My First Foley Experience

This past Saturday, I took out the intermediate audio production studio (Park 143) for a couple hours to just mess around and practice doing some foley work. I had it all planned out, my files were ready to go on my external hard drive, and I brought snacks (of course).

Things started out totally normal: I went to master and got them to unlock the room, put my stuff down, and then headed over to PPECs to pick up equipment that I reserved. I had reserved one ME-66 Rycote shotgun microphone, and the rest of my order would be non-reservables. Pretty soon I realized that the mic I reserved would not connect to the mic stand, nor would I be able to remove the dead cat. Fine, I'll take out a different one. Turns out, I'm not authorized to take out many microphones. I ended up with a ME-66 K-Tek shotgun mic, which also would not connect to a mic stand. Instead of the stand, I got a boom pole, mic boom cradle, attached that to a grip head and then attached the grip head to a C-stand. It was a very awkward setup and it looked like this.

Not as low to the ground as I wanted it to be.

The whole thing took about 25 minutes because for whatever reason, the computer I was being checked out on stopped working. Obviously, it wasn't anyone's fault at PPECs, but it was still frustrating since I lost all that time.

Once I got all my equipment set up and plugged in to the right inputs, I was ready to solve the next series of problems. For whatever reason, the computer in 143 would not recognized my external hard drive. This was an issue because the file of the video I wanted to use was on it, so I ran to master control to get help. We couldn't fix that problem, but the computer would read one of my thumb drives, so I transferred the file from the external to the thumb drive and then I was good to go.

Nope. Not yet. I thought I had everything set up and ready but whenever I would hit record on any track that wasn't the first one, no waveform would display in the recording, which meant it was not recording any sound at all. I asked for help again and figured out that there was a setting turned on in Pro Tools that makes it so that every time you add a track, it automatically chooses the next input for you. So the first track would record from input one--that's where the mic was plugged in; since I only had one mic, track two would automatically try to record from a second input that didn't exist. Once we identified the problem, it was easy to go in and switch the input to mic one for every track.

After working out all the kinks I could finally begin. And let me tell you, foley is 100% at least a two man (or woman) job. I probably looked like an idiot to all the families walking around Park peeking through the window to 143 as I hit record and ran from the control room into the studio to record a couple times and then ran back again. But I don't really care.

This is the video I attempted to foley. It's a short animation of a guy getting up to dance to Pharrell's song "Happy."

My foleyed edit is by no means perfect. I know that there are sounds I missed or left out and that's because I had a limited amount of time in the room and because I only sort of knew what I was doing. Here's my edit. You will definitely have to turn up the sound and put on headphones to hear what I foleyed. (If it looks like its lagging a tiny bit, it's because I've uploaded the video directly into Blogger).

Overall I'd say this foley experience was a positive one. Now I know what sort of problems I will probably and definitely run into when I do post sound for our project for class as well as foley for the senior thesis film Scout's Honor.

Here's another edit just for you, Internet.

Things PPECS should invest in

Being a employee and customer at PPECS there are a couple of things that I believe PPECS should take a look into getting sometime in the near future. One of the things I think PPECS should get is drone. No not one of the drones that Obama has been using to blow up the middle-east, I mean one of the drones capable of shooting video and taking pictures from high altitudes.

According to Quadrocopter.com these drones come in at a mere $1159.00 (which isn't a whole lot compared to some of the other stuff PPECS has). But the capabilities of the drone are definitely worth the price tag. This drone is capable of reaching distances anywhere from 1640 to 2296 feet into the air. In addition, the drone is attached with a camera capable of shooting in 1080p HD and taking stills with 14 megapixels.  And the best part is that the drone is capable of being controlled via your smartphone. That'll be a huge favorite feature for our tech savvy generation.  

Think of the possibilities a drone could bring to Ithaca College! Student film projects would be able to include beautiful, dare I say even gorges, aerial footage of Ithaca. The drone could even be used to help improve the football team, providing a new perspective to review footage for practice. UCLA's nationally ranked football team uses the drone to help in practice. (UCLA using a drone to help in practice) . 

If you aren't convinced yet about getting a drone, check out this video of a drone flying over the city of Nashville's 4th of July fireworks display. 

Book Lighting

Book lighting refers to a technique of manipulating light to create a nice, soft, bounce light.

Position your light at a 45 degree angle to a bounce source so that your subject is lit primarily from the bounce. Add a layer of diffusion in between your subject and the bounce. The farther your diffusion is from the bounce, the softer the light will be on the subject, and likewise, the closer your diffusion is to the bounce source, the harder the light will be (but it will still be a soft light). This makes the bounce the primary source of light, with no light from the actual fixture reaching your subject.

This technique can be achieved very easily with equipment accessible to all of us. 

Use a powerful light (1K or 2K both available from PPECS) and then as the bounce source either use a reflector, bounce card, or muslin (available at any fabric store), and then diffuse it through a diffusion gel (cheap online, or ask around, I'm sure someone you know has one you could borrow). Good luck!

How to complete a proper equipment checkout

We all for sure will be working with equipment this semester, whether is is checking it out from PPECS, on set, or something else, knowing that the equipment is functioning properly and will continue to function properly is a must.

The first step to ensuring that your equipment won't fail out on you is when you're checking it out. You need to check and set up EVERY piece of equipment you are checking out. This doesn't mean just setting up the camera and turning it on. It means checking every filter and making sure they're all clean and not broken, as well as setting up and fully extending every level on each C-Stand and so on for every piece of equipment.

While this seems like an extremely tedious process, especially when the technicians at PPECS tell you that all the equipment is working properly, mistakes have been made, and they will be made again, and one little mistake may be the difference between getting the shot while still leaving the location by your hard out time. I work at PPECS, and we always check the equipment to the best of our abilities to ensure it will continue working, but sometimes we miss things, or equipment fails suddenly. Another set of eyes, specifically your  own eyes, will help make sure there is no faults.

Upon checkout you can always request an order form with the list of all the equipment you checked out with the specific numbers of each item, which I highly recommend. Give a copy to this list of each department head on your production so during any company moves you can make sure no equipment is left behind.

When checking out equipment to student productions I often notice it is only 1 or 2 people there for checkouts, and most often those are people in positions that won't be working closely with the equipment (director, producer). I strongly encourage productions to bring as many people as they can to PPECS upon time of checkout and checkin, not only to make the process go as fast as possible, but also to get more people to look at the equipment before it goes on set.

At PPECS we have counters lining all of the walls with outlets right on the counter tops. We encourage you to use this space to make checking all of your equipment easier. Checkout is a great time to become more familiar with the equipment you'll be using on set before you have to perform in a high stress environment. If you have any questions about how a piece of gear works or what its function is, I'm sure the counter workers will be more than happy to answer.

Here's a video from David Elkins, author of The Camera Assistant's Manual, on how to prep a camera package.




And always remember to have PPECS number in your phone in case anything goes wrong or you have any questions!

Here it is just in case: (607) 274-3636



*All views and opinions reflected in this blog post are my own and do not reflect the views and opinions of PPECS, it's employees, or any other members associated with PPECS or the Park School of Communications.*