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In the 3rd “studio session” of this project, I’ve dedicated mainly to editing SFX. In this category, three main subgroups are edited separately but mixed all together. Those are:

• BACKGROUNDS/AMBIENCES (BG/AMB): sounds that build each scene’s location and consist entirely of elements, not scenes on screen. Some editors prefer to differentiate BGs from AMBs. The only thing that might differ is their visibility on camera.
• HARD FX (FX): realistic sounds that are driven by what’s on camera or action.
• SOUND DESIGN: elements that need to be created from scratch or a lot of processing to fulfil its function.

In this post, I’m mainly going to expose my ideas on backgrounds.

BACKGROUNDS

I am pretty happy with the result that I’ve got with ambiences so far. The production sound was good on certain occasions, but overall it sounded bland – no depth nor exciting elements that could enhance the story. For each sequence, there were different solutions. Here’s a list of all the locations relevant for this editorial:

Digital Processed Ambiences: At first, I considered using an actual recording of a handy camera in a forest near London. However, I remember that solving sound editorial issues is not always objective as it might look. For example, my first ever foley session was chaotic because I didn’t have enough knowledge to understand that some sounds aren’t reproduced only by their source. Furthermore, not all handy cameras have that retro feeling that the spectator is expecting. Cinema not always uses truth to be truthful. Cinema is a clever lie developed by professionals. Therefore, for all scenes with the handy camera, I used one of RC-20 presets (Retro Color 20 by XLN Audio) and applied it in the other food groups for those scenes only. 

Mountains: There were only two scenes with this shot. A big mountain can be seen with some low clouds. Some electrical interference damaged the production sound, so I had to recreate the ambience. Nonetheless, I didn’t particularly appreciate how it sounded concerning the film’s leitmotif. This scene is quite essential to establish a modality. I added wind sounds, made it more airtight, and gave it a little time location. Time is an interesting topic to debate about this film. There’s no perception of time throughout the whole short film.

Inside the Forest: Most of the actions where the characters interact are taken place inside the forest among tall pines. Some shots portray a confusing and labyrinthic forest which the production sound couldn’t express. I decided to recall my personal experiences whenever I was in a pine forest. They are quite common in Iberia, but they all differ in terms of the soundscape. One of the most characteristic sounds related to them is the wood creaking by the force of the wind. It reminds us of a woodpecker or something big moving. When we try to locate those sounds, we can’t trace what’s provoking them. Therefore, I decided to add them dispersed throughout all the scenes that became silent. It gave a different perspective towards the story and the action and helped engage the eerieness out of those sequences.

Outside the Forest: These scenes were crucial to separate the two worlds represented in the short film. Inside the forest seems like there’s something very obscure lurking in the shadows. Whereas outside of it, there is an entirely different world, full of rich sound elements that relocate the characters in a wild but yet familiar scenario such as the cow fields. When I showed my editorial to Harry Charlton, a course colleague, he was intrigued by the cowbell sounds that were “everywhere”. I didn’t realise how powerful that sound was in terms of geographical context. I did a little research on cowbells usage, and I came across something like a founding for me – the traditional usage of cowbells are almost exclusive of the Iberian Peninsula. Could it be confusing for other spectators? I think not. I think it’s part of its identity.

Even though it wasn’t requested to students to do dialogue editing to their projects, it would be complicated to deny that factor in my project. I recognize the time implications it takes in others to perform a good session of precise noise cleaning and room tone fluidity, however, this project is also a good way to practice and to make mistakes. Another mistake I took was selecting a film of 8 minutes to edit instead of 3-4 minutes. By the time that I’m writing this post, I already edited dialogues, and I’m organizing and spotting my backgrounds and hard effects. Nevertheless, and as I referred previously, learning is a process of irregular successes and failures, and again, today (18/11) I fell into another of my mistakes: I forgot to update my Pro Tools Ultimate subscription and now I have to wait 48 hours for AVID to accept my academic version request. I’ll use this time to write my process in the project so far and explain my intentions.

Last Tuesday I had a tutorial with Tim Harrison. He told him about all my ideas and discussed my projections for the whisper. We discussed the idea of making a non-humanized sound so it maintains its ambiguous and hermetic language. If I use recognisable sounds, the spectator will try to visualise its form and ways of being. The sound must be unrecognisable for us, but not the characters – because they are the only ones who know what to expect. I also told me about other examples of sound design that uses the opposite technique to trick the spectator. One of them was the bear scene on Annihilation by Robert Eggers – the film gives the spectator the information that one of the characters didn’t die through sound, but then it’s struck by the surreal alternative of a bear-like creature adopting the missing character’s voice. It expresses antagonistically the idea that I want to produce: I don’t have a plot twist nor a surprising sound that might trigger the viewer’s imagination. I want total confusion and no sense of understanding. However, the characters perfectly know what to expect. They are the only ones who know how it sounds and how it behaves and even if it has a form. They are the only ones who possess knowledge.

My way of editing dialogues, and other groups in general, starts with the premise “Story Drives Every Decision” and I keep asking myself throughout the editorial whether the decision helps or hurts the story. So, mostly, my decisions consider the plot and concept. After, preparing my session with all the tracks I needed, I started arranging the clips for continuity purposes. This short film doesn’t have many extra possibilities in case it lacks something specific. In this case, the film was recorded with only one boom, and even though it is very well recorded, some things must be overedited in order to reach a decent result, which is the case when some strange production sound steps dialogue. In that situation, my only option is to go through all takes and see which one is “cleaned”, but the problem of having only one boom means that for each take there’s only one recording – actors don’t do the exact same acting 5 times in a row unless they are really professional (the actors used were amateurs and non-actors because that’s the way the director likes to work). When there’s no way of fixing audio, my very very last option is Izotope Rx. This program doesn’t do miracles but one can take advantage in order to have decent results. If RX is not sufficient then there’s nothing else I could do (unless I had time to do ADR and money to pay tickets for the Ecuadorian actors fly all the way to London).

RX saved me from saving the story. The film atmosphere is “almost” dead, so I proceeded to delete all the bird and dog sounds existing in most of the scenes, even though there are cows in one of the shots (the film suffered many alterations due to post-production problems; many scenes were deleted as well as many ideas I had back in March when we were on pre-production). It took me at least 4 hours to arrange everything without accessing the studio at any of those times. I’m also reconsidering mixing the film in 5.1 for the assignment. I don’t see myself having the time to do everything I want for this film. I have to be more conscious of it in the future so I don’t have any surprises. Hopefully, backgrounds and effects will only need one session to edit.

This small excerpt is taken from Post Sound Design: The art and craft of audio post-production for the moving image by John Avarese explain really well the logistic problems that inherently come from different workflows and departments inside the post-production phase on a film. Ideally, sound editors want the AAF to be organized as well as for the sounds they select to edit their films. Many times Directors, Producers and Editors don’t take into consideration the hard work driven by the sound department. Sometimes, even sound recordists ignore the importance of making a clean and efficient session out of their job, hoping that any sort of issues might and will be solved in post-production. In the first lecture with Tim Harrisson, he noted down the importance of the relationship director-sound supervisor, and eventually crew-sound supervisor, quote:” You should start doing your sound libraries before production. By establishing a good relationship with the director, you will be able to participate in the pre-production process, alongside the rest of the crew. Later you will be able to hand in your sound library to the editor so they can start using your sounds instead of something that they find.

In Smells Like Sulfur, I’ve had the privilege to start working with the director, Mario A. Arias, a long time before pre-production in February 2021. He showed me the script; we talked about some ideas; made some decisions about some sound concepts we would like to produce. Because it was a small production, I didn’t have difficulties in talking with my other colleagues from other departments. We all knew each other, which made it easier, and my sound recordist, Sergio Argüeso, was very capable and knew what he was doing. We analyse the script together; I warned him about some very important scenes that he would have to make sure sound was recorded immaculately. The film was recorded in Madrid, and by that time I was in Porto, Portugal, with almost no way to be there for the production process and help Sergio with the recordings. He had to “improvise” and be creative as usual. Listening back to production sound I can proudly say that he managed to get a really good result out of the shooting. Nevertheless, the only problem I can point out occurred in pre-production: we started to do sound design for the feature too early. When the film was shot, and later went to post, the sounds we’ve made didn’t match intentionality or concept. I’ll have to redo the sound design for the whisper and a new approach.

For this assignment, I was asked to be consistent with my blog posts in order to report my process. It’s ironic because I’ve never documented my process before when it comes to sound post-production for film. I did take notes when I was in Film School, paying attention to my tutor’s sessions, shortcuts, ideas, workflow, learning as much as I could to be good at it. Now, I’m taking notes on my own process and reading them back looks like I’m writing down a tutorial. In a academic context, studying film can be overwhelming, and sometimes he can erase your passion for it – which was what happened to me. However, now that I’ve put myself again on the processes I was used to, I’ve got my passion for sound for film again, and consequently, cinema. I retrieved my need to express myself through sound and image.

Luckily, the AAF handed by the editor, Angela Delgado, was perfect, very well organized, and the sounds she used weren’t awful. I also opted to redo my Pro Tools templates for either 5.1 and Stereo. I pretended I was ignorant to the eyes of sound editing as a way to refine my ways in the process – I’m available again to learn more about sound for film and its language. I’m trying a new way of dialogue editing organization: separate the tracks for A and B so I can divide sequences and lately have a more organized session when I start mixing.