Tom Berge on the Summer School sound workshop
Dave Hamill, who works both in composing music and as a sound operator on a film set, took this workshop. Carrying heavy boxes and cases of equipment, we opened the session by answering questions to get an idea of our existing knowledge of sound. It turned out that we all had very similar views and opinions on what makes a good sound and the importance of sound in a film to create mood and to evoke emotion. Having handed the papers back, we learnt about different microphones and what they look like graphically. Dave, the mentor on our film set, talked about his own experiences in working on Casualty on how he became a part of the industry. It seems that to enter into this area of work, there is a lot of word and mouth and all you can do is to impress other people with your skills as a trainee. After a thorough discussion, we then moved onto boom operating. I later discovered that there is more to booming than just lifted a pole in air, the sound quality is highly dependent on the sound mixing. To get an idea of booming, we set up the camera and we took turns in holding the boom and sound mixing. We established the difference between good sound, audio without distortion, and bad sound, with hissing and buzzing. It was brilliant! We made use of the entire space in the church, simulating a real set, using a boom and radio microphones, small devices that allow you to record sound from a distance. The day went quite quickly – time flies when your having fun! On
Film Music Workshop
Thursday, Dave came again to give a film music session, where we listened to a large collection of music and described the emotions it evokes. Later, we got used to using a sound synthesizer with music software on the computer. On the last day, Friday, Huw, Bruno and I started on composing music for the finished film. For the titles at the start of the film, we used a bass guitar, a treble guitar, with an organ sound provided by the synthesizer. I think that we produced good tracks with the limited time that we had and the technical problems we encountered. I really enjoyed the two weeks, it was a shame that they came to an end so quickly. Our film looks great!
