Wednesday 2nd November
Location Sound work at The Kinema in the Woods
Last week, MA student Ed Kirk contacted me with some location sound and post-production experience. This included a short documentary he is working on which is taking place at The Kinema in the Woods. His documentary is being used both for his hand in and also as a promotional tool for the Kinema. Ed checked out the Kinema’s online presence and believed there was a good opportunity to improve this, whilst also creating something for his course.
We turned up at 8am, when Ed had arranged to meet the General Manager, a Front of House worker, and hopefully the Organist, who he had called and said he would make it if he could. The equipment I took was a Sound Devices 633 Field Recorder, Sennheiser MKH416 Rifle Mic, Sennheiser Radio Mic available from media loans and Zoom H4N recorder. While Ed and Kieran Hill (CLM student) were setting the equipment up, I ventured into the woods next to the venue to record some wild track.
Unfortunately, the Kinema is situated beneath a main air traffic route, as aeroplanes were flying in both directions constantly, creating a continual noise on the wild track. This meant that no wild track could be used for the opening shots. However, this wasn’t a worry of mine as I knew I could provide atmospheres and SFX from the SFX library at the University.
Next, we moved inside to conduct the interviews. After switching off the several heaters which were warming the venue and the speakers which were creating a hiss, the ambience of Kinema 1, the first screen, was nice and warm. I boomed and used the radio mics simultaneously for all three interviews, thinking that I would be using the radio mics for back-up. Due to the camera and lights set-up, I was able to get in close when booming.
Fortunately, during mid-morning the organist arrived and was happy to demonstrate the Compton Kinestra organ which has been installed at the Kinema. This means that during screenings, the Kinema pause the film for an intermission for the audience to grab snacks or go to the toilet, meanwhile Alan pops up from beneath the stage on his organ to entertain the crowd. While Alan was demonstrating his craft, I used the Zoom to record the music. However, when looking back at the files I found that the combination of the organ, speakers, and my own position, meant there was hiss on the track as well as the sound of Alan playing the actual keys on the organ. After this, while Ed and Kieran were capturing B-roll, I was left alone in the Kinema to record some wild track.
Overall, I was happy with how the day went. The outside wild track was unusable but that didn’t matter so much as I could use sounds from the SFX library. I believed that the interviews were recorded well on both the boom and radio mics. However, when checking the files after I arrived home, the levels were quite low, even though the gain was set about halfway on the Sound Devices, and I was booming from very close up. Again, I didn’t think this would be too much of a problem, as the signal to noise ratio was low, so increasing the level of the dialogue shouldn’t affecting the increase of the background noise too much. This also gave me an opportunity to sharpen my skills with RX, which is on the next blog post concerning the post-production of the documentary.
If you want to see a short clip of the organist at the Kinema, follow this link!
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