In this masterclass, Jack Shelbourne showed us some of the equipment that the media students are able to book out, spoke about the role of a boom op/sound recordist on location, and also told us a little about his working relationship with sound recordists. He has worked extensively with Paul Fairey, a freelance sound recordist that Jack praises for his work ethic and professionalism on location. When on set, Jack and Paul work exceptionally well together, as Jack understands the importance sound has in film. The rivalry that can occur between visual and audio teams only hinders progress; we should instead aim to befriend camera operators and aim to work closely with them. If a shot doesn’t work because of boom shadow, and other ways of recording the scene would provide inferior audio, would it not be better to change the shot slightly to accommodate the sound recordists wishes? I fully support this idea, and the us-versus-them mentality is a useless, unhelpful thing that should no longer be a part of filmmaking.

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During the first semester Sam, Rob and I were contacted by David on behalf of Matt North, an Audio Production graduate who wanted some assistance with recording some foley and also sourcing ambiences for a film he was mixing call Callback. We wholeheartedly agreed, and Matt sent us the video file, suggesting that we work through chronologically and sent him OMF files at various stages, essentially like working on reels when working with physical film.

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I attended the TV Studio Masterclass today, along with a few others from the Audio Production course. To begin with we went upstairs to the control room, where we were shown the monitoring screens, which had feeds from all the studios cameras, and also had a computer that allowed decals and images to be overlaid onto the camera footage. All the footage is captured and recorded onto hard drive, with a backup saved onto a separate drive in case the standard drive has issues and footage is lost. This footage is also uploaded to a server for extra safety. The mixing desk was in the same location as the recorders, which were mounted in racks. We are afforded a surprising amount of headroom, as 0dB is actually -18dB, so we should be aiming for amber with most dialogue, and are able to dip into the red occasionally if necessary. Interestingly enough, the audio has to be delayed slightly, as the video signal sent from the studio arrives more slowly, so a delay has to be used to keep audio and video in sync. We were also shown the radio mic rack, which shows when mics are in use, and also when their batteries are running low, as well as the patch bay.

We then went into the studio itself, which had a load of cameras, several with an autocue rigged up, allowing actors to read scripts without taking their eyes of the camera. We had a look at the old system for taking sound in which consisted of plugging into the interface (phantom power controls were at the back, oddly enough), and sending that to a tie-line where it will be sent to the mixing desk, where it will be mixed before being recorded. The new system worked in a similar way, but the new Focusrite interface had phantom power controls at the front, and essentially amalgamated most of the equipment it was replacing into one box. It also had a USB connector, allowing for local recording directly from the interface, as well as sending it to the mixing desk.

It all seemed rather complex, but I can see the benefits of being confident with a multi-cam setup, so I’ll need to do some research into how the system works in greater detail, and perhaps I’ll look into exploring multi-cam projects in my Semester B Audio Project.