Location, Location, Location

What's better than public swimming pools? Filming a horror movie at a public swimming pool, hell yeah! I was able to snag an opportunity along with Blake G, recording live location sound for a film student in tri 2, they were recording in a local swimming pool locker room for a horror film that they had written. As soon as I saw the location I knew it would be really hard to get workable audio out of it. It was a typical locker room, the most reverb I've ever heard with about a 2-3 second tail. Much more than what's good for a film. We suggested that the 5 or 6 lines of dialogue would be better recorded in ADR, but we recorded the whole thing using the boom and the lapel mic's just in case. The boom was good for getting those small sounds, like footsteps and clicking of bag zippers. Along with the ambience of the room they sounded pretty good. The lapels kind of worked with the dialogue... I say kinda because it did seem a little reverb-y but I'm unsure how that would turn out given proper speakers and in relation to the video. Though I was only asked to do the location sound for this film I suggested that I'm available to help edit if they would like, It would be a days work for me or multiple for them, I'm yet to hear back from them about that though.

The hours were longer than initially stated by the team as well, claiming 830pm - 3am shoot with a 7.30 role call, easily turning into 730 - 4.30am nights because of delays in setting up scenes, debating on how to set them up and waiting on make up or actors etc. This was a problem for me due to my early rising sleep schedule for uni and having been awake since 7am to get to the 830am class on Friday. But I had an energy drink and this wouldn't have been as big of a problem had it not been for the 3 pizzas ordered the first night

(divided between 11 of us) Meant we had 2 pieces of pizza for dinner... Again not as we expected. Things changed the second night however, things were a little more organised, there was more thought going into the scenes before setting up and how things were done, only really pausing for the main bloody death scene to set up make up for the blood. And as if to make up for the previous night, a feast of 10 pizzas was ordered. All in all, I realise that students wont be perfectly organised or anything like that. In fact it wasn't really un organised, just that plans changed. And that to get an artistic piece with this many inputs there has to be debate around the way things are done. So it was a good learning experience in how the film industry works and what being a location recorder would be like. It has definitely peaked my interest as a possible job future. Also as a side note I realised that actors forget they're mic'd up a lot, and it's hilarious banter or awkward in the case of the one with the weak bladder.