Going from filmshoot to filmshoot is laborious after a while. It’s my last assignment coming up (with Alfie’s Dead Fish… and I’m already very excited!) I do enjoy the challange of getting crystal clear dialogue recordings when I’m on location, but I would like to do more now. Tonight I got some free time (wow! I don’t remember when I had this in the past month) and I got immersed into things that are on my mind. Tonight I went on the route of birdsongs -> music -> sampling -> parabola mics -> wall-e -> foley.
Time is on my side only if I can manage it well. My priority now is to build a solid sonic basis for each soundtrack I am working on. Thinking about sound possibilities I remembered that my friends talked about a junkstore where they got lots of junk from. Right now I’m eager to find out where that store is and see what it has for me. The next few months I believe will be very tense: I would like to catch up with my writing (which I had to sacrifice for the filmshoots) and find the sounds I need.
I am thinking about several methods to do this; one of my plans is to go to Burnham-on-Sea to record seagull and crow squawks. Dominic affirmed that my choice of location should be quiet enough and should give me the results I am hoping to achieve. (Nonetheless I would like to build my own parabola mic for two reasons: I think it is fun and could be very handy later on.)
The next days will be spent looking for my IKEA bags to store my junk and discovering the what the junkstores and charity shops contain which I could use for my soundtracks.
On the side I am utterly interested in sampling and I look at my own piece (incorporating the knitting machines) as grounds for these kind of experiments. Dave Royce, however, pointed out to me that a film’s soundtrack doesn’t have to be strictly “boring”. By this I mean that one can go creative and introduce distorted sounds (sampled, treated, remade) in order to achieve the impact. Ben Burtt experimenting with Walle did this really well; looking for sounds that fit the sonic environmnet. This is what I also would love to do.
I have access to equipment and with a bit of time allocation I will be able to start playing and exploring!
Amon Tobin’s album “Foley Room” is another great inspiration for me: create new sounds by placeing them out of context is an old idea (foley) remade. I’m already looking into foley, but now I am opening towards the endless possibilities of sampling. [A note for myself: as Benkő Tibor pointed out, writing down all the steps I do in the process is important. This will allow me to master the technology and realise my visions instead of being dictated by the technology itself. Happy accidents are, of course, not excluded by this process but analised and used to learn from.]
Following up my quick tutorial with Duncan (where I said that I don’t want to use sampling just for the sake of it) I can see how Burtt used technology to create the sounds he was looking for. He described most of the sounds created by happy accidents. Those only occur if I play and do my recordings. Get into this! I can hardly wait!
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