It's not a music video

When I took on the role of sound designer I knew from the beginning that I wanted diegetic sound recorded on set.  At first the soundtrack was heading more in a soundscape route but as it evolved it became clear that music would be needed - but the piece needed grounding. As soon as you take the diegetic sound away from a film you're in silent movie territory, it's more a music video and is more focused on the music than the image and I wanted to make sure that didn't happen.

Before we started production I wrote the music to go with what I imagined the piece to look like on the assumption that I could add the foley tracks, synch sound and have a re-edit once the piece was filmed. However I ran into problems.

Day 1 in W103 - I still had my sanity

My main problem was I had wrote most of the music before the piece was made, meaning that when we got on set there was no guarantee it would work. What I found was the overall 'atmosphere' of the film wasn't what I had imagined meaning that the music just didn't match up in post - there was no saving it. I spent 2 days in the Protools studio adding foley sounds, synch sound, changing chords, adding instruments, taking instruments away, trying to be the drummer I was destined never to be. At the end of the 2nd day I knew it was pretty must over, I just needed James to confirm it for me, in case there was some fix for it that I was oblivious too and in all fairness there was, the solution was to re-write. Still not one to give up easily I decided to try and re-write over night, Meg and James gave me some reference tracks - I reverted to my theatre routes and got influenced by Sweeney Todd, many violins were played that night. The next day I begrudgingly admitted defeat and returned to my edit suite. 

The opening after my night of re-writing

A friend who had been giving his opinion on the music through out the production agreed to compose a new track in time for hand-in so that I could focus on my other roles - still keeping me as sound designer, just not music composition. 

Since I had been integrating the foley/sync sound with my music the basic layout for the soundscape had already been laid. I just needed to clean it up and make some decisions on which sounds should take prominence. Taking away the music also made me realise that we were missing some sounds. Nirav our sound recordist on set was amazing (when he wasn't in shot) and told me early on that the microphone I had originally booked out just wasn't up for the job we were asking of it, it didn't have the power and just wasn't made for the amount of movement we needed to make. (At one point he used a C-stand - you could hear his pulse through the boom pole). But this sadly made the sound from out first day shooting (powder and bath) pretty much unusable and I had to work around it. Also with the complexity of this shoot we couldn't get that close to the dancer as when he did he would be in shot in at least one mirror.

After getting the soundscape pretty much done I booked out a zoom and decided to get the rest of the sounds at home. This was just the sound of the dancer hitting her body gently and a few more water tracks. Water was easy, I just really wanted a sound to match up with her foot entering the bath becuase it seemed so bare without it - standard setup of me holding a sponge over my kitchen sink. The body sounds where a bit harder. We recorded some in the foley studio (I think Em actually bruised herself punching her shoulder?) and we recored some on set but it didn't sound natural because we were so far away. So decided to hit sausages. It makes sense, honestly, it was the raw meat thing and the only thing I had was sausages - I read it the Sound Effects Bible. I just ran with it and it worked.

Tomorrow is the day we finally export - I have to finalise some VFX, finish the sound, get the music approved and finish the edit. Then export. It's going to be fine. Just fine.