the music of sound

Everyone has experienced a bad ADR session, but I have never heard an actor so eloquently insult the director as Orsen Welles does while attempting to voice this commercial!

Its such fun to get out of the studio & do some FX recording! This a Ford Bronco V8 we recorded yesterday for our current film project: Bridge To Terabithia. We managed to track this vehicle down via TradeMe, since whatever we recorded had to match the one used in production. This one provided the challenge of having no WOF or registration and also being left hand drive… Needless to say we took it carefully but got some great material!
Recorded onboard using an HHB hard disk recorder using two dynamic mics (one on exhaust & one on motor) plus two Sennheiser 416s inside the cab… For exterior moves, passbys etc we used a Sound Devices 422 recorder with an MS mic setup using Sennheiser MKH 50 and 30.
After all that we went & recorded some interior bus moves (foley etc) plus recorded a few impulse responses with my starter pistol for use in Altiverb…

The last film we completed sound design for just had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, apparently to much ‘laughter & shrieking’ which is appropriate seeing as the film is a black comedy/horror by the name of Black Sheep. It screened in the Midnight Madness section fo the festival to a full house of 1200!
In hindsight one thing this film achieved was to mess with every idyllic childhood memory I have of growing up on a farm, but in a hilarious way rather than there being any permanent damage!

Heres a TV news clip from the premiere:

A couple of reviews from Toronto:
twitch film review
mcn blogs review

There is also a video clip online actually from the film;
a scene from reel 1 where we first meet the lamb creature
(oh how I wish the audio from youtube clips was better!)

And by the way, I found these clips via this great blog on NZ film

and so does Goethe
in fact he said it first
I just borrowed the phrase

So…. as the title says, this blog is about ‘the music of sound’
ie my random thoughts on the lovely way air molecules vibrate.

Most of my waking hours are spent working on film sound design via which i get to collaborate with composers & music editors, but I also love to spend any downtime I have noodling around with music & sometimes, by virtue of using similar technology if nothing else, the two overlap & I try to capture the happy accidents that occur…
as one of Eno’s Oblique Strategys says ‘ Honour thy error as hidden intent’

indeed!