. For example when doing passes of the whole film focusing on specific sounds, it meant that I could set up a series of ‘test’ tracks and have all the audio I had collected that related to the sound I was doing a pass of open in those tracks. This meant that I did not have to keep hunting down my audio and could listen to all of the sounds I had to work with in one go by listening to my solo’d test track. Though the negative of this method was that if I noticed something that didn’t relate to the sound I was doing a pass of, I would leave myself a speedily written note or memory location and then promptly forget what that note meant when I got back to it after finishing a pass. I then switched up my method and began going through the whole film and adding effects as I noticed they were needed. The positives of this method is that it was probably quicker as I wasnt watching and re-watching the whole film every time, I found it more mentally stimulating (variety is the spice of life), and it meant that whole sections of the film were watchable to people other than me for feedback that i could then action on my next pass. The negatives were that my ‘test’ track method wasn’t as useful as they became a mess very quickly, and so i spent more time trying to hunt down specific audio within my recordings.
The conclusion I have come to is that the best method seems to be a mixture of the two. Where I do some quick passes of the full film focusing on specific sounds that appear a lot, and then go slowly through the full film adding anything that I feel I missed. This is something I will definitely be taking forward into future projects. It’s all a process about finding the right methodology I suppose.
My next big focus was on creating the sound of time rewinding. I left this until later in my process for two reasons. The first was that I was still trying to work out what time rewinding would sound like. And the second was that I knew that this would be creative and fun, and I like to give myself something to look forward to. For this sound I wanted something that sounded mechanical and as though it was turning, so I found some audio of one of those spinning ‘wheel of fortune’ wheels, and reversed it so that it spun from slow to fast. I also wanted the sound to build in intensity before being ‘sucked out’, and I also wanted to show that this was a big event that would have an impact on the world around it: so I had a play with the sound of an explosion, once again reversed and with some EQ. Some more mechanical whirring, and voila. Time is being reversed. I felt that something was missing once we arrive in the next scene, and that since the time reversal is directly correlated with our arrival in the next location there should be something to link the two together. So after some brain racking and thinking about the religious tones of the film I decided to add the tolling of a church bell, playing on the idea of ‘for who the bell tolls’ linking to death and the thus calling an end to the loop. Though since it is loop, the end is also the beginning.
I then did another ‘anti-bird’ pass, to try and get rid of any of the bird noises that had somehow escaped my ire up until this point.
By this point I was running very low on time before the crit, so I attempted a very rough mix, and sent the bounced mix off to be put back together with the colour graded film.
I definitely need to work on it more between the crit and the final deadline. Especially since there are a couple of sounds that I did not get round to adding. Such as the slow ticking in the Glenshee section, and some smaller details such as the sound of the pocket watch being dropped in the first section of the film (before The Warden picks it up to re-set the loop). And I also need to give the film a proper mix.
