The majority of the shooting for Immort has now taken place, with one day of pickups remaining. This allows me to reflect on the process of the location work and begin thinking about once more about post production and how things will work there.
First off then is the location audio side of things. The easy way to put this is that things on set went very well. Despite me being the lead Sound Designer on this particular film, I decided to defer to Rory for the location sound recording aspect. This is because, while I have done location sound on several films before and taken the lead in doing so, Rory had more experience than me, so to this end it made much more sense to defer to his judgement while on set, so to sum this up simply, Rory operated the mixer while I was the boom op. This worked out rather well I felt, with communication between both us and the rest of the film crew being very good. Filming days were not rushed, but well planned out and sound was not overlooked at all, which made it much easier for us to do our job well. By this I mean that while on set we could easily gather information on what is happening in each shot, the shot number and scene number and we were also given ample time to work out the best way for us to set up for each scene – checking for boom shadows, checking the framing of the shot, hiding radio makes and making sure that doors for example would close quietly during takes so that we could capture the dialogue cleanly.
With only one day of shooting left to complete for this film, we will soon be handing over the audio from location to the director who in this case is also the editor. This will be done by creating a mono mix of the audio gathered on location, with the files named so that he can easily match the correct takes with his own video files. Once this is over we will be handed an OMF of the session from which we will begin our dialogue mix.
In terms of post production and the direction of the sound, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking having seen what the aesthetic of the film is like and having ascertained a better idea of the type of film this will be once it’s complete. While many of my ideas need to be okayed by the director still, I feel as though I have a good idea of how to progress from here. This will be discussed further with the director at a spotting session which will take place once the non-VFX cut of the film is finished. I’ve been keeping the rest of the group up to date with my thoughts on the sound design for Immort by posting word documents which detail the sound requirements for each scene on our Google Drive folder.
I tend to quite often act primarily as a composer on film projects and this being a Sci-Fi was the perfect excuse for me to branch out and start thinking more about the sound in the movie on an overall level. This led me to Randy Thom’s blog – https://randythomblog.wordpress.com/ – where he posts thoughts on aspects of sound design. One aspect that is particularly appealing to me is the post about Cacayanga, described as “a sound or set of sounds that seem authentic, but embody a mystery that pulls you deeper into the story in part because they aren’t immediately identifiable.” This concept is appealing for two reasons, the scenes in the film set in the city street are the main part of the film that can take advantage of this – this is because who knows what the future sounds like? No one, which gives us the opportunity to create a soundscape ignoring the usual commotion of a big city like London, instead taking into account the world that the director is creating and combining that with some sounds that will help to sell the world by making it seem populated, but also helping to really distinguish that this is the future and a far off future at that. The other reason this is interesting for this film is the nanobots themselves – they are a key driving point in the film and they sound like a mass of whirring noises, but at some points they will have to be used in peoples bodies, repairing them and such like at which points they will need to be fleshier at which point we once again loose reference as to what that would sound like, giving us free reign again to create sounds that draw people into the world.
As an end note to this post, I want to clarify one aim of the sound design in Immort – this is to help with the worldbuilding in the film, by creating a soundscape that is believable, we can immediately immerse people in the film, helping them to buy the concepts presented in the film, something which is vital to do in a Sci-Fi film such as this.
This is in relation to learning outcomes two and three.