The plan was to spend the whole day in Audio 1 recording everything needed for RM. This meant a clock, the foley and music.
Instead things got out of control and everything started to slip. Technology seemed to defeat me with all the settings and knobs. I finally was able to record around 11.00 am. There was no news from Jane, so I recorded Sol’s singing bowl I wanted to record the clock next, but it turned out that the lady who owns it fell ill. No clock, never mind. Another text to Jane. She’s running late. I set up for foley, but James came in to record a voice over. I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the recorded voice. The artist was Bulgarian girl, Jana. Her voice sounded too tinny with the Rode mic. I proposed to use my Oktavas. This worked out better, it smoothed her voice better. Ideally I would have used the Neumann, but university regulations prevent me from swapping mics just like that. We evaluated the recordings before Jana left. James assured me that he is happy with the quality.
After the VO recording, sometime around 2pm Harry the guitarist and Jane came in. A short discussion with Kris Yates assured me to record the guitar in the soundproof booth.
After the first round of recordings it turned out that the mixing desk in Audio 1 is the worst for the kind of technique I wanted to use. (Sending the output of the soundtrack to the headphones while recording the guitar. The SPDIF records everything that goes through the mixer and that includes the ‘preview’.)
After taking a break I suggested switching the lights off in the booth and I also resolved the monitoring problem by swapping the headphones outputs around.
The second attempt was much more successful. I also experimented with microphone palcement. I swapped one of the Oktava mics to the Rode NT1000. This microphone brought out more of the mids and highs, which was compensated by the Oktava’s soft and round sound. The last setup sounded the best, but we were running out of time. Now I have to listen back to all the recordings and try compressing, eqing, etc. Finally we were kicked out at 4pm on Friday.
I’m really pushing to record the music for RM on monday. All the music. I’ll also try to hijack the studio on Monday to record the required foley so that I can mix the film on Tuesday. Schedules are tight, but this isn’t new. In fact, I’m very upset that people didn’t pass on the video edits on time. Everyone seemed to sit on the edits like hens on eggs.
After today I felt that I’m a moving studio with all the equipment strapped onto me. Here is a picture of me at the end of the day. I hope it illustrates the point. The box is a mic stand, in my bag are three mics, xlr cables, a recorder, notes, and appropriate clothing for foley.
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