Impaired

Impaired is my most recent venture into sound. I was once again head of the sound department, where I was responsible for the on set mixing and recording, and the entirety of the post-production audio.

Pre-production

The BA3 Sound Workshops enabled me to explore a variety of different processes, techniques and equipment.

With the previous experience I had gained, I felt confident enough to challenge myself further, and test the most advanced equipment available to me.

The equipment included: the CMIT-5 boom microphone; the COS-11 lavelier microphones; and the Sound Devices 664 mixer. All of which are industry standard. Prior to filming, I spent lots of time in the workshops researching and experimenting with these resources to gain confidence for the shoot.

Leading up to the shoot, I tested the acoustics of each location in order to achieve the highest quality sound.

I also experimented with possible soundscapes that I would have to create in post. I predicted the various atmospheres of the film and produced sonic demonstrations of the scenes, as you can hear below:

Production

During production I was in a team of two on the sound crew. I was responsible for the sound mixing and recording. It was a role that I had become familiar and confident with over my years of experience. For this film I opted to take advantage of the ‘Tentacle Sync’: two devices plugged into both mixer and camera, that would generate a matching timecode. This is an industry standard practice.

The research leading up to the shoot proved beneficial as I was abled to seamlessly prioritise microphones as alternate environments would affect each one differently.

Post-Production

All my skills and knowledge have culminated in the final post-production sound design. I was able to hone my craft from all my previous films as well as utilise new equipment, like the Izotope plug-in for Pro Tools.

I completed a foley database, recording almost all of the film’s sound effects myself. This included the entire badminton scene, as the on set sound proved inadequate due to the echoey space.

Levelling, mixing and mastering were also my responsibility, as well as creating both hyper-realistic, and surrealist soundscapes.

In the final stages of the edit, I was able to achieve another 5.1 surround sound mix.

Aeterna