Voice recording

Steve Wilson generously donated his voice talents for the "voice on phone" for Shut The Fuck Up today.

You may notice he's actually wearing two sets of headphones. The iPod headphones are connected to my Macbook in front of him where a quicktime of the film is shown, where he can sync his dialogue and get cues from Toms performance on screen. The bigger AKG's are connected to Pro Tools for reference where I recorded everything.

I used a se 2200a mic a workhorse of a microphone through a RNC compressor and an ART pre. You really only need to get a good level on Steve's voice and your sorted. I've used his talents on radio ads etc in the past and the guy's really got one of "those" voices. Makes my job so much easier.

After arseing around for almost two hours talking shite and eating beans on toast, we finally got down to work and had it wrapped in under twenty minutes. Only one tiny edit was needed as the performance synced up beautifully with Tom.

It great to see this finally coming together.

Tomorrow I record the voice of the girl with my most obliging step daughter Nicole.

Links

I've decided to put in links to most things I reference to.

Particularly in reference to Books, Equipment, Movies, Software and Sites.

Anything really that has an outside reference.

Since I'm Irish and anything I order/purchase has been made from Ireland, I'll refer only to the nearest (geographically) link.

All books are going to be referred to amazon.co.uk

And even though I use B&H in New York City as my main source reference (and where I've bought some gear in the past (amazing store)) I'll endeavor to include as many local links as I can.

I have of course purchased on ebay in the past but will only refer to there if the link is still valid.

If you go to The Rig post below you will see I've added links to the list of equipment.

Occasionally I'll have to refer to the manufactures website, your on your own after that.

I still haven't found what I'm looking for... or have I?

After trawling the net for any info on how to remove reflections in glass I think I have finally found something.

Most sites seem to suggest that a Circular Polarizing Filter will miraculously get rid of any reflections. I dutifully ordered and purchased one before the shoot to avoid such post production headaches.

Being a fan of the Video Copilot guys, I'm kicking myself for not checking out their site sooner.
I love their Riot Gear elements and also their Designer Sound Effects package, but they have some of the best tutorials out there.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/magic_glass

Hopefully I will be able to take elements from the above tutorial and apply it to fixing my problem...

Ah, the dreaded "fix it in post" mantra plagues me yet again!

Score!

Today I picked up a second hand copy of William Goldman's Adventures In The Screen Trade for a mere fiver.

I've been hearing about this for years and every screenwriting course I've done or book I've read seems to have at least one quote from this legend.

I'd like to do some book reviews at a later date on this blog. I've had to sift through a lot of shite to find half decent books on screenwriting, perhaps the 1 or 2 other people who read this blog (other than my wife) could benefit.

I would have linked to an image of the cover, but blogger suggests that that is a bad idea in terms of stealing other peoples bandwith, and copywrite theft. So I've opted for a quick snap from my camera phone of the inside "carpet" page.

Speaking of screenwriting courses, I've just completed my second with Zoetrope and must admit I fell lost in the wilderness again. I just finished earlier this week.

Writing is such a solitary activity it was great to have the solidarity of eight other writers writing together around the world. I miss it already.

Gotham hosts the Zoetrope course, I highly highly recommend this course to anyone interested inn screenwriting. I'll post a direct link to the courses on offer at a later blog as the site seems to down at the minute, but I'm sure you can find something at www.all-story.com

Currently I'm reading and thoroughly enjoying Richard E Grant's diary on the making of his directorial debut film; Wah-wah. I've not seen the film but hope to view it before the chapters on production are covered and I don't ruin the film for myself.

I really enjoy his matter-of-fact style of writing. Very witty and personable. I loved his film diaries With Nails, which I read over a decade ago now I think.

This post is running long so I'll save my reaction to finding the original script of Plan 9 From Outer Space for another day.

Out.

Update on the flick

My good friend and talented actor Steve Wilson has agreed to do some voice work for Shut The Fuck Up.

Steve was my first choice in voice talent in my promo days and I'm honored to have him on board.

There is a LOT of audio work on this piece. I think I have exhausted my multiple gig library of Sound Effects options for this piece and will have to enter an area I was hoping to avoid; Foley.

Making this short for no money does not need the expense of recording foley.

Frustrating.

The SFX I have been using thus far are clean pristine recordings (mostly from the early 90's I think) and have a great fidelity.

I am replacing most of the location sound (apart from dialogue) with effects sound and badly recorded foley will stand out like a sore thumb.

Grrr

The Rig

This here is a photo of my lovely wife Jen in our back garden, kindly modeling my rig as I took some snaps, while we were shooting some test footage of our son last week.

Seeing as we had no crew for the STFU shoot, the end titles are a little bare, so I decided to list all the gear that was used on the shoot in the titles.

I'm posting that gear list here, and will in turn try to give a half decent review of each piece of kit (among others) in following blog posts.

And give me something to do while progress bars slowly inch there way to their conclusion.

Canon hv30 HDV camera
Letus35 mini DOF adapter
Manfrotto Fig Rig stabilizer
AKG c1000s Condenser Microphone
Beachtek DXA 2S Mixer
Lcd4video 7” Monitor

Cavision 15mm Rod Support System
Nikon Nikkor 20mm Lens
Jessops Circular Polariser Filter
Nikon HN-24 Hood
Panasonic Professional grade HDV Stock
AKG K-271 Headphones

Second unit gear:

Canon MV500i Camcorder
Sony ECM-MS907 Stereo Microphone

Post production finally goes ahead

Having a pretty good day of it so far.

Did more work today than I have done all week.

Its slow going due to the mac and my tendency to experiment with effects and end up shutting them all off anyway.

Since there was no crew per say, there was no one to document the shoot, so Tom and I took a couple of snaps as we were ready to return home exhausted before our wives woke up. It was a beautiful dawn by the sea.

This is Tom. Still in character (a bit).

And this is me, Ian, wrapped up well.

I'm hoping to have things wrapped up well with this film hopefully by the end of the week.

I'm playing with different effects right now as the 6 hour progress bar slowly reaches its conclusion as FCP's SmoothCam analyzes my bouncy footage in the background.

I did want to shoot handheld as I think it suited the piece (and after I found out my rig was too heavy for a steadicam merlin) I opted to use Manfrotto's Fig Rig. I'm glad I did.

I may not use the SmoothCam'd footage after its done as I quite like how it looks right now, but we'll find out how much it improves the footage (if at all) in 6 hours or so.

Also, a big thing about this is that I've decided to re render the footage in Black and White. It just looks soooo much better n Black and White, even thought the dawn light gave some lovely colour, I don't think the HV30 coped with it very well. (But then again, that could be my fault).

'rafter