After arriving in Melbourne for another challenging mobile recording we set up and worked with what we had been given. For more info on the issues and limitations that we had to work with check this out.

The tracking days and nights went well, and after finding some curtains and carpet to throw around the large open room to help reign in some of the long reverb we were underway. Sadly a lot of the vocals were attempted to be sung live in one take as planned, however there was just too many things for Ash to think about and therefore a separate vocal recording session was booked for after this initial week.

What I loved about this mission was that with the right people, the right attitude and a few beers you can accomplish anything. I’ve learnt an absolute tonne about recording in this way and it only solidifies my thoughts that I would like to do more mobile recording and location recording projects coming up. The reality is that I just can’t afford a perfect acoustically controlled studio, I can ‘try’ and make something but to get it perfect costs hundreds or thousands of dollars and I just don’t have that money lying around (geee really?).

I think the vibe, the song, the people and working with what you’ve got are the most important things with any recording project whether it’s in the worlds best studio or done from your bedroom. I cant wait until the CD’s come back from mastering and they’re in the hands of all the people involved.

I would like to thanks everyone that helped out to make it happen: Ash, Em, Greg, Tony, Marg, Cal, Paul Rigby, the string and horn section, the choir, the dance school, the old orange volv… everyone.

In the meantime, here’s some pics of the process. Enjoy. I did.

Mobile, location audio or live recording whether it be for a band, a tv show or a film is always very interesting and often quite challenging. This particular mobile audio production project was no different and I loved it! Ashleigh Southam writes fantastically eclectic soundtrack style musical compositions that would equally be at home as a film soundtrack as they would snuggle into your ipod playlists. This concept album session come DIY music recording not only took me away from the recording studio in Christchurch but to a whole new country, Australia. Ash lives and works in Melbourne and really wanted to record his sophomore album there this year and approached me earlier in 2010 to plan out the sessions.

The concept behind this recording was that Ash wanted to track and record as much live as possible, where possible. Do it ‘old school’ Motown styles: One big room, all live, one take. Drums, bass, guitar, keys, vocals, horn section, string section.. the works… all live.. all one take. I was intrigued by this and thought the challenge of getting out of the recording studio and into a massive room to work like this would be good for me, I mean you don’t grow and learn unless you put yourself into odd situations right?

I arrived in Melbourne in late September which was welcome relief following the large 7.1 earthquake in Christchurch earlier that month which had destroyed the old Sitting Room studios building and had caused a large deal of stress in the local music and recording industry. I caught up with Ash and we talked through the plan of attack and went to go and check out the space which he’d managed to secure for the project. Straight away a few issues became evident.

The Issues:

The time frame:
Due to me having to cancel work in the recording studio in Christchurch I was on a tight time frame and the musicians and location we’d chosen we were limited to a week for the entire album.
The location / The room:
Ash works part time at a dance school and because it was school holidays we were able to get access to their largest studio for the week. 450 sqm, 7meter high ceilings, hard surfaces and no acoustic treatment. Simply, it was a monster of a room.
The songs / The players:
Ash doesn’t normally have a ‘band’. Most of the players playing on this album were mates or ring ins that hadn’t spent much time learning or rehearsing the songs. To top this off, not all the players had been confirmed nor had the final string or horn section parts even up until a few hours before the first day of recording.
The Gear:
A lot of the gear I’d planned on bringing had either been damaged by the earthquake or I didn’t have access to bring. I’d arrived with a handful of mics and that was about it, we had to beg borrow and steal the rest and only ended up with a stock digi 002 (rather than my Black Lion audio modded 002r that I love and swear by), a behringer ada8000, some more mics, some cables and stands and the ability to only track 12 tracks at once MAX… WAY less than I am used to!

Stay tuned for part two… and what happened next.

Audio post production for tv and film is something that the sitting room recording studios has been doing more of in the last 2 years and I must say that I bloody love it! We were lucky enough to score the audio post production job for Push Play this year. It was heaps of fun and combined Voice Over ADR recording, Sound Design for the title sequence and Graphics, music selection, a mix and master and supply for broadcast. Push Play is the brainchild of Tony Palmer (ex What Now and NZ TV guru) and is a weekly magazine style sports show for children aged 7-17, and being aimed at a young audience was quite FX heavy in some of its sequences… tonnes of fun laying all of those Sound FX.

It screened every Sat morning on TV3 and then repeated numerous times throughout the week on the Sky Sport channels and as far as I am concerned is one of the best value for money children’s production around. I tip my hat to Tony and the Quick tv crew for their ability to pull this off every week with the resources available… and here’s hoping there’s more to come.

Audio Post Production for TV and Film.. Who cares?

When you think about it as a % your movie or tv watching experience surely depends on the sound about 50% as the visuals also about 50%, right? . The finer details could be argued that either is slightly more important at given times or depending on the style of entertainment you’re watching, however the % is probably sitting close to half most of the time.

Given that, the audio recording, soundtrack or music, sound FX, foley fx recording, ADR and audio post mix is quite simply bloody important and more often than not, very time consuming.

The Sitting Room is doing more and more audio post production these days, everything from tv shows, advertisements, documentaries and film and I love it. It’s quite a different challenge to recording and mixing music and can is extremely rewarding when you see (hear) the finished product.
The Hell Pizza interactive adventure was no exception, we had a totally blast with the SFX recording (zombies, blood, bites) and the great vibe of the project.

Here’s hoping there’s more exciting Hell Pizza adventures to come!

And for anyone interested in a little laugh this stuff happens all the time in the Audio Post or Location audio recording circles:

ADR and Hell Pizza

Audio post production, Sound fx, the soundtrack and audio post mixing for film and TV is often under estimated and overlooked by the general public in the finished product. Often if the music and audio post production mix is done REALLY well it’s designed to not be noticed, in fact it’s usually only noticed when it’s done badly.  There’s a real art and skill to piecing together a dynamic and emotive sound mix for film or tv and one very important part of that is the dialogue recording. Whether it’s an action, a horror, a rom com or even a doco the dialogue is very important, the watcher must be able to easily hear what is being said, and this can be extremely tricky if you’ve decided to record your audio on location and there’s the lighting guy’s generator cranking, or planes flying overhead, it’s near impossible to get a good clean take of every line. So the process of ADR was invented and implemented.

ADR or Automatic dialogue replacement is essentially the process of ‘over dubbing’ good clean audio takes of the dialogue. It’s most usually a case of getting the actors back after the shoot, have them come into an audio recording studio (like the sitting room) and re recording each of their lines, mimicking exactly how they delivered the lines during the actual shoot. Now, clearly this is a very time consuming process and there’s a lot of factors here that can make or break a good ADR session. Consider such things as:

• Microphone placement or distance to the speaker vs how far away they are on screen
• Emotion and being able to exactly replicate ‘how’ something was said
• Movement, if lines were being delivered whilst running or eating, they sound very different to just standing still in front of a microphone
• And phrasing, I can say the same thing in different ways 100’s of times without even consciously trying to do so.

Given all this, the role and job of being able to record and/or re deliver your dialogue lines is tricky even at the best of times. Once again, if the ADR recording and editing is done well then it’s hardly noticabe even to a trained eye/ear… done badly and things can be out of sync or just sound wrong. The Sitting Room recorded and edited the and fingers crossed there’s not too many points where it’s too noticeable !

Check out this great video about all the issues sound production and audio post teams face on big film shoots:

Shooting

For those who haven’t been involved in film or audio post production for film, shooting, editing and mixing this amount of footage of this calibre is no easy feat. In fact it’s a time consuming and costly process, but once again Logan and Katie have managed to ace this and the proof is simply in the pudding.

Logan has been a big DSLR fan and in fact one of NZ’s DSLR poster boys. He’s been using and shooting HD video on DSLR’s longer than anyone else I know in the industry and as far as I’m concerned getting some of the best results in the country. All this does not come easy or cheap, he’s spent 100’s of hours using, shooting, researching and testing to make sure he get’s the best results.

The shoot for this campaign was spread over 5 shooting days and comprised of a 2 camera set up, a large crew and crap load of Hell Pizza for lunch.

Film shoot, location audio recording and zombies

Some of you will know that one of the major drawbacks to the DSLR shooting at the moment is the audio recording capabilities. Not that it has none, but that they’re limited and well, average to say the least. It was discussed at length before we started the shoot how we’d deal with this as usually I would be swinging a boom or making sure we’d be recording location sound as best we could, however being an actor and also the tight shooting schedule meant that we opted for a shoot with little or no location audio being recorded to be used in the audio post mix… scary? Yes.. a little dangerous… yes.. but did it work out.. yes, just. Essentially this meant full ADR recording for all the actors, massive foley sessions and FX laying and some very long and intensive audio post mix sessions..more to come on this in the next few posts.

Some of you may have seen this but I really wanted to share some thoughts on a project we’ve been involved with recently.  The hell pizza interactive online adventure involved the cream of the crop in the south islands leading up and coming film and audio post production studios and individuals.

So what is it that I’m talking about?

Here’s what it is and how it works:

Scenario:

In a world becoming overrun with zombies, an attractive young woman finds herself trapped, and ends up ordering a pizza from the Hell Pizza website. One of the last remaining Hell Pizza employees receives the order and has to battle his way through a city of zombies, to ensure the Pizza arrives safe and sound.

Instructions: It’s your mission to watch and play the game and direct Steve (Hell Pizza delivery guy) through a series of decisions along the way. Make the right decision and you keep on playing, make the wrong decision and be sure that you will die in an interesting and outstanding zombie way.

This was the brain child (BRAIAANNNSS) of Logan McMillan and is a perfect fit with the Hell’s branding and marketing and once the green light was given on the project the production proceeded to rope in the cream of crop of film production and audio production companies and individuals in the south island. It was a production utilising some of the newest technology in the film industry (DSLR’s, CG FX, lots of foley and ADR recording and plenty of makeup). I was involved with of course the audio, soundtrack composition and recording, audio post mix and for the first time ever in something of this size… acting (although I pretty much just played a hypo version of myself).

I will write more about these parts very soon but in the meantime please watch and play the game.

Big mega thanks to the following for being awesome and making it happen:

Logan McMillan – Gorilla Pictures – DAD
Katie O’Brien – Little Sister films – MUM
Stu, Otis and Steve – Hell Pizza – The bosses
Dj and Emily and all of the zombies – Actors
Dan Watson – Camera and motion graphics
Andy Dean – Grip and camera
Lucy, Julie and Brae – Makeup
Bryce – Art direction, wardrobe and level 70 Mage
Flip Grater – Production guru
Eva, Belinda, Ben, Simon, Libby and Jake – PA’s and mega heroes

You guys are awesome… yumma yumma yumma!

How do we know what to feel when we watch something? How much difference does music make in determining how we feel?

These and other questions we will attempt to answer in today’s….

AUDIO VISUAL EXPERIMENT

OK. How this is gonna play out is you need to first (like right now) turn off all sound on your computer. Put it on mute.

Have you done that? If the answer is yes, click play on the clip below and watch it.

Nice. Now turn up the sound on your computer nice and loud or even better put on some head phones or something. Then run the clip again.

What did you think? For me the difference was night and day. The audio made all the difference between it being a relatively boring or dry visual experience and an emotive, funny or intriguing one. I like how subtle the sound effects are and how much they add by being so quiet.

For me it was the music that made this a ‘positive brand experience’. It’s an interesting step from Google to move away from the kind of robotic, nerdy, geeky vibe they so often have, to a more emotive, engaging one. But what took it to that place was nothing to do with the visuals, it was all in the audio.

In a lot of ways, it is the audio that lets us know how we should feel about what we watch. Should we be afraid, happy, relieved, apprehensive, angry, upset? Audio is the cue we use to help us make sense (emotionally) of the visual experiences we have. It’s the difference between funny and upsetting, happy and sad or boring and engaging.

We specialise in audio…. just saying.

It seems as though the world is turning faster and faster, I’m hardly able to keep up. Whether it’s the latest obscure indie music video that’s storming the web, the latest iphone app or even just the latest and fastest way to get weather updates, these days one must have a full time ‘ear to the ground/finger on the pulse’ technician giving daily debriefs on what’s happening in the world of the interwebs and techbiz land.

A month or two ago I got an iPhone. After the initial jizz fest of figuring out how I could not only streamline my workflow but more impressively do it from anywhere, things slowed down. To be honest most iPhone owners shudder in shame when they hear that I only have a handful of apps and most of which I never use. Shame on me, tisk tisk. I struggle to actually see the practical use for a lot of iphone apps so you can imagine my jekyl and hyde response once I saw Tim controlling Ableton live from his iPhone, I freaked out. How awesome was this? I was pretty syre that it could revolutionise recording and music performance? And so after a quick interweb search for anything similar for Pro tools, I uncovered this:

Now, I know it’s not an official release and it’s only working on Jailbroken iphones, but it got me thinking….

Why do we have this? Why do we need this? What has happened to us? Is this just another grossly unnecessary example of useless techno-landfill? Or am I missing the point and it’s potentially brilliant and maybe with more development the future of portable recording control surfaces?

I think I have a fair idea, but we’ll see.

Last week we had the ‘always wonderful’ Julia Deans (FurPatrol) in at The Sitting Room recording studios recording tracks for her first ever solo album. It was a star studded affair with the a multitude of special guest appearances on the record. I wont name names yet but it’s going the be a KILLER album.

There will be more posts to come and something for everyone… I will have a gear geek out talk about the world class recording gear we had in here, there will be photos, and hopefully even a quick interview from Julia….but for now here’s a quick video snippet of the lovely time we all had together.

She is a lovely person, a very talented musican and a good friend… keep en eye and ear out for more details to come.

Proudly and lovingly brought to you by Tim Chesney and Ben Edwards of The Sitting Room Recording Studios Christchurch, New Zealand. The south island home of audio production, sound design, mixing and location sound recording.