Sounding Suspicious

Definitely finished now.  Definitely.  Only a final tweak or two to the edit and some special effects - I know, I said last time that I would build big, complete sets and do everything in camera so that post production was a simple cut and splice job like it was in the old days - but still, there are some rig removal jobs to do and the water effects to key in.

Oh, I've already shot them.  That was a fun day at work, crouching in front of a blue screen in the bath, splashing water at my expensive new camera and laptop.  What a lark we had!

Then there's the sound.  No dialogue, innit. (Innit?)  In a breathtaking departure, I have included almost no dialogue in this movie.  You should know that my last two pictures were very speech heavy.  POPPYLANDS had over eighty individual shots with lip-sync and FIREBIRD was mostly just people standing around chatting.

This Boy has FOUR spoken lines.

But it means that the final cut is almost completely a silent movie.  I have no digetic sound (the sound recorded on set or location, teacups on saucers, breathing, clothes rustling, footsteps etc) so it all has to be painstakingly crafted by hand, one element at a time.  And because there is essentially nothing for the audience to listen to, the quality and quantity has to be a little higher than normal.  You can get away with murmur if the characters are talking over it, but if there's a problem with the sound and picture not being quite right, people will notice.

A momentary oversight caused by my over enthusiasm earlier in the week amused me.  Kelvin rests against a wooden gate at one point and the hinges squeek.  I'm very proud of the hinge squeek, by the way.  It's played by a Screwfix trigger clamp, yet another reason to just have as many of them to hand as you possibly can!

But the trouble is, I forgot myself while recording and proceeded to create a lovely load of interactions with a metal farm gate like so many that I knew in my youth, and it wasn't until I stepped back from the desk and played all the sounds together with the film that I realised while the noises were perfectly solid and acurately synced, the gate on screen is very obviously made of wood!  It just sounds wierd.