Here are some more great youtube videos of sound related stuff be it commercials, skits and whetever

There’s also an absolutely amazing commercial made in Sweden (I think) that used to be on youtube, it involved creating the sound for crackers of some sort.  If anyone can find it please post it here, i’d love to see it again

A great little commercial for DAB radio which I stumbled upon across youtube.

Over the last few months we have been amassing as much gear as possible to make your productions as proffessional, stress free and with a variety of options.

We have equipment for any small drama, documentary, eng, interviews voice overs… pretty much anything really.

We have a wide array of microphones for use on location or in the studio, for both dialogue, effects and music.

For dialogue in interior locations we strongly recommend our Schoeps CMC641.  This extremely high quality condenser mic sounds incredibly natural and has great rear rejection which heps combat reverberant spaces. In outdoor locations we have the new Rode NTG3 shotgun microphone.  This sounds identical to the Sennheisser MKH416, a long term industry workhorse.  Not only does this microphone provide great rejection of lateral sound (great for noisy locations where distant traffic is an obstacle), this RF mic will also work under the harshest conditions in low temperatures and high humidity.  When there is no way to get in a cabled microphone, we can also provide new Audio Technica wirelees mics.  There are two available which can also be used  connect a mixer to your camera.  There are also a range of microphones for other applications such as Rode NT1 (for voice over or music application), NT3 (voice or foley recording), Shure SM57 (music, voice and loud effects recording such as gunfire), contact mics, telephone pick ups and plenty more.

There is an SQN 4S series IV location mixer that can mix up to 4 tracks of audio into 2 channels that can be recorded into camera or any other device.  SQN’s are highly reliable and have been used for film and broadcast for over 20 years.  We can also record remotely onto 2 Zoom SD recorders or to hard drive through a Laptop.

We also provide facilities for post production with a choice of several small facilities operating Pro Tools Le, Logic Pro, Soundtrack Pro and Final Cut which are cost effective and can work remotely.  For larger productions we can provide high broadcast grade facilities at Borough Studios right near london bridge which houses 2 Pro Tools HD recording studios.

For rates and more information conact chris@sound-spot.co.uk

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After having this little telephone pick up sitting in my kit for a long time, it finally came in use for some unorthodox ADR recording.  After that i thought I may aswell take it out in the field and see what I could pick up.

I had played with it before in my uni days picking up all sorts of powered objects like hard drives and what not but never really left the flat with.  I wondered what London would sound like through this little gadget so I recorded my journeys through the city.   As soon as I pressed record I noticed lots of weird tones coming out of nearly everything on the street.  However things really got interesting when I got onto a bus and the magnetic tones matched the buses engines exactly.

Here’s a snippet of what I picked up that day

Chris Box – Bus 1

This includes 5 minutes on the street with street lights, shops and passing buses all influening the soundtrack, then 5 minutes onwards the interior of a bus takes over.

Next I’m going to experiment with mixing these magnetic sounds with some bin-aural mics and see how they influence each other

Really nice to hear these mics back to back so we can really notice the difference.

Scene 22. EXT. ROOF OF TALL BUILDING – VERY EARLY MORNING

VASSILY and PETRA emerge onto the roof. A shot of the city
from high up.
The SOUND LEVELS show a bang of the roof exit door slamming
closed, then complete silence.
VASSILY and PETRA record the SOUND OF SILENCE.
Sunrise over the city.

The extract above is taken from a script of a short film currently in post production at SoundSpot; Vassily and Petra. It poses a key sound design scenario which revolves around the concept of silence.

Some brief research has shed light on this topic bringing up aspects of 1-technology, 2-dynamic balance and 3-the use of silence as a design tool.

1- TECHNOLOGICAL advances in film sound have resulted in soundtracks which can exploit a wider range of frequencies whilst reducing the unwanted noise and hiss. As magnetic tape has disappeared and Dolby becomes a universal standard meaning sound designers and mixers can focus more on these low level sounds which previously were masked by artifact/tape noise. This brings us closer to a mute canvas which can be built upon, whether it be a delicate sound or a high impact collision filling the entire screen.

2- With this bigger range of sound comes DYNAMIC BALANCE which can be assessed within a scene of a film or ultimately an entire soundtrack. Just as photography is composed of the lights and darks to create balance and beauty so is a soundtrack; utilising peaks and troughs in sound levels. The emphasis for this balance is more of an issue for the mix which works in unison with the films narrative in order to tell a story and keep audience interest.

3- SILENCE AS A DESIGN TOOL. Not to be taken literally but used to reflect the idea that stripping down a soundtrack at times is just important as making it dense and sonically rich. This comes with time, understanding cinema and design intuition.

…Finally a word from the master.

Michel Chion. The Silence of the Loudspeakers, or Why With Dolby sound it is the Film That Listens to Us

“Everything today tends on the contrary to separate the sounds from one another: their dispersion across several tracks, their precision, the differences in contrast and the gulfs of silence between them, etc. We live in a world in which rhythms overlay one another without blending, in the same way that music heard on a car stereo is superimposed on the rhythms of the passing world but does not become confounded with it.”

http://aspectratio.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/from-here-on-in-absolute-silence/

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VoKROBFWuvoC&pg=PA51&dq=silence+cinema&lr=#v=onepage&q=silence%20cinema&f=false

http://www.frameworkonline.com/Issue40/40ls.htm

http://www.theauteurs.com/topics/2637/comments?page=1#comment_67481

After working for some time now as a location recordist, I am finding it more and more important to secure enough of my own equipment so as to avoid rental houses for smaller jobs.

This is partly for my own and clients convience, and partly due to the constant pressures of, let say, frugal sound budgets (the pinicle of this is being asked to provide 5 radio mics, boom, mixer and recorder including rates for the grand sum of £100).

Anyway, I am now pretty muh all the broadcast grade gear I need short of a set of radio mics.

Despite the fact that (as I’m sure many recordists would agree) I loath using them, there a valuable asset for the corporate, eng and documentary work that I do, so i resigned to spending the money.

However there is one huge problem with this which I am yet to find a solution.  This is the inevitable switch over from Ch69.

JFMG

Moving into Channel 38

So as I desperately try to build an inventory of equipment, what is there available to buy that will outlast the next 2 years.

So far I can see plenty of gear operating in the 800 spectrum right slap bang in ch69.  I cannot afford to spend upwards of a £1000 for gear that will only live for two years until serious adjustments need to be made which may cost the same again.

Beat Electric have posted a massive archive of soul 45s I’ve not sifted through them yet but I’m damn sure i’m going to

Have a Look

Ok so it may be a slow afternoon at the studio but I did manage to make some use of the downtime I suppose.  Here’s a little treat I’m sure I’ll play out at gigs

Big Youth vs MOP – Daddy Ante

Daddy Ante - Boco

After further reading of ‘Film a Sound Art‘, Chion mentions something that resonates with all of my previous experience in sound design, that of subjectivity.

He argues that the sound film has ’succeeded in creating codes to translate physiological subjectivity but not psychological subjectivity.’

By this he means that when the soundtrack shifts from it’s the objective to the subjective, this is almost always to signify the physical ills of a character.  Think of every time a character is poisoned and the dialogue echos and or filters of into obscurity as the character drifts out of consciousness. Chion himself uses two examples to illustrate this point, these being: the diabetic sequences in the ‘Panic Room‘ and the poisoning of Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock’s ‘Notorious‘.

Panic Room 4:00

This focus on the physiological still seems to me to be hanging on to aural objectivity, an attempt to objectify the sensation of ones illness.   Although there may be no clear intent to portray psychological subjectivity in cinema, there does however seem to be many intelligent and creative ways of suggesting the psychological through the physiological.  For example, during the beach landings of ‘Saving Private Ryan‘, ‘Capt. John Miller’ (Tom Hanks) is overcome with shell-shock. Although this seems a straight forward interpretation of the physiological, distancing of the sound and screaming of the shells also signifies Miller’s confusion, panic and mental paralysis, which suggests the psychological.