October 2017 – Anson Audio Projects

Luke Pickering

Anson Williams / October 31, 2017October 31, 2017 / Guest Lectures

This weeks talk was with Luke Pickering an assistant engineer at The Church Studios, London. A lot of what he said was about being in the right place at the right time but you have to put yourself in that situation for that to happen and not just hope to get lucky. He applied for work experience placements through a company called Miloco, they work with studios around the world to fill job positions and provide work experience. Luke said was to stop thinking of any audio industry as anything other than a service industry. Almost always a job in audio will be working for a client and catering to their needs and making sure they’re happy. They are trusting you with their money and so they expect a certain level of professional service. Luke said to always keep busy, whether that’s just cleaning up or making someone a cup of tea when they need it make sure you’re always doing something to help as employers will notice your attention to detail and how well you work with other people. Finally Luke really pushed that if you’re given am opportunity do everything you can to make it happen. Whether that means sleeping on someones floor or making a sacrifice in your personal life because you don’t know if you’ll ever be given another opportunity as good as the one that you’re given.

Tutorial 5: 27/10/17

Anson Williams / October 27, 2017December 14, 2017 / Tutorials

Carrying on from what we talked about last week in this weeks tutorial we discussed what I am actually doing for Stonethrow and what they needed in terms of music. David told me I had to meet with them and have a spotting session and to update my aims and objectives to reflect what I’m going to be doing for them. I’ve also got to get a document with what they want, with examples of music, descriptions of where and how the music will be used.

Tutorial 4: 20/10/17

Anson Williams / October 20, 2017October 24, 2017 / Tutorials

After meeting with my group I found out that they want both diagetic and non diagetic pieces for their film. The non diagetic pieces will be used as atmosphere and to build suspense while the diagetic pieces will be used in the film to relax the character. The diagetic piece they want to be in a style of somewhere between 50’s and 70’s which is a huge time frame but they’ve yet to narrow down what they want. For the drone pieces I discussed with David about how I would like to incorporate elements of the narrative and the characters thoughts, almost blurring the lines between score and first person sound. I also talked about the possibility of including a reoccurring melody to signify a happiness, David suggested I watch some films John Williams scored to get an idea of what, how, where and why a leit motif is used. David also gave me a Radio 4 segment by Debbie Wiseman talking about music in film and how it’s used to listen to in addition to recommending I watch the BBC4 series Sound of Cinema. For next week I’ll have a clear list of what my client wants from me in my pieces.

Research 2

Anson Williams / October 16, 2017October 31, 2017 / Research

After Jez’s talk I went straight down to Maplins and bought all of the bits and pieces I needed to make a contact mic. I was eager to try and capture some sounds of my own like his work. This practice will be extremely helpful when I’m creating pieces for my clients film. They want something ambient and droning and ominous sounding and I feel like making these recordings will be a good way to start. I made the contact mic but it wasn’t very good, I’m not exactly a soldering iron master so I think I might have soldered something wrong but I was still getting a very low signal so maybe I just need to improve the contacts. Because I’m not really getting what I wanted I’m going to have to get a mic from media loans and try working with that.

Jez riley French

Anson Williams / October 16, 2017October 31, 2017 / Guest Lectures

Had a great talk from Jez, a sound recordist and sound artist he came in to talk about his work and how he got started with his recordings. He does a lot of his work with contact and hydrophonic microphones. Although he has been at it for a long time he said that he still has no idea what sounds he’s going to get and that wind, temperature and time of day all affect the sounds he will capture. One thing that I really found useful was how long I should record for, usually on locations I will record for around a minute for wildtracks but for his recordings he was suggesting recording around 20-30 minutes at least. One, because any animals that were in the area being recorded are going to be disturbed by the mics and need to be given time to settle. And two because for the first few minutes our ears won’t really pick up these sounds when they’re being played back but once they are noticed it’s easy for us to heard patterns so looping them won’t be as natural and enjoyable. My favourite thing about the talk was his DIY approach, I’m all about winging it and hoping for the best. Since the talk I’ve gone out and bought my own bits and bobs to make a contact mic, it doesn’t work yet but I’m going to give it another bash and try some recordings with it. The first real sound I’m planning on recording is the sound of the springs inside my guitar.