The Sound Lounge

Last night we finished the sound mix. In some ways it feels like a bigger milestone than locking off the edit. Not sure why. Perhaps it's because even after the edit I still knew there was a long way to go with post, sound being the biggest of all the jobs. I've been obsessed with the sound and music for the film for the past 8 or 9 weeks. Literally. Every moment of my day and night, including many weird dreams and nightmares have been caught up in the sound of the film in one way or another.

And even though I'm feeling a little unsure of what to do with myself now that the mix is set in stone and I cant do anything else to it, I ultimately feel really good about it.

Craig Conway and Paul Shannohan did the initial sound edit at their very sexy new studio Final Sound in Melbourne, and Craig took on the overall sound design as well. I think they worked seven days a week for over a month sourcing, creating and editing 1000's of individual pieces of sound for the film.

John Simpson who co-incidentally lives in Quorn S.A , where a chunk of the film was shot, took on the foley. Check out his cool studio literally in the middle of nowhere.

And as discussed previously Paul Charlier composed the music in Sydney.

We all met up with Gethen Creagh in Adeliade at the South Australian Film Corp mixing theatre and mixed away for 3 intense weeks. I say intense even though most of it for me anyway was spent sitting on a couch drinking gallons of green tea, while others beavered away, pushing buttons and tweaking knobs. But it is an intense experience none the less. I love sound, I think I love it more than image. And I definatley feel more confident talking and discussing sound than I do pictures.

If the films pictures was an apple I could describe to you what the apple looks like, whether it was green or red, or a mixture of both perhaps. How big and or round it is, if it had a stem, and how long that was and which way it bent etc. But if the films sound was an apple, I could think about and explain in obsessive detail not only the colour and shape, etc, but I could discuss the spots and blemishs on the skin, every ripple and dimple, what the stem looks like and how far it reaches inside the apple, how it would feel like in your hand and what it would taste like if you took a bite out of it. (Is that a really crazy analogy..? I think I'm losing it...)

I can just see and hear the detail in sound more easily than I can pictures. And I believe sound is a far more powerfully emotive element than a picture can ever be.

So it's intense in the way that every decision we made was a really important one to me. And for every tweak and modification we made, I wished we could have done 10 more, and then another 10 after that. I think in this part of the process, we didnt so much as finish the mix, but we abandond it when we absolutley ran out of time and could do no more. But as I have mentioned many times on this blog, time is not something you have much of when making a feature film of this size.

Anyway... I'm really happy with the result. And very proud of the talented and colaborative team I had around me.

Adrian Medhurst(Assistant Mixer) Gethen Creagh (mixer) Craig Conway (Sound Designer) Me (in need of a haircut and shave) Paul Charlier (composer) Missing from this picture - Jack Hutchings (editor) and Antonia Barnard (Producer behind the Lens) and also Nick Cole (producer) who graced us with his sage like wisdom and guidance for a couple of days as well.

Paul and I. And Craig obsessing over some minor EQ of his own in the background.

Just a few more weeks to go...