We had a short meeting on the 19th, mainly about the research we’d be doing. Hannah, the Producer, asked us to provide her with some research by Sunday 23rd, so instead of all giving her research on Location Sound, we focused on differnt sections. Rob has already done some work on Booming techniques, so will write that up and send it along, and Sam will look into some of Lauren’s notes on potential music to use. I’ll be doing some research on the microphones we’ll be using on the shoot, summarising their benefits and drawbacks, as well as providing a few other suggestions for each type. Aside from this, we spoke about the location, and concluded that it should only be used as a last resort. I go into further depth below.

The location is a basement in the Drill Hall, a theatre in Lincoln. While the basement is apparently perfect visually, and the Drill Hall also won’t charge the Media Students for their use of the space, Rob had several reservations about the quality of audio we would be able to record in it. The ceiling is very low, which wouldn’t allow us to boom overhead, so we’d need to scoop most scenes, and that would mean we’d lose a lot of the higher frequencies in actor’s speech.

Here you can see the low ceiling, which would make it far more difficult to boom when filming.

This is especially concerning when you consider that the main character is female, and as such will almost certainly have a voice with a higher register than a male. We would of course mic actors up with radio mics, but these are never as good as boomed dialogue, as they don’t capture the space as accurately. We would therefore need to spend a lot more time building a suitable atmosphere to mask the isolated dialogue from the radio mics. Also worrying is the fact that there is a road right by the space, and the wall separating the road has a hole in it, meaning there would be a fair bit of unwanted traffic noise on most, if not all, dialogue recorded at the location. Finally, and this is less of a sound issue and more of a time issue: the space is full of stuff that would need to be moved, or covered up.

The location is full of theatre supplies, which would need to be moved to create a convincing 1970’s basement.

The crew are only able to use the location for three days, split across October and November, from 10AM to 4PM. In that time we would need to move a lot of equipment out of the way, then dress the set (which in this case would require a lot of dressing), before we can set up to begin filming. And then we would have to to everything in reverse when leaving. Assuming an hour and a half to set up and break down, that gives us only 3 hours to film, which would be 2 and a half if you factor in a break for lunch as well. I feel like this isn’t enough time to properly shoot this film, as I don’t want to feel too rushed when working on Location, and this time pressure would definitely have a detrimental impact on the quality of our recorded sound. In conclusion, I suggest this room be held as a backup, and only be selected if absolutely necessary.