Brainstorming and some more new ideas

 Tonight I had a little brainstorming session. I was browsing through “The Foley Grail” by Vanessa Ament, partly because I have a foley recording session for the ‘Jam’ coming up next week, but also I thought of getting some new ideas for the dissertation topic. In this book I came across a very cleverly named chapter, entitled ‘Replacing Reality’. This got me thinking back to last year’s film analysis and watching documentaries and interviews with different sound designers, like Ben Burtt for example, on how they approached sound in their films. As we know, sound we hear in films is not the sound that is recorded on the set while the movie is shot. The sound we hear in films is recorded separately on foley stages or on location and then carefully designed in the post-production. So, I came up with an idea of recording a gunshot (hopefully with the help of the military or police) and then compare it to a gunshot heard in movies and analyse the differences. It would be a cool project to do if I could get to work and record inside of the military base, even just for that photo opportunity!

The dialogue editing dilemma...

 So, the work on dialogue editing for my new movie project ‘Jam’ is underway. I have also almost finished reading the book on dialogue editing. I say almost because I ended up skipping some parts of it. The book, however insightful, is very technical. And I mean VERY! It talks at great lengths on comping vocal takes from different perspectives, camera/microphone angles and there is a very large practical section devoted to step-by-step film dialogue editing. It proved a good read for the purpose of learning new things to try on this new movie I am doing, but in terms of discovering some exciting possibilities for a dissertation subject it didn’t offer a great breakthrough. At this point I am a bit lost and I really don’t know what else I could do. I have a first official progress presentation coming up this Friday with James, so I will have a think in the next few days about some other possibilities. For now, I am out...

A new movie project coming up...

 I have a new movie project coming up in the next few days. The director of my last movie contacted me asking if I would be interested in doing sound design/editing duties on a short-feature called ‘Jam’. I have of course agreed, as I really enjoyed working with those people in the past. Plus, it was an invaluable learning experience and it got me a Bafta LOL! Since, I would be starting the editing with the dialogue I thought I could give “Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures” by John Purcell a read. It could serve both as a prep work for the upcoming film, but also, I hope that I could possibly get some cool new ideas for the dissertation topic. The art of editing dialogue is hugely under documented in all publications on film sound. And however very technical the process is, it’s still art, and I could be onto something here if I read this book...

Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound" – good, but not good enough?

 So, I have been reading Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound by David Yewdall for a while now. It’s a very big book (by my standards). I have to say though, that however interesting it is, I am finding it hard to find some cool ideas that I could explore further as part of the dissertation. Don’t get me wrong, this book is AMAZING! But, the first 200-250 pages are full of anecdotes, stories about the industry, interviews with specialists from many different fields of film production, history of film sound in general, history of film sound standards and tools used in the past. There is a lot about how they used to use tape to record and cut sound. It is a very fascinating read, but I am afraid I will have to stop as it’s taking too much time and I could be reading about something that could hopefully spark those dissertation ideas flying faster.

Meeting with Kenny - Modality, Horror and foley fun

 Today, I had a meeting with Kenny McAlpine, the programme leader, about the ideas that I had for the dissertation. I ran all my ideas through him to get some feedback. The two ideas presented were as follows:

• Modality in film soundtracks
• Horror Sound Effects – how it’s the sound that makes horror really scary.

 In general, the tutor seemed to like both ideas, although he didn’t seem particularly fond of some of my ideas behind those projects. For example the ‘horror’ project – I thought it would be cool to lock myself in the studio for a couple days and just have pure fun recording smashing vegetables and fruits with a baseball bat. For some reason, Kenny didn’t like that explanation and I can kind of see why. He said that “having fun” in the studio is not a valid rationale for an academic Honours Project, and although both ideas seemed valid, I needed to think a lot harder on the justification. To be honest, I had even harder time coming up with a rationale to the ‘Modality in film sound’ idea – I just can’t think of why it could be a viable academic research.

So, at the moment it seems it is back to the drawing board for me. I need to think harder on this and especially on the rationale part (it ain’t easy...)

New idea - What makes Horror’s scary and foley fun (mostly foley fun though!)

 Tonight I had a totally new idea that I think could possibly work as a dissertation topic. Basically, I was thinking about last year and what I enjoyed the most about it. Apart from the Audio Production Methods module and doing film soundtrack analysis, I have really enjoyed recording foley and sounds for the “Sword of Truth” Sound Library as part of the Sound Effects and Spatialization module. I have recently had a conversation with a friend about horror movies (of which I’m not a particular fan) and we talked about how sound is what really makes horror movies ‘scary’. Without the sound, the gory pictures lose a lot of its impact. This is exactly what Chion explains in the first few pages of the first chapter of his “Audio-vision”. I thought it would be particularly cool and interesting to use this idea as an excuse to record tonnes of vegetable abuse in the studio, which was loads of fun last year! (pics below). I am having a meeting with course leader Kenny McAlpine on Friday, so I will be able to get some feedback on my ideas so far.