Here in all of its glorious 11 minutes and 46 seconds is Luke White’s short ‘Tide’

A beautiful short made at LCC last year. Here’s a short description taken from Luke’s website blackpaint.co.uk

“A boy and his father live a harsh existence against a desolate backdrop. Whilst the father is stranded, the boy’s physique allows him to pass through a small tunnel leading to a place very different from their own. He brings back footage to satisfy his fathers desire to re-live memories of when he too could make this journey. Tide is the story of a father’s obsession that will ultimately lose him the respect of his son, and in turn his companionship.”

TIDE from luke white on Vimeo.

I (Chris Box) was lucky enough to be involved, creating the sound design for this, recording foley, ADR and mixing it at Borough Studios here in London.  Since completion it has gone on to be screened at both the BFI and London Shorts Festival (and many more).

Hope I’ve included everyone in this list.

Father – Liam Thomas, Son – Luke Williams

Writer & Director – Luke White, Producer – Emilia Dobrogowska, Cinematographer – David Stafford-Clark, Production Designer – Jessica Bernard, Assistant Director – James Fisher, Associate Producer – Zuzana Markova, Costume Designers – Jessica Bernard & Ruth Wade, Make-Up Artists – Claire Belling & Jessica Bernard, Production Assistants – James Winterflood, Nicolas Crew & Anna Jurkoweicka, Focus Puller – James Stafford-Clark, Johanna Lietha, Jessica Greene, Alba Moronuiz & Jack Newman, Clapper Loader – Johanna Lietha, Holly Cleary & Alexandra Michaels, Sound Recordist – Chris Box & Chris Mcquillan , Gaffer & Grip – Paul Kemp, Sparks – Holley Cleary, Chris Brown & Ritvan Mislikovjan, Continuity – Analisa Tremolada & Anna Meller, Set Construction – Fred Mercer, Mirela O’Prey, Matt Hansell, Joe D’Ovidio, Yoku Ishida, Chaperone – Mark Bromley, Editor – Armen Antranikian, Sound Designer – Chris Box, Foley Recordist – Palani Bala

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

Just come across this little gem over at creativeapplications.net

“Berna is a software simulation of a late 1950s electroacoustic music studio. Oscillators, filters, modulators, tape recorders, mixers, are all packed in a easy-to-use interface with historical accuracy.

Explore serial, concrete and tape music or create strange new sonic worlds with instruments inspired by the greatest studios of the early days of electronic music.” Berna Website

I can’t wait to play around and create some serious retro si-fi stuff.

Head on over to Gleetchplug and get yourself a copy

Although ‘The Jazz Singer’ is widely referred to as the fore-bearer of the talkies, I have often read of a great many experiments in the field of synchronized sound in film.  Such examples date back decades before ‘The Jazz Singers’ 1927.

Here is Dickinson’s experiment with his and Edison’s Kinetophone which dates over 30 years earlier in 1895.  This is a film I have not seen for some time and it is interesting to take note of Edison’s huge cone microphone taking up much of the left of frame.

In the years leading up to ‘The Jazz Singer’ there seems to have a fair amount of competing systems that run in a variety of ways ranging from accompanying gramaphones, phonographs and photographic methods, however Gaumont is a company that I have often read about but have still not seen any examples of (if you have some please post them, please)

Anyway I have been hunting down examples of sound film that predates ”The Jazz Singer’. I am particularly interested in this first example of Vitaphone which contains strictly the on screen human voice, something of which that mainstream avoided for quite some time.

Audio Post Production Showreel by Palani. Autumn 2009. Featuring works from University of The Arts London Alumni.

Palani Sound Post Showreel from Palani Bala on Vimeo.

Join El Club Cinema Commercial from Kasia Sobocinska on Vimeo.

Here it is up on Vimeo and in HD Join El Club Cinema Commercial / Skillset director: Victor Naveira writer : Joseph Kendle director of photography: Luis Posada camera operator: Kasia Sobocinska producer: Stephen Roberts production designer: James Morrall key art director: Jessica Hand editor : Adrian Thompson sound designers: Palani Bala, Chris Box

I’ve finally returned from another long but quiet weekend of at the studio, and sitting on the worktop is my well overdue copy of Chion’s ‘Film, a Sound Art’.

Like all others who’ve spent time studying film sound, Chion is someone who at first terrified me before developing a real understand of film and audio visual relationships.

Already I have noticed the considerable weight, twice as much as ‘Audio Vision’ and ‘The Voice of Cinema’ (don’t look down at me for using the English titles, I have no idea whre the ‘ for the e is).  Hopefully this means Chion will have a great deal of things to say and again my perception of film will change again.

I have only read through the preface at this time but I allready think I have a strong Idea of where Chion is going.

From the very outset Chion has layed a blueprint for thought. He reiterrates the idea that image and sound are not exclusive elements “The fact that there is no soundtrack means you cannot study a film’s sound independantly of the image-nor, consequently, can you do the contrary: you cannot study a film’s ‘image’ by itself.” (however I’m sure there is a plethora of cinematographers out there that will argue differently). However the shining light so far is the suggestion that audiovisual relationships, together, can mean so much more than these two senses.

“Cinema must be considered as an art of the simulacrum: an art in which sounds and images do not only seek to translate the strictly audiovisual world but all sorts of sensations as well.  Hence the importance, in my work, of the notion of the rendered and the idea of the trans-sensory”

The fact that we realise that certain information can be percieved in many different ways (as with words, they can be percieved throught any number of ways, by titles or voice), only reinforces the idea that they cannot be thought of as seperate elements.