Chris Jones Blog

Re-recording ADR in car with our lead actor!

I just spent the morning with our lead actor, Bill Paterson, as we re-recorded the story of how his character Old Bill, caught the biggest pike in the world. In the narrative, this takes place in a car, so we re-recorded it in his car just outside his house. I used my trusty old Sennheiser mic and a small, 24bit Edirol field recorder I bought for £200. I recorded uncompressed 24bit audio direct or a memory card – I bought this Edirol recorder last year for £200 and it has served me well on many occasions.

Bill did ask if we should do this in a proper ADR studio, but my take has always been, why try to recreate the sound of being inside a car in a studio, when you can just sit in a car for real?! It also gave us the time to get it right, without the pressure of an expensive studio.

We had decided to re-record this part of the drama because on the day of the main shoot, we were filming in a car on a low and everything went wrong – consequently we fell behind schedule. It meant we were unable to shoot it the way we had planned, and it ended up being a little rushed. It plays OK as it is right now, but this new recording will really improve the timing. It also meant we could tweak the script and add a few lines to match the edit now that we have that in place. Effectively, re-writing the script in post production, a tool I bang on about on my courses.

I am going to Eddies (the editor) cutting room tonight, and we hope to do a picture lock for the next test screening tomorrow night. How exciting!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Post Prodution Outline So Far....

I thought I would just outline our post production process so far, for those who are interested.

We shot 35mm, which was processed overnight at Bucks labs, and then shipped in the morning to central London where Midnight Transfer did the 35mm telecine to DVCam, with all the relevant information such as lab roll, timecodes and keycodes. Remember, this is an offline cut, not the master conform and grade. For that we will go back to the 35mm and re-transfer at full 2k res.

This DVCam tape was then digitised onto an Avid Media Composer (on a laptop, software only) and the rushes were sunk with the production sound which came in from sound recordist Ro Heap on DVD, recorded in 24bit (24bit, opposed to 16bit, for extra on set headroom) and 48khz sample rate. Accordingly, the Avid project was setup in 24bit.

Once the rushes were sunk, we could do the edit, which Eddie Hamilton did.

Tonight I am planning to do the final edit, integrating the new material we shot last Friday. Once that is done we will have one last test screening to make sure there are no gaffs. I am also going to do some ADR with Bill Patterson to help the story along and clean up some location dialogue.

Once all that is in place, we will begin the final mastering stages of sound and picture.

So for now, Eddie has all the data on his laptop, and I have a cloned Firewire drive of all the media and the project, so I can view edits should Eddie make any changes while I am not present (he can just email me the project as I have the media already).

Broadly, we hope that Videosonics will do the audio mix and Midnight Transfer are going to do the picture grade. I will outline just how all that works when we get closer to the time.

One last thought, I do plan to make a BueRay or HD-DVD version of the film, simply to go through the process and learn the pitfalls and advantages of these new formats. I am looking forward very much to this as it will be a good real world test of the process and technology, and of the results possible. If it’s as good as both the HD-DVD and BluRay camps claim, I suspect festivals in the future will start to accept BluRay and HD-DVD disks for submission.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected] 

Pickup shoot is 100% success!

Saturday morning, the day after the pickup shoot, and I am looking out of my window in amazement at the weather. According to the BBC it should be bright sun, and it’s grey and miserable. Yesterday on the other hand, the day we shot, WAS AMAZING SUNSHINE! We could not have been luckier with the weather.
So the shoot went very well. We had a very small crew, running without sound, and now ticking over like a well oiled machine. We cranked through loads of simple cutaway shots, like the one here of the gnarled shark hook the killer pike chews up in the story.

By lunch time we had about ten shots in the can, all with amazing backlit sunshine. What was great is I could feel the edit of the film coming together, as I knew just how these new shots would slot in perfectly and plug little problems.

After lunch came the moment of truth with our large, rubber ‘Bruce’ like pike, built by Jenny Cochrane. It was operated by a couple of very nice divers, Steve Reid and Dave O’Dell, who came along for the fun of it. I don’t quite know what they made of Goliath when they finally saw him, but they were game, so they got into the water and we all attempted to make movie magic! Sadly, for most of the time, Goliath performed just like a big rubber pike would. BUT… after lots of takes, we could all see that we got short glimpses of real genius, where Goliath looked terrifying and enormous and completely real. I can’t wait to see the footage. So 100% success!

We also did a few shots of photos that we had to drop during the main shoot as the actual props were not ready (as we had only just filmed the cast in costume – this is always a scheduling nightmare as actors need to be in costume etc., and it’s rarely done before the main shoot). We did these shots in the main building at Bury Hill Fisheries, overlooking the lake, which is a bizarre place to do such shots.

We should get a tape of the rushes from the labs on Tuesday and have it all cut in by Tuesday night. I hope to have a locked picture by Thursday and a final test screening on Friday, making tweaks over the weekend if needed. Then it’s all about the final picture conform at 2k res, getting the digital effects right, and a track lay and Dolby Digital Mix. The very talented guys at Videosonics have already offered their help so I know the movie will sound a million dollars!

FANTASTIC!

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
[email protected]