Breathing Room

Pulled on at last minute as a Sound Recordist for this film, I rather enjoyed the experience: the family atmosphere of camping out together on location is rather grand, and Gourock is a beautiful part of the world to which I had never been.

What did I learn? I got some elementary knowledge of a new piece of equipment: the solid state recorder. 100 top level menus, with multiple sub and sub-sub menus under each one mean that this machine will take a long time to master. Meanwhile I was very glad to get the opportunity to use it and try it out with Gavin Rizza as mentor on set. There also was a new model of mixer which I hadn’t worked with since my first class with Simon in first year. So that needed a lot of work to re-familiarise myself with its operations.

Sound guys get a raw deal: they are the only one on set for their department, while the pack of camera hounds eat all the pizza and grumble about the boom shadow being in shot. In particular one thing which irritates me is that after a scene is completed, and I need silence for a wildtrack, there are grumbles and general noises throughout. After a yell out, silence is maintained for about ten seconds. Then it is right back to larking around and general noisy behaviour. Either I get good sound at the time the camera is shooting (which isn’t always possible) or I substitute it with a wildtrack in the edit. If I can’t get clean wildtrack and I can’t get my boom close into the action then the sound for that action will be inevitably poor. I did allow my grumpy side to come to the fore on the third take of a recording of ambient sound. All three were ruined with chatter and after much remonstrating, I yelled angrily for them to Shut Up. This landed me with a red face when it turned out it was Graeme’s mother talking, newly arrived and unaware that I was recording. Another lesson learnt: no matter how provoked, never lose your temper. It does nobody any good.

Having had my rant, I do feel I got good sound, and was helped especially by Lauren on the third day of shooting where she volunteered to be my Boom Operator after a lack of jobs going in the Camera Department. I was particularly pleased with one set up where Lauren was on the balcony with the boom and I was in the garden with the mixer signalling where to point the mike. A wide shot with good quality sound: nice!