Easter Holiday

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Tuesday 19th April

I started all of my production with the recording of Cody’s voiceovers, these are pretty crucial as they help to link the piece together as well as helping to further build Cody’s character. These recordings were fairly easy to complete as both me and my actor had done voice recording for my options project, so we both knew what we were doing.

Cody only has 3 voiceovers and so I was able to get them completed in a good amount of time. I have now listened to them over on the computer and I think they sound good and I’m confident they’ll work within my piece.

I was also able to complete the audio recording for the conversation between the student and the bully today. This conversation needed to be recorded beforehand as the person voicing the Bully is unavailable for in person filming.

This meant that during Pre-production, I planned to have this conversation recorded beforehand and then have a stand in for the bully character when I actually film the scene. Having it recorded separately will also help me as I will only have access to one audio recorder on the day of filming.

But, I’ve listened over these recordings and I’m fairly confident they will be able to be blended in with the rest of the scene. Combined with the atmospherics of the room, I’m hoping the blend of the two audio recordings will be able to work well.

Tuesday 19th April

Wednesday 20th April

Today I felt was my first proper day of production. Today I was shooting for Act 1 Scene 1 which is Cody walking across the field at sunset. I decided to shoot this during the holidays as I only needed to use my phone and gimbal which are readily available and so I felt completing this shoot before the rest of the equipment was needed would make the production later on run more smoothly.

A couple of days ago my Cody actor had contacted me to inform me that they would be unavailable to shoot on this day. This was slightly disappointing however luckily could be worked quite easily around. This shoot and scene only contains Cody with no other characters, and Cody also does not speak within this scene. Additionally, because Cody is animated you cannot see the actor underneath. This means that in this one scene replacing the actor for Cody would be quite easy. And I have checked with the original Cody actor and they are still ok for the rest of the production which creates no more problems.

To replace Sam (the original actor), I enlisted the help of Gary who I luckily already had a talent release form as he will be playing the body double for the bully. Gary was readily available and willing to help which was really useful. The only slight problem is that Gary is quite a bit taller than Sam however, as there are no other characters within this scene, I don’t think this will be noticeable.

I had checked during the day what time the sun would set and it was at roughly 20:15. This meant I decided to be there for around 19:40 to give myself plenty of time. I began by setting up my phone and gimbal as they were my main piece of equipment. Thanks to my demo tasks, I was confident in setting it up and knew what I was doing. At this point the sunset looked really nice and I was very happy in my decision to shoot at this location and time.

I was then able to record all my shots. Act 1 Scene 1 is only comprised of 5 different shots and then I needed some footage for shot 38 and so I was able to gather all the shots as well as some re-takes just to be safe. By the time I was finished it was around 20:10 and the sun was just beginning to set. But, I’m very happy with the shots I’ve produced and I think with a little bit of colour correction and grading they’ll look even better.

I differed my final shots slightly from how I had originally planned them. Originally, I had planned for Cody to walk from screen right to screen left. However, while on location and the position of the sun, I felt it made more sense and would look better with Cody walking from screen left to screen right. I also realised this would help better for shot 5 where the title appears as people read from left to right so it makes sense for Cody to appear from left to right as the title would then be read as he moves past it. Overall, it’s not a huge difference but I think it was definitely a good change.

The very last thing I did on location was take an audio recording of the natural atmospherics. I think it is quite unlikely that I will use this recording as the scene will have a voiceover and music, but additionally, there was a fair bit of wind which has made the audio recording not that great, but it was still worth it as it will provide me with a backup in case I change my mind in post production.

Overall, I’m incredibly happy with how this production shoot went and I think the results from it are almost exactly what I was trying to achieve.

Wednesday 20th April

Thursday 21st April

I started my day with the recording of my narrator voiceovers, this was fairly easy to do as the only things I needed were the audio recorder, which I had booked out over Easter as well as the actor for the narrator, who was myself. This meant production ran very smoothly and I was quite easily able to gather all the recordings I needed. I had a little bit of struggle when I was recording my first couple of narrations, which led to my first narration taking about 10 takes for me to be satisfied. The problem was that in the recordings there kept being these little audible bumps or noises in the recording which would then ruin the recording. However, after a couple of tests and trying out different things, I discovered that the problem was my breathing. Because the audio recorder is quite sensitive, it was picking up my breathing and causing these noises. However, I found a relatively simple fix for this problem. Originally I had been holding the audio recorder directly in front of me which was most likely the cause of the problem, however, I moved it to the side of my face still pointing at my mouth. This allowed the audio recorder to still pick up my narration without it picking up my breathing. And after this fix the rest of my recordings were able to be carried out a lot easier and more effectively.

Thursday 21st April

Friday 22nd April

The first thing I needed to do today was the creation of shot 33 or Act 3 Scene 2. This is the scene where the Director comes to Cody’s house and finds his room fully animated. To create this animated room, during this production, I placed a greenscreen just inside of my door so that when the door is opened all the camera sees is green. This means that in post I will be able to key out the green and replace it with the animated room image that I will be creating later during post production.

Similarly to yesterday, the only actor I needed was myself and the only equipment I needed was the audio recorder as well as my phone and my gimbal which I all had easy access to. This meant that the production shoot was able to run pretty smoothly, and I made sure to get a good handful of takes until I felt satisfied with the amount and quality of the shots that I had produced. Overall, I feel fairly confident with this shoot and I think the recordings I’ve got from it will be able to work well within the final product.

To finish off my day, I needed to record all of my foley. As my piece is trying to replicate a documentary, I wasn’t planning to use too much foley as if it became too much or too obvious then I feel it would ruin the emulation of a documentary. So the majority of my foley was focused on minor sound effects that I feel would be important to be able to hear within the scene. This included sounds such as footsteps and clatters for when Cody drops stuff.

I had done quite a bit of foley work for my options project, so I was pretty prepared and knew what I was doing when it came to recording my foley. The majority of my foley went smoothly as my room is pretty quiet, which I discovered during the options project, and it was good weather which meant rain wouldn’t interfere with the sound recordings. I had a little issue when recording the footsteps outside as there was a decent amount of wind which affected the recordings quite a lot. However, I simply waited for the wind to die down as using headphones allowed me to hear what the audio recorder was recording. And on my re-listens I’m fairly confident that when cut out the wind noise shouldn’t interfere with the rest of the recordings. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how my foley recording went and I think when it comes to post-production these recordings will help to just finish off each of the scenes.