Category: Extra Curricular

BioBlitz with Chris Packham 03/10/2016

BioBlitz was a School of Life Sciences led event on October 3^rd 2016 at Lincoln University. It celebrated the diversity of wildlife that can be found on our university campus. The university invited Chris Packham to present a lecture on the current state of UK wildlife and to run several activities across the day, where participants would examine insects and birds.

A camera crew and I were tasked to film a short promotional video of the event, which would be shown by the University.

My job was to record interviews with the lecturer’s and Chris throughout the day and to also capture wild tracks of the activities. This was a documentary style shoot and was a job that I hadn’t done before.

I needed a light set up so the equipment used were:  Sound Device 633, Sennheiser MKH416 rifle microphone, Rycote Modular Windshield, Carbon fibre boom pole and 2  Sennheiser SK100 Lav microphones.

My main microphone was the MKH416 and my back up microphones were the SK100’s. I wanted more experience with following talents with a boom microphone whilst being able to manoeuvre quickly, so the boom wouldn’t enter the frame.

This was a new and challenging role for me, as it was a different project compared to the films that I had done previously. I had to make quick decisions as to where to boom from and to determine whether any microphones needed to be placed on the talents.

It was also a fantastic experience to work alongside a professional such as Chris. There was one particularly great part of the day where he explained to the camera what a ‘BioBlitz’ is and we had to move with him in order for him to show the wildlife that was in the grass.

Overall, a superb experience that has given me confidence in quick decision making and working with an industry professional. I can apply the knowledge gained from this on the set of Cognition.

‘Callback’ 11th October to the 20th November

‘Callback’ was an external project from audio production graduate Matt North, who is now a freelance port-production sound designer. He needed someone to source ambience sounds and also record some foley. So he got in touch with tutor David McSherry asking if there would be any students that would be up for the task. David then asked myself, Sam and Dan to become part of the project and be credited as Sound Designers.

Matt assigned us a deadline for each week to have a section of the film completed. There were 4 reels spread across 4 weeks, we felt like this was a manageable timeframe to stick too.

We sourced ambience tracks for scenes across the films which consisted of rural streets, a beach, an arcade, a park, a cafe and a house. From then mixed SFX to this and then recorded and mixed our foley to it. It was a great way to experiment and be creative with of sound design and the chosen SFX really brought the scenes to life. The external street in the cafe scene was an interesting aspect to include SFX as it was busy with traffic. We played around with spot SFX for car sounds, we had to carefully think about the levels and applying EQ to make it seems like it was outside.

A very different experience to what I am usually working on as what we were doing wasn’t the actually finished piece. It strange to send off our work to then be finished off by someone else but a worth wile experience as a believe it was a great way to practise for the post-production for ‘Cognition’.

This workshop was to explain the onset relationship between a sound recordist and a DOP. Jack is a distinguished camera operator and a cinematographer. He has worked on a variety of projects, from corporate jobs to high budget films.

He explained what sound is considered to be onset and that when the camera is running that is when the whole day is running and when the camera wraps, the day is at an end. The camera dictates the day, and audio follows it. He stressed that that doesn’t mean the camera is more important then the audio, but thats just how sets work.

He works closely with a location sound recordist named Paul Fairey who has only been in the location business for about 4 years but has been in the sound industry for his whole career. Jack said that his set etiquette is what gets Paul hired across the country, and thats is one of the most important aspect of being on set; How well you work with each other.

It is expected of a sound recordist to know the camera and the camera lenses that they will be working with on the day of each shoot. This means that each time you begin to set up for a new shot, the sound recordist can figure out where he can boom from and how close he can be close to the talent without entering the frame. The smaller the smaller the number on a lens, the wider it is going to be.

He then showed us the camera that the university offers and the different settings they have. The sound recordist need to know the audio settings in the camera and also where to find the timecode settings. I asked about timecode and his experience with syncing up to the audio equipment. Timecode syncing is an industry standard method of linking sound to picture and is essential when on set.  When you”jam” the timecode, you are syncing up your audio mixer to the camera. There are two types of timecode when on set. ‘Record Run’ is when your timecode stop and starts when ever your camera is running and the there is ‘Free Run’ which is when your timecode is continuously running. Jack said he usually used free run as it time effective when on set and only requires one jam session.

Overall a fantastic workshop that explained how a sound recordist should be like on set and what is expected of one. This will help greatly for future projects.