Lvl 6 - FMP: Trick Of The Dark - Girlfriend Shoot

For this shoot i had no major issues that presented themselves, in fact this was one of the easier shoots, there was certain instances of planes and automobiles passing but they were not present throughout which made for a more consistent & higher standard of audio. For this shoot i had a basic set up with no Radio mics & we had no reason to set up any further ado sessions as i caught exactly what we set out to achieve. The equipment i had on hand was the Zoom H6, Rode NTG mic, Boom Pole & XLR cable. i had the settings defaulted as stereo & used the space around me to make sure that i caught a minimal amount of background interference. i started with capturing Atmos as normal and pushed onwards with the production, we wrapped in around 2 to 3 hours as the scene we had set to shoot weren't as intricate as some of the other cave sequences which allowed me to focus more on making sure that everything else that could use my assistance was taken care of. overall this shoot was a success & we captured what was needed to finish the film. We know going forward that we ar not going to pursue capturing some of the final scenes as there is no time and we already have a narrative structure put together due to Andrew and his incredible editing ability which i will certainly give him props for as he was able to pull this film together in such short notice.

Lvl 6 - FMP: Trick Of The Dark - ADR

Automated Dialogue Replacement is the process in which you dub over the lines that were not captured to a high quality. It is also known as Looping or Dubbing, so we thought it appropriate to using this technique due to some of our audio issues. On the third shoot for Trick of the Dark we scheduled an ADR session for the following day, which was also the day in which i helped with Echoes ADR as well. As technical as ADR seems from the image below it is actually one of the easiest tasks i have had to accomplish during my time as sound operator. I used Audacity to record the audio during the sessions, it was straight forward & only took several functions to record, save & export the different takes of audio. There were only two dials to keep in check which were the in going levels & out going levels of sound. This was to control the way in which volume was leveled.

Obviously with these ADR sessions they were predominantly focused in the areas in which we could either not gain a high standard of audio such as the sound stage or due to public interference such as unwanted talking, motor vehicles & extreme cases of wind. We focused on the two shoots which were the ending/1st shoot & the cave scenes, these are the areas that needed dubbing. The session lasted around 2-3 hours & we were able to gain all the necessary audio through multiple takes of the three.

Lvl 6 - FMP: Trick Of The Dark - Cave Shoot

So for the third shoot of Trick Of The Dark we decided on getting as much of the cave scenes completed as we could. We established that due to time restrictions from the upcoming deadline that this would be the best route going forward with this project. This was definitely successful as on returning to the uni Andrew was able to put together a linear timeline in which the film makes sense. So what has already been established is my role on this project in which sound was going to be complicated due to the surroundings in which i was capturing my sound. Gaining an atmos track was essential to this which became an issue to constant traffic of people entering the cave in which we were filming. I was able to capture some atmos but going forward with the shoot more difficulties presented themselves.

I had an issue with the XLR cable which seemed to dislodge slightly throughout a few takes but i used the spare that was there which was definitely useful as it stopped any recurring sound issues. Capturing sound without the public was no issue and i captured some rather crisp audio once i had fixed the mono & set it to stereo. I put the XLR cable into input 3 as due to the Zoom H6 being set back to factory settings it was an issue that Shaun pre-warned me about. Public became more and more present as the shoot continued which complicated sounds as they were being loud and asking the crew questions about the shoot itself, At this point we established that this was going to be a problem so we decided to schedule an ADR session for the next day to capture the sound that was not recorded on the day and make sure that we get the best audio that is accessible with the equipment at our disposal.