Thursday 1st December
Benchmarking
When working on the dialogue edit, I needed a professional benchmark to compare my work to, and aim for it to sound similar. The film I chose was Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007), starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo among others.
The particular scene occurs inside a basement, as was ours when originally planned, with the action following two characters conversing. I found the scene on YouTube and will embed it below.
I chose this scene for my benchmark because the reverb on the dialogue sounds excellent. The reverb illustrates the space of the basement, as well as the emptiness and hard-surfaced nature of the walls and structures, giving it a cold, tense atmosphere. I aim on creating a reverb which is somewhat similar, while portraying a smaller room (as Cognition is set in an attic), but with equal technique to illustrate the size and space in the room.
One of the dialogue editors for this film is Malcolm Fife, who has won two Golden Reel Awards. One for Best Sound Editing – Dialogue and ADR in a Feature Film for The Social Network (2010), which was also directed by David Fincher. The other for Best Sound Editing – Sound Effects, Foley, Dialogue and ADR in an Animation Feature Film for Inside Out (Pete Doctor and Ronnie Del Carmen, 2015).
The scene starts at 1.10 during the clip below:
I had originally planned to use Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) as my benchmark, as there as several scenes in the basement of the bar where Fight Club takes place. These scenes offer outstanding dialogue reverb, most notably during Tyler Durden (Brad Pitts)’s speeches. This is perhaps what I would have used if we would have filmed in a basement, as the space would be larger and give me the ability to replicate this through creative reverb. Interestingly enough, Malcolm Fife also worked on this film, and was nominated for Best Sound Editing – Effects and Foley for Fight Club.
Reference List
Fincher, D. (dir.) (1999) Fight Club. [film] London: 20th Century Fox.
Fincher, D. (dir.) (2007) Zodiac. [film] London: Warner Bros.
TBSmedia (2015) Zodiac Analysis – Inside the Basement. [online] Availabe from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af78yVw_O9c. [Accessed 13 Dec 2016].
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