Picking up A Good One: Of Pidgeon Droppings, Lighting Issues, and ADR
The new academic year has finally started and I am already excited to see and learn new things. On the agenda for this academic year will be filming with 16mm and Arri/Bolex cameras, getting to know the BlackMagic (finally!), submitting a 30-second advert for the Nahemi Kodak Awards, Live Project 2, and – as I am certain – many more things.
But before we will be starting to do all this, we will have to improve another project that we left at the end of our last academic year: A Good One!
As you know from my previous blog entries, we’ve filmed and finished the rough cut of A Good One right at the end but were not really happy with the outcome of some of the footage and especially the sound of it all. So my crew, together with our lecturer, decided that we would try to improve the film and attempt to hand it in as for the RTS Awards.
And while our crew was eager at the prospect of getting a RTS nomination, we set about to reschedule the film shoot, book out equipment, prepare for ADR, call the actors back in and give that piece of film a good polish. That attempt failed gloriously and repeatedly within the timeframe of roughly a month that we were given.
For the first, since it was the end of the academic year, our university’s End of the Year-Show was being prepared and students as well as graduates were leaving, we had to work around many busy schedules to be able to
1) find a mutual timeframe for cast and crew of about three days to film and ADR
2) have the relevant camera and lighting equipment available at those dates
3) have all the original crew members on board or alternatively find a replacement
4) get access to the set and sound stage in which we have shot hitherto, and
5) have the studio and relevant equipment reserved for ADR.
Solving this task of matching up all the tasks and schedules turned out to be a Gordian Knot in and of itself. Whenever we had gathered relevant information and planned ahead, it turned out that we were always lacking one crucial element. For once, it was actors’ availability that really limited us down to a maximum of three days within the month. After that, we lacked proper access to the sound stage and studio because people were using it in preparation for the End of the Year-Show. The same happened in regard to the equipment. We then lacked our producer as she was undergoing an operation and, naturally, could not be with us on site. We scheduled and rescheduled several times, always to no avail as it seemed.
In the end and within the last week of our own set timeframe, we managed to push around our schedules in one last attempt and it finally seemed to properly fit with all. So we booked out our equipment, studio and soundstage, as well as editing time, called in the actors and prepared ourselves mentally to get this project done. We were ready as ready can be… until, on the day of the shoot, we learned that a double-booking of the equipment and studio had occurred and we did not have access to half of our equipment. We had to cancel the shoot last minute but promised our actors to call them back in after the summer break, when university was a lot more steady and settled.
And this is why I am writing today. Already on our first day last week, we checked out who was still in on the project, what the set was looking like, whether all the relevant equipment was returned and in good shape, whether our actors would still be in on it, etc. We had Hannah and Adam cover as our sound op and editor, and started preparing again.
Since the set and the sound stage was largely unoccupied within the last three months, it was sadly in a bad shape. The bridge and especially one part of it was so badly soiled down by heaps and heaps of caked pidgeon droppings, that we had to clean it first in order for us and our cast to savely film in there. Which meant that Has, Hannah, Chloe, Adam and me met up on Monday, protected by cleaning overalls, gloves and cleaning masks, and started cleaning the set for two hours until it was usable again.
The plan next was to take out the equipment on Tuesday and set up all the required lighting as well as the track and dolly for our shoot on Wednesday. And while that seemed like a reasonable plan, come Tuesday, we only encountered one problem after another.
For the first, we learned that we could not get out all of the extension leads that I had booked out as students from Production Design unknown to us had apparently taken them out but not returned them. So instead of having three extension cables with 25m, 40m, and 50m, we only had one with 25m and another with 5m to work with. Secondly, when we arrived at the sound stage, I realised that the power circuits available to us did not lead any power anymore. I checked all of them, but out of the four available circuits, only one was actually still carrying power, one which was more than 30m away from our actual lighting position. Which brought us to a mathematical as well as a health and safety issue: By health and safety standards, we are not allowed to
1) chain two extension leads together and to
2) plug equipment with a higher demand than 2KW into one circuit.
Since we only had one circuit of 2KW but were needing close to 3KW, this was already changing our game drastically. Trying to find a proper solution, I double-checked all our circuits in close proximity, but any way you look at it, we were lacking both functioning power circuits and extension cables. Not being ready to give up just yet, I decided to check whether we could recreate that background lighting in another way, by bouncing the light from a Kino Flo off of a Polyfoam, thereby spreading it out more. But when I – by way of trial – plugged in the first Kino Flo to the functioning circuit and set it to the same settings we had earlier in spring, it did not emanate nearly enough light to make it work. The neon tubes seemed to have lost a lot of their luminosity over the summer.
I double-checked the settings again and then decided to check whether our second Kino Flo in case I was confusing them both. But when I plugged in the second Kino Flo and turned it on to check on it, it flickered for a moment and then turned off completely. This happened again the second time I plugged it in and even though the neon tubes flickered again, they would not stay turned on. I then proceeded to check the button-dial at the back, thinking that it maybe was faulty or dodgy in some way. That’s when I learned that the button-dial was entirely missing and no one could actually set anything on that device anymore.
Since this now required work of a technician or certified electrician and I am neither of these, we collectively brought the Kino Flo back just to hear what we already expected: That the light had to be repaired and would not be ready in time for the shoot the next day. As we were now lacking power sources, extension leads AND necessary lights, it was obvious that we would not be able to recreate the lighting continuity-wise. We already needed all the lights we had at our disposal to match it up with our footage and we could not even safely power these on top of all that…
When we then learned from the actors that one of them had lost a stone in weight and changed his hair cut and the other one was still tan from the summer but put on a stone, we knew that filming them would not improve upon the film at all as continuity would be a mess. Also, we were told by one of the actors that he would only manage to come in for one session of a maximum of four hours, so it was clear as day then that we were not able to film AND do ADR at the same time, even if we managed to reschedule and repair the electrical issues in the meantime.
Collectively, we decided then and there, that if we wanted to improve upon the film, we would need to focus on sound and ADR, as this was the most problematic issue we had with our film. Regarding the issues with the footage we want to see whether our new editor Adam would be able to fix the issues by editing it in a different way than originally planned.
We packed our equipment, returned to the stores what we did not need for the ADR and Hannah sorted out the room that we would use for recording ADR on Wednesday since the actual film studio is currently under construction and thus not available to us. We thought we had everything sorted out.
When I woke up this morning, I was greeted by messages on whether I would be able to come in and help with the ADR session since both Chloe and Hannah felt sick and could not make it through the day. I quickly gathered my things and popped down to uni, helping to set up the AVC camera that we used as a recording device and fetching the actors as well as having them sign in at reception.
Once we were settled, we watched the entire film again as an aid to memory for our actors. After that, we set about doing ADR by going through the dialogue one page at a time. Adam guided both actors through the process since they themselves never did ADR and Has gave directions whenever our actors got stuck on a line or its delivery. I filmed both actors lip-syncing their lines for the entire duration of the session to
1) record the actual sound of them since the mic was fed into the camera as a recording device and
2) have a lip-sync reference for our editor Adam, who would need to match up the sound recordings with the actual footage.
After 2,5 hours, close to 70 sound clips of good quality and several retakes/repetitions, we managed to capture all the dialogue that we required from our actors and were able to send both home with a good feeling.
Now, the only thing left to do is editing. For this will be the decisive moment to see whether our efforts to improve the film actually bore fruits. But even if things should not work out as intended, I will be content with the end result, for I learned a lot along the way, especially since it is rather unusual to revisit a project and try a new take on it instead of just moving on with another one. Reworking this project meant that I was confronted with what I created earlier, seeing past mistakes and learning how to avoid them in the future. It meant that I learned not only how to ADR in an efficient manner, but also how to effectfully improve footage just with cleaner sound.
I am looking forward to the end result. And especially to Adam’s take in the edit suite.