21T1 Virtual Showcase Perth - Studio 1

Commissioned

Audio Post Production

Project

Project Synopsis

Our audio team worked on the music, sound design and audio mixing for the short film Commissioned, written and directed by Gray Harrison and produced by Aiden Lombard.

As a three-person team, we assigned broad roles to divide our workload;

Tima Munro as composer - writing and performing the score for the film and working with the film team to build their desired tone.
Drazic Cox as foley artist and sound designer - sourcing and creating effects and noise to create a believable movement and physicality to the film.
Lliam Ahearn as mixing engineer - compiling and mixing the musical and sound design elements, as well as the dialogue and incidental audio provided by the film team.

Film Synopsis

Commissioned follows Samuel; a painter who has been hired for his first commissioned piece.

Facing writer's block and feeling uninspired to paint someone else's feelings rather than his own, Samuel struggles find motivation until Samantha - a manifestation of his psyche - appears to encourage him to break out of his slump.

The Film

Team

Tima Munro

Score Composer

Score Performer

Contacts:

Email:

timamunro12music@gmail.com

Webpage:

https://sites.google.com/student.sae.edu.au/timamarekoportfolio/home

Drazic Cox

Foley Artist

Sound Design

Contacts:

Email: draziccox@gmail.com

Lliam Ahearn

Mixing Engineer

Team Leader

Contacts:

Email:
lliam.ahearn@gmail.com

Webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/lliamahearn/home

Process

Deciding on roles to take, we considered how each task would fit into each of our skillsets, schedules, and access to facilities. Tima would write and perform the score for the film, Drazic would record and implement foley and sound design, and Lliam would produce the final mix of all stems and act as group leader. This way, Tima and Drazic could work concurrently with no time wasted before getting all of their audio to Lliam to bring together. With only a week or so between receiving a fine cut of Commissioned and the film teams deadline for our work, this strategy was pivotal in completing our process on time.

Weeks before seeing the film, we had discussions with the film team about what they wanted from the sound in Commissioned. They provided a list of reference tracks for the score and concepts for the sound design, so we could start contemplating our work with these and the script in mind. With their approval of demos and ideas we shared, we were ready to work on the film once they had an edit for us to work with.

Once we received the fine cut, Drazic and Tima went to work on their portions. Each of them shared their work with the group for notes and feedback, made any suggested changes, and passed on their work for Lliam to mix. Sharing his work, the group made suggestions for improvements that Lliam implemented before sharing our bounce with the film team. After a discussion with the film crew and collecting their notes and thoughts, we made our final adjustments and delivered the mix to the film team as it can now be heard.

Composition

The key words for the composition were "Etherial" "Wide" and "Spacious" So I had one rule in my head that the composition should not clash with the dialogue what so ever. So I started with the outro first, working on the end credit song which brings that vibe of content and satisfaction, I shown this track in its early stages with the film students before which they liked the route I was going for but there were obviously missing pieces and changes to be made like the attack of the piano chords were too impactful and too frantic, and there needed to be a melody, so I took out some notes from the piano and lowered the velocity of the chords to make it sound more soft and spacious, and for the melody I recorded a simple one on guitar to fit the feel.

The Intro was more simple as the film student's added a very subtle synth in the beginning, so I recorded guitar and played with the key of the synth was playing in, I also sampled a ticking clock to keep that feel of tension and slight anxiety of what the protagonist is feeling.

The biggest highlight for me was the middle scene where Sammy was stressing out in the hallway, as I got to experiment with slide guitar and added a few layers of effects like an amp sim, reverb, delay and vinyl distortion. all of these effect and a pad synth over the top gives you the feel like Sammy is about to go insane with stress and anxiety.

The outro track was also pretty straight forward like the Intro, the film guys put a soft pad synth, but I made use of a progressively fast finger picking melody that eventually slows down towards the end, and the ticking starting fast then slowing down eventually fading out.

Lliam filled in some pads over some dialogue heavy parts which I was really stumped on, but he did make them very subtle and didn't interfere with the films dialogue.

I found this project really enjoyable but there were time where I was quite stuck on how I can properly capture the feel of certain scenes, but after some feedback and advice from my peers I manage to pull through and the film guys were extremely happy with the results.

-Tima

Sound Design

I started recording foley based off of the notes given during our meeting with the film students. There wasn't too much to add other than maybe the addition of footsteps and the last painting scene where there is little minor movements in the paintbrushes, paint tubes and canvas. These foley samples were recorded at home using a zoom microphone and edited in Pro Tools.

I decided to team with Tima to record the footsteps throughout the film by using Control room C and the drum and foley booths. We were able to hire out an AKG large condenser mic and then proceeded to record the steps by stepping on the bottom of a plastic box in synchronicity with the film. Although we had an unfinished cut to work with so it took a while to re adjust the footsteps to a final film and into the new film length, so these were discarded and the original steps were used instead.

next was to give Samantha's voice a bit of a ghostly persona, so I uploaded it into Pro Tools and very carefully cut between each Sammy's and Samantha's vocal lines and gave her a slight delay that grew during the heightened hallway scene. although only the hallway vocal delay was used in the final project.

I would have enjoyed to be more on board with this project and was ready to help out on set as I'm quite interested in audio and foley for film. However it seems the film students wanted to take most of the on set audio for their artistic vision.

-Drazic

Mixing

With the musical and sound design stems collected into one session, my first move was to organise everything and route he tracks in ways that would improve my workflow. As Tima and Drazic's clips were processed and balanced relative to one another, I figured most of my adjustments would be made collectively to these groups, or sub groups within them, and this turned out to be extremely valuable to getting this mix together quickly.

After balancing and lightly processing the tracks, my main objectives were to create a more natural and less awkward feeling space by way of the room noise, and automate dialogue tracks to keep a consistent feeling level throughout.

As the film has some very quiet moments, especially at the beginning, I felt that creating a comfortable room noise was really important, though it was quite a challenge to develop. As the on-set recorded room noise jumps intrusively between cuts and shares a track with our dialogue source, I knew I'd have to cut it up and process it pretty wildly to achieve a workable result. I decided instead to source alternative room noise to underlay the whole film. With the pre-existing room noise being very noticeable in our dialogue clips even after careful editing and gating, I found the more impassioned dialogue and musical queues quite jarring. To smooth out these transitions and mask some of the uncomfortable buzz, I decided to add some strings throughout the film.

Starting with a G to conform with Tima's score, I programmed a single note with MIDI before committing it to audio, so that I could automate a very subtle presence throughout, only swelling at appropriate moments. Adding a lower octave, as well as minor and major thirds meant I could accentuate the positivity or negativity of a moment, and create some difference in the sound throughout without grabbing attention. Though there are audible strings throughout the entire film, the intention is that they're no noticeable outside of the automated swells, while still masking some of the on-set room noise jumps and creating a more comfortable continuity.

Automating each dialogue track for a normalised level while still retaining the dynamics of the actors' performances was very touchy, but ultimately with the new room noise and strings, I think the dialogue tracks sit naturally with Tima and Drazic's work, with our audio production bringing an emotional and believable quality to the film.

-Lliam

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