Are You There? Production diary 8

Ahh, music and sound! I’m on home territory here! The music is written already for the beginning and end of the film and also the party scene.

How good is that!? This is the benefit of being the writer, director and composer!

Because I already have the film in my head, I have created the music for a lot of it already. It’s not necessarily the most amazing collection of songs, there’ll be no huge selling soundtrack album, lol, but it does express the loneliness of the lead character and the unreality of the situation he finds himself in.

Again, it’s in keeping with the overall mood and style that we’re going for. You’ll notice elements that link back to the films that inspired me such as blade runner, 2001 and others. I have to say that the synths in the Blade Runner score by Vangelis are probably the most evocative electronic score I’ve ever heard! I spent ages trying to copy his sounds using a Yamaha DX21 and a selection of delay and chorus pedals which was as far away from his budget, skills and equipment as it was possible to be! That was way back in the late 1980s, 1988 or 1989, possibly, when the DX21 was nearly ten years old already! I still have it though. It has sadly lost a key or two in the last few years but it still works!!! (Funnily enough, what I was trying to do then is what we’re trying to do with “Are You There?” now – aiming for the stars without a rocket!)

All the other music and soundtrack is planned, but not yet recorded. As the studio is available to me at almost any stage, I will probably wait until the edited film is done so I can experiment with the tempo to get things just right.

The end music is the only piece not composed by me as its a 17th century Traditional Irish Harp tune by the great composer O’Carolan. I heard my wife Sharon (www.sharon-carroll.com) playing it and knew it was perfect for what I needed.

Sound wise, we’re doing a lot in post-production. There are only about ten lines of spoken dialogue in the whole movie… These will be captured on location by recording the Rode Videomic into the Tascam audio recorder as shooting RAW with the Canon 600D means we can’t record sound in camera.

Each of the locations will have its own character and add its own flavour as each represents a different stage in the main character’s story. Adding just the right sounds will add to the sense of time and place for each location.

This is reminiscent of, and inspired by, a lot of 2001, where each of the time periods had its own feeling, with much of the last part of the movie being free of dialogue – just the sound of the ship-board environment and David’s breathing, creating a tension and calm counterpoint to the actions that we know are very threatening. Maybe I can work someone singing “daisy, daisy , give me your answer do” into the soundtrack, lol!

This silence or the normal, mundane background audio bed can often be more unnerving than huge in your face (in your ear?) sound and I hope to use this to my advantage. Again, I feel that this is different in style from most sci-fi shorts, which ape modern sci-fi action films with hyped up sounds and ear-busting explosions.

All the computer sounds are being created from scratch inside the synths in Apple Logic Pro. This makes it easy for me to do everything inside one computer – an old (ancient) Apple Mac Pro. (I’ll do a production diary on our equipment soon!)

I’m using my fabulous Rode Video Mic to capture dialogue on set. It and my Rode boom pole are two of my favourite pieces of kit, bought recently and only used in anger a few times! I have been very impressed with the sound of this mic. For the money, it’s hard to imagine better and I definitely recommend it! The shock mount is very good as well. My only niggle is that when using the furry windshield with a short lens the furry can sometimes sneak into shot. Time to get out my shaver;-)

We’re shooting with an inexperienced boom operator (Hi Zakk!), so fingers crossed everything will go ok – I’m sure it will! We’ll give a lot of training! Lol! Zakk is very quick at picking things up and a very hard worker, so I know he’ll do a good job!

Foley will be done where necessary, but if we can do without sound we will. I’m building the sound of the location into the soundtrack so the Mountain will be part of everything making location sound less important. A few visual effects will need something, but unless there’s something we feel is really missing, we’re not going to worry about it. Less is more!

As I’ve said before, it all makes sense in my head at the moment. I’ll be very happy if I get to within 60% of what I’m aiming for! (I’ll also start adding photos to the blog soon!)

Next time: Locations