Gareth Wood Sound

One of the most enjoyable projects I’ve worked on in months, the Google Infographic by Rob Norman.

This time, it’s all about the synths! I’ve been meaning to put my Novation through its paces in some sound design ever since I got it. Once I saw the highly stylised visuals of Rob’s work, I knew this would be my chance!

To begin with I thought I best not to risk it and cover myself, so I made an entire FX tracklay for the video, this way if I couldn’t make all the synth patches in time, I’d have something to show for my hard work. I remembered from working on Rob’s last piece that it’s all about the material of the foley objects used that make motion graphics sound good. Plastic was the material I was after (PVC if you’re a massive nerd like I apparently am) so I had a little rummage around my stuff and ended up recording the lid of an aerosol can, my Ravensbourne ID card with its plastic case and one of those Olbasoil nostril sticks that are handy when you have a blocked nose. I also ended up recording the metal lid of a biscuit tin which makes an interesting wobbly sound when flipped up in the air, and the classic water-in-a-saucepan which made the sound of the two heads forming at the beginning.

Then it got interesting! The idea behind using a synth for this project was because of the tenuous link that synths are modern technology and that this is about a very technical subject, it also helps that the visuals have a hint of retro arcade about them. I won’t go in to too much detail on how I made the patches but you can have a listen to them here if you like.

I tried to be as creative as I could, for the languages section, I decided that each language should have its own character, the English one is the popular one and the French one is the groovy laid-back one for example.

One of the key things about this project was the collaboration between me and @SimonAllinson. Before we started I went through with him my plans for the style I wanted to take, which led him to take a more synthy approach. He told me what key he was playing and the tempo too so that the transition between sound and music was a little more blurry and really ties us together. We frequently gave each other our latest versions so that we knew what frequencies we would be using and tried to compensate for that accordingly. It also helped that the visual was beat matched rather well too!

P.S. The narration was also performed by Simon, he’s looking to get a portfolio of voiceover work up and running so if you need a voiceover you know who to call!

I have a couple of projects I want to show you. I can’t put either of them on my official online portfolio yet as original music has not yet (or may never) replace the copyright infringing material that my colleagues have sought ok to use. However I’ll show them on this blog. 

The first is this Eurosport advert celebrating the 100th Tour de France this year as part of a YCN student award competition. The sounds were created by bringing my bike in to the uni studio, playing around with it. Myself and assistant Sam Anderson, got some very interesting sounds out of it including the whine-ish sound I used to represent the slowing of time. This was a fun little project and Sam will compose music for it, so it’ll be on the main page soon.

The second is a fake trailer made for the purposes of Yannick Hausler and Co.’s CGI unit. I really enjoyed this one and would have loved more time on it (I only had a couple of hours) but it was a pleasure to work with such clean dialogue so well done to whoever did that! The music is from a recent Superman trailer and I don’t think its going anywhere I’m afraid so I guess it won’t ever make it on to the portfolio page, but on the other hand it sounds great (and looks fantastic) so check it out.

More stuff coming shortly!

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of starting one of my main portfolio projects, ‘Long Distance’.

The edit hasn’t started yet, but I was at hand on set as location sound op 1, with help from loco sound op, Tom Ottley.

Ever since our success with ‘Artifact’, me and Tom have been of the opinion that having two sound guys on set makes a huge difference. This meant that one of us could focus on boom operating whilst the other could get another angle, either via lapel or a hand-held shotgun, it also meant that we could discuss the best course of action for every shot.

It was a big challenge, we had 3 long days of shooting in two very cramped flats, shooting on 2 cameras at the same time, with a range of night and day shots, regardless of the actual time of filming, getting out of shot and shadow was tough!

The film is written and directed by Craig Busek, who I’ve collaborated with numerous times and have had my film written by. It is about a couple going through a long distance relationship, following the ups and downs through their phone calls over the months, hence it is dialogue heavy!

I’m looking forward to seeing this completed and talking more about my film, more to come soon.

I thought I’d shed more light on some of my past projects that may have not made it on to my website, mostly due to serious copyright issues! These two videos were part of mandatory work for uni (and were handed to us with no previous audio). Nevertheless, I had a great time working on them and they have a special place in my heart.

First up, ‘Pucker Up’ directed by Katie Aidley. Most of what you hear is foley with the odd sound effect here and there. Even the girl walla was recorded in the studio and for a 1st year project is surprisingly not bad and we only had 4 girls performing! Of course looking back there are a few things that could have been improved on but this was a great practice for sound fx editing and foley performance, not to mention the very first collaboration with composing legend Simon Allinson.

Next Up, ‘World War’. Made by Vincent Chai, and again, given to me with a completely silent audio track. This was great fun, less foley this time round, but a lot went down here and all done within two days of intense mouse clicking and shortcut pressing. The key for me on this project was to have to very distinct sounds for the two characters, the plucky old-school plane-bot and the brute tank-transformer. I managed to get my old bicycle pump to perform most of the planes hydraulic movements, along with ironing-board-fun to get some metallic sounds in there. The big guy mainly consisted of heavily processed vacuum machine start-ups and shotgun reloads, oh and a lion with a very quick delay shoved on it. Sam ‘Ande’rson on music making duty.

Overall I’m happy with my 18 year-old self for these two pieces but alas, I can’t possibly put them properly on the site, I don’t have a spare few grand to give to Prince.

Oh and if you were wondering what that picture’s all about, that’s me on the far right in the impromptu laptop orchestra ‘Project Oblique’! Don’t ask about the name, I have no idea. I don’t have any footage of us in action just yet, but I’m working on it. Anyway, this all took place a year ago now, but there is a slim chance you’ll see us in some form of action at Ravensbourne’s The Degree Show this summer…

Another little victory, in the days prior to the 48 hour film, I worked on two motion graphic clips for the CMI Management Book of the Year Awards 2013. The videos were displayed as the winners of the ceremony accepted their awards. CMI also had a sub-compettition for the best animation displayed, Rob Norman’s motion graphics won and fortunately I was a part of this success along with musician Laurence May. Well done lads.

The two videos that I worked on, Rob’s (1st) and Deborah Blech’s (2nd), both used different techniques to get the gist of the books across in the 30 or so seconds supplied.

On The Management Book I thought I would have a go playing with materialising the sections of the animation. For example, we begin with sounds made entirely of paper, later on during the helicopter scene, everything is made of plastic, and the car has a metallic quality. Its subtle and probably fairly poorly executed, however I was given the project at 9pm the night before the submission and Deby’s arrived on my computer two hours later!

For The Strategy Book I went back to the style I used for a previous motion graphic piece. This is more of a cartoonish exaggerated attempt with interpretive sound design matching the clever icons that represent different sections of the book.

I enjoyed working on both of these as it makes a change from normal dramatic work and I think they both look great, I’d certainly like to work with them both again but with a little more time in future!

The videos are available to watch here

Good news! I finished working on a short film yesterday for Ravensbourne’s 48 Hour Film Challenge. Later that day the awards were given out with 23 films vying for a shot at the 5 awards on offer. I can proudly announce that my team and I picked up the best soundtrack category (best overall audio including music and sound) along with a  nomination in best cinematography and and most original film!

- Thanks to all those involved with a special pat on the back for Simon Allinson (Composer) and Thomas Ottley (Location Sound Guru). I look forward to working with you all on many more things in the future.

Straight after the award ceremony we were whisked off to have a chat with some younglings on our course about the film and the interview that followed will be broadcast on Resonance FM 104.4 if you’re interested. More info on that if I ever get it.

Here is the film

I can tell you that most of the audio is location sound, which makes a change and really helped with the crazy work time I had. Luckily, as you can imagine, there isn’t a lot of traffic or air traffic to contend with down there so we got some nice stuff and the natural reverb that me and Tom recorded was fantastic. We have to go down to Chislehurst Caves again with suitable sound props at the ready!

The cool thing about the caves was that they often have school visits, normally this would be a nuisance, but the sound they made that echoed throughout the place made such an interesting and eery sound that we had to get it in to the film. Of course there could be a bit more that could be done with the sound and the music (and the story!) but given the time constraint, I couldn’t be happier with the result and I can’t wait to be cheeky and have another crack at it next year even though I won’t be a student! Next stop, Sundance London (hopefully).

So I’ve been busy the last few days putting together the sound for the South Sudan project. The picture above has absolutely nothing to do with it, or anything actually.

Its been quite enjoyable working on this, crafting my own jet sound as naturally accuracy was not going to happen, (the aeroplane in the film is the second loudest in the world and is not even allowed to fly in the EU) however the director, Charles Heales, gave me a very good description of what it sounded like both from the ground and inside. I ended up with a mixture of sample FX - built up of only the brute military aircraft in my tardis of an FX hard drive, my synthesiser - a Novation A Station, pictured in the last post for that touch of individualism and in the really loud bits, a sneaked in Lion roar! I thought I’d try my luck with a technique I discovered whilst researching for my dissertation. “When we want to add something in post to give it an intelligence or emotional resonance, animal sounds can be layered” (Sonnenschein, 2001, p. 61) I’m not sure I’m completely sold on the idea, but the theory behind it kind of adds up when you look at neurology. Anyway, I wanted to add a bit of a character to the airplane but at the same time I knew that this is for a real-life client so I can’t really go all out on the experimentation therefore bonus points if you can spot where they are. Simon is just finishing the music off now so hopefully, in a few weeks once its all cleared it’ll be up for all to see. 

Ding Ding, the 3rd and final round of my university experience is about start (working on a boxing film for more months than I can remember has affected me). I guess a catch up is in order.

So good news, ‘Let It Be’ has had its security settings lifted (about 2 months ago) and I’ve finally gotten round to lifting them on my copy on vimeo, so it should be viewable on my portfolio page soon enough!

‘Down In The Third’ is finished. After working on 2 re-drafts of the film from a few months ago, and the film receiving a few add-ons, I’ve finally finished it… well, almost! It seems there is a technical error and for whatever reason it won’t quite sync up. Hopefully the director and I can get it sorted, when he’s ready, and I’ll have my toughest project yet available for all to see. I do believe its getting a star studded premier when that happens too.

As for the rest of my summer, its been fun! The olympics were fantastic, I have a lot of great memories and the pay cheque was alright too, considering my work load haha!

My Californian road trip was amazing, my only regret was I didn’t get the recorder out as much as I ought to or said I would but map reading in a 400+horse power convertible is enough of a handful. Lessons learnt, going on holiday and going recording are two separate things (though I’ll never have the money to separate the two, so sorry to whoever goes on holiday with me next time!)

I’ve moved in to a new house this year, and for the first time, I’m living with a sound designer and a musician, both of whom have had their names mentioned on this blog already, so I’m looking forward to a very collaborative and noisy year ahead.

I had the pleasure of meeting the new batch of 1st year students of both classes and oh my god, there’s a lot of them! They all have that fresh but slightly nervous face on them, it reminded me of me two years ago, but more importantly that I’ve only got one more year left of this bliss before I’m out in the big wide world, better make it a good one!

The deadline for portfolio submission is in a couple of hours.

For this brief I will have two very short pieces, of which one is a motion graphic, and two extensive +10 minute short films to show.

I won’t include my work on ‘Persona’ or ‘Heavy Duty’, as I wasn’t happy with my work on Persona and Heavy Duty is yet to be released.

Back to ‘Down In The Third’, the ADR session didn’t go quite to plan. Only one of the two actors turned up, so we have one very nice sounding character and one not so good, and quite frankly this was the one that needed doing more! Hopefully we will have recorded him once we have finished the final cut.

I’m currently still compressing the video file that is being used for the degree show so that I can upload it this side of the deadline, hopefully I’ll just make it!

This portfolio experience has been a good one. I’ve made many contacts, of which most have said they’d like to work with me again (not that any said they didn’t!). I’ve learnt a lot more about the mixing process, having had the fortune to work on some very challenging pieces, it’s given me the opportunity to experiment with techniques I’ve read and heard about that help add punch to loud effects such as having a drop in levels of other sounds just before the main event happens. Also having the tight deadlines has meant I’ve had to change my workflow, not necessarily in a beneficial way that I’ll do again and again from now on, but in a way that has made me re-do things a few times which has helped me learn for the future and ultimately fine tune the mix.

I’ve not done as much self-recording as I would like, as is always the case, but there is at least a little bit of me in every piece. Foley is limited due to having very limited access to dead spaces, and when I did get an opportunity, it was rushed and produced unsatisfactory results in the most. Though most of the well used foley actually came from my own acoustically challenged flat. I still managed to get a lot of foley experience by helping out Dan Hennessy and George Ankorn with their short film who’s name slips my mind. We got a heap of foley done that day, almost all of the sounds were what we, along with Joe Murphy, conjured up.

Plans for the summer are to finish off the short film, go on holiday to California (I intend to take my recording stuffs not only because why not? but also because we’re riding around in a V8 muscle car, I’m definitely going to come back home with a full V8 library!) and working at the Olympic Games.

I’ve also got to work on my dissertation, I was planning on looking for work experience at the end but this now seems unlikely due to having too much organising on my plate. I’ll hopefully fit some in during term time or the xmas/easter breaks so I can prise my way in to the industry after graduation!

Otherwise, I really want to start filling up my own sound library, properly. I only really have a limited selection of forest/countryside ambient recordings, or sounds I’ve collected around the house with things that make interesting sounds, and already a lot of it has come in handy. But I want to stop relying on my hard-drive, and I’d love to utilise my binaural mics more (if only they had better wind protection).

Apologies for the long post and thanks for reading!

I’m still going toe to toe with ‘Down In The Third’!

I’ve gone through the mixing a few times now, with a few elements that have been given to me along the way.

The music has arrived and is sounding good. It is there throughout most of the film though so it has taken a while to mix in nicely without over-shadowing my long, hard work!

The deadline for the Rave 2012 degree show hand-in is about 20 hours from now. I have to fit in an ADR session in the afternoon. I came to the conclusion that some of the dialogue recordings were just not up to scratch and luckily both actors seem to be able to come and do it. Unfortunately however, the commentary track will not be in this draft as the voiceover artist has done a vanishing act.

The draft for the degree show is the draft I will be showing for my portfolio hand in. Though the plan is that the film will be re-edited and I will finish off the sound to match in the weeks after, in readiness for festivals.

I’ve given myself the extra challenge of making sure the output levels are within broadcast regulations, which is something I’ve not really took in to much consideration in past projects, ‘A Moment in Time’ aside. The trouble is, this is an inherently loud piece, so its been a tremendous amount of re-eqing and going over again and again. I wouldn’t be able to do it without my recent purchase of a motorised fader, what with the super-busy studios!

Hopefully the amount of effort that’s gone in to this will shine through, it’s by far my most complicated project.

Work has been full-on over the last week or so. I haven’t been able to enjoy the sun!

The good thing is that I’m nearing completion of ‘Down In The Third’!

I’m getting to the mixing stage of the project. It’s been a lot of work. The dialogue recordings weren’t very clear to begin with so I’ve had to swap out a few regions and be very crafty with the EQ and noise reduction plugins. I’m fairly happy with what I’ve managed to do with the dialogue so far.

The main area of challenge has come with FX. It’s a very busy piece with a lot of action, and though I’d love to have lots of time to get my own recordings and everything, there simply wasn’t the time scale for this. That and I don’t have a car that I can speed in!

The director has been quite involved with what he wants from the sound, which is good. The narrative arc has been considered in the sound, and though the edit isn’t quite what I would do (maybe a couple to many cut aways to the ambulance) there are a lot of transitions which aid this.

In other projects, I’ve just handed over the final mix of ‘Let It Be’. The video will probably be up in the coming days.

I’ve also managed to squeeze in one of the poem pieces that the 1st year Digital Film students have been making. ‘In the Deepest Loneliness’ is a visually appealing piece that isn’t very action-packed (for a change) which led me to create some nice summery ambience. I knew Simon Allinson would be doing the music of this so I left a lot of room for him and the Voiceover. I kept all my sounds in the high-end and though I never spoke to Simon about the project I think he got the message.

I’ve also had to drop ‘Leading the Blind’. It was yet another +10 minute piece that had a very tight deadline. There was no way I could do it and Down In The Third justice, given the time. So I gave this on to Jack Burch.

So, this is the little advert I was talking about, with my sound!

The music was already complete when they gave me the video. This coupled with the visuals told me that they wanted something playful and cartoony. I had a lot of fun working on this piece and managed to complete it in a few hours. I took a lot of inspiration from other similar videos that are often uploaded on vimeo. But my favourite part is where the monuments pop up, I’m happy with that!

Well I’ve been given the final edit of ‘Let It Be’.

‘Let It Be’ is a short film about the friendship between a young man and an elderly man who cross paths on a regular basis in a Job-centre. The old man lets on that he’s not seen his family for a long time and it is apparent that he is dying…

Its a fairly touching piece and it’s nice to work on something that is less “action-y” for a change.

The boom op had a tough time with the choices of location and at first I thought I had a real challenge on my hands. It turns out the editor simply picked out the worst audio takes for each scene which meant that I had to rummage through to find clearer samples. Still, it was not exactly easy to sort out and some times the better audible takes just didn’t match up with the chosen picture takes and I had no choice but to be very careful with the EQ.

The only reason Im writing about dialogue editing at this stage is that I’m waiting to use a deader space to record foley. My huge victorian floorboard room with main road outside just won’t cut it Im afraid. Well it might have done if it wasn’t for the fact my whole mic collection consists of omni directionals. This will have to change when I’m in the money!

So overall Im fairly happy this will be a nice little piece and the music works quite well. You’ll have to wait and see.

I have hopefully secured two little pieces. One is a motion graphics piece that is an informational advert that is trying to gain funding for a new professional video business but lends itself to a very vimeo kind of simple but effective sound design. I really hope I do get to work on this as it looks like I’ll have a lot of fun! The other is a 30 second promo video for Chislehurst Caves that was shot on a RED camera. The visuals should be stunning, and I expect a lot of free reign on the sound. Again a lot of creativity for this one which can really show me off in a good light, I hope.

I’ve finally finished ‘Persona’, after having to re-edit the sound because someone gave me the wrong edit! Working on this has really opened my eyes to how important a good boom op is, let’s hope some of the directors I’m working with down the line has discovered this. Now I can move back on to more enjoyable projects.

‘Heavy Duty’ has been finished now and with it my first feature credit. I should have an IMDB name within the next couple of weeks!

‘Down In The Third’ is coming along nicely, I’ve come to a sort of end with what I’ve got so far as I need to see the rest of the inter-cutting footage to get a better understanding of the story. So the crowd is currently just happy to be there and hasn’t picked a side yet! From what I’ve seen of the on set pics on the ‘Down In The Third’ facebook page, it looks like I should have a nice looking portfolio piece here.

One of my other short films, ‘Let It Be’, (that I haven’t been able to work on yet) is nearing completion in the editing department, so I should be able to fit that into my schedule now that some of the others are behind me. Its been a couple of months since I read the script so I can’t really say much about it right now!

I haven’t heard much from the makers of ‘Leading The Blind’ yet either though I know they have been shooting. I expect this to be a rather dark and surreal piece. The more twisted the better I say, and I hope to play my part in this.

As for anything else, it’s all in pre-production.

I am rather excited to hopefully get something together with the guys from the recently put together Red Oak Pictures. A strong team has formed that traverses several year groups and courses, and once again I’ll be working with now long time collaborator Simon Allinson. We’re aiming to do our own 48 hour film just to see what we can do as a team, in readiness for a proper short for the festivals, now all we have to do is decide on a script!

All work on anything else has temporarily halted! The folks at Persona (the world’s first soap for smartphones) were in some desperate need of some post sound in time for their deadline of this Sunday for Season 4. It’s been pretty much non stop for the last couple of days for me, trying to get everything for ‘Megan’s story’ cleaned up and sounding as good as possible!

Download the app and you can listen to the goods, well some of them, I’m only involved with one of the interweaving stories.

This is the teaser poster for the boxing project I’m working on.

I’ve had to give up on going to a boxing gym. It was a bit too complicated and short of closing the whole gym, I would end up getting lots of background noise.

My solution is to use my leather sofa and punch that. So far it has produced some good foley results! I’ll need to layer it with other hits to make it sound really punchy and maybe a few wooshes to get it sounding hollywood. I’ve had a look at some more modern boxing movies such as Million Dollar Baby, Cinderella Man and the latest Rocky. I’ve noticed the footsteps are inaudible so I’l be doing the same unless asked otherwise.

I may just have too many projects on my hands at this rate!

One of the longer shorts dropped out after discovering that the producer had already selected another guy to do the sound without telling the director.

Luckily for me I managed to secure another project instead. The overall deadline for this one seems to be the same as all the others but they have already shot one location, so I can already make a start and begin the foley / sound fx hunting process. This projects main theme is boxing, and the fight is the section they have completed so far. It throws up a few challenges however. Firstly, the surface that the boxers are fighting on (a boxing ring floor) is something I am going to have a bit of trouble getting right. It’s a fairly unique sound and I’m fairly confident that I can’t cop out and use a library effect, as I don’t have one. This means either I find a large enough surface in and around my flat that sounds similar (which isn’t going to happen) or I source out a boxing gym and record it that way. To make matters worse, one of the boxers is barefoot and the other in socks! But on the plus side, if I go there I can gather all kinds of other effects that may come in handy!

Another challenge is that the director intends to replace the background (which is currently a gym wall) with a large packed out arena! This is going to take some imagination.

In other news, I received a message from a feature film director who is in need of more hands on deck in the foley department! I’ll have more on this as I get more information.

Last week the class were set a task of recreating the sound for this Wall-E trailer, myself and Thomas Ottley, and Sam Anderson took the challenge of trying to complete this task using only foley and in the space of four hours. The idea was to give wall-e some characterisation, I don’t think we did particularly well in that area but overall I’m fairly happy, considering we didn’t get to mix.

Today, Tony Gibson from Molinaire and Ed Moris from Delicious Digital talked about their experiences in sound effects editing and music for picture respectively. One thing that was of note was the amount of times they said the word NETWORKING and utilising the interwebs to promote ourselves. I’m trying to take that onboard, so expect more blog posts and tweets and status updates from now on!

So at the time of writing this very first post, I have been given the task of coming up with a proper portfolio, full of all projects that have my name on the credit list.

It’s not as full on as the portfolio I will create next year, for my degree, but its a good chance to start generating more contacts and enough projects to generate a showreel with.

So far Im in the process of securing projects and making new contacts.

Last term I had the pleasure of working on a short film which was for the Sundance Short Film Competition 2012.

A Moment in Time

Through doing this project, I was able to prove myself as a valuable member of a team that had already created an award winning short film for Ravensbourne’s 48 Hour Film Festival. Many of the team on the latter short weren’t involved in this project (who were mainly directors/DOPs), but I was able to get to know them nonetheless which has lead me to land a few 5 minute shorts that should be ready for me to do before the deadline of this portfolio.

I also have another 1 or 2 longer shorts which I have landed having lived in the same house as the scriptwriter, which again have a similar deadline.

So hopefully, I should have plenty of things to show off, however there is a concern that I will be doing them all at the same time with only a couple of weeks to do them all.

Another issue is that they are all the same type of media. Ideally I would like to have all sorts of projects, including motion graphics pieces and animation. I have made friends with people in these fields, so I should be able to get a project or two out of them.

Overall Im fairly optimistic that I’ll have a nice portfolio, full of nice visuals to compliment my sound.