Liv Jones - Learning Blog

1 week to go until the Showcase Presentation and I'm still busy working on the Sound Design for different projects. This weekend I finished recording SFX and audio for the American Football Documentary, which will be useful for adding to my library of SFX.  Today I have finished the Foley for Peaky Blinders which is a huge relief, I had a meeting with Steve to review my progress on this project and he suggested that I needed to work on making the sounds more dramatic to fit the genre rather than making them sound natural (as I discussed in my last blog post). The final focus for this now is to work on the final sound mix, I intend to manipulate the volume of what the audience hears to emphasise the most important points in the action.  In the PPS Suite during the workshop we added some reverb to the horses walking down the street to create a sense of the enclosed street that we are in. This workshop was really helpful as I was able to hear on good quality speakers what m...

I have been back in the Foley Studio this week to finish up my Peaky Blinders scene for my presentation and for a short horror film that I have been working on, whilst I have been doing this I have come across some challenges with separating the instances when I want sounds to seem natural, and when I want to use them as a dramatic tool. In order to overcome theses challenges I have decided to do some research into creating atmosphere with Diegetic and Non-Diegetic sounds. Diegetic sound is sound which is derived from sources we see on screen e.g dialogue, footsteps, punches etc. When designing this in both the Peaky Blinders project and the horror, there was clear differences on how each would be utilised. For Peaky Blinders, the action part of this scene was challenging because I didn’t want things to seem too natural so just punching my hand didn't work. In the end I had to create the Foley of the man hitting the wall using a bag to give weight and a bass drum to make it mor...

This week has been so hands on - I am knackered but loving getting some practice in all areas! On Thursday I went into the Foley studio to work on Foley recording and SFX on ProTools with Quentin on the Snapchat Project - this is a horror that was shot in the woods so we bought in dried leaves to make the sound of walking on the forest floor. This project is really interesting for sound design because much like A Quiet Place, the main character is deaf. Trying to make the sound design scary whilst having almost no sound was really tricky but interesting as we attempted to make the lack of sound really uncomfortable for the viewer. The next shoot I had was on Friday, filming for the Bodyguard Trailer project. We were filming with the police and police vehicles so I got the opportunity to record car skidding sound effects and I got to practice using the boom whilst recording fast action. This shoot continued on Saturday where I spent most of the day recording with a rifle mic, but i...

Following our ProTools workshop this week I was keen to get into the Foley Studio and get in some more practice with using the software and equipment. Having decided that I am going to present a clip of Peaky Blinders in the showcase whereby I have completely redesigned the sound, I need to now get to grips with using ProTools software and gather my resources to be able to do this. This is the clip that I have decided to use (no audio): Peaky Blinders Series 1 Episode 2 I found in the Foley studio today that I was quite quickly able to grasp the workflow of ProTools and in a 2 hour session I have added most sound effects to the beginning sequence. I would like to revisit the Foley studio again to work more on this task and I plan to create Foley/SFX for two others projects in the coming weeks, so the more practice the better! I was also able to add some reverb onto a poor sounding police whistle in the second sequence which was very cool and I am making progress with my...

The sound design in Peaky Blinders is arguably one of the most crucial elements of creating ambiance in this series. As the show is set just after the First World War, the sound needed to be designed in such a way to make the programme feel and sound 'periodic'. Of course, Peaky Blinders is very well known for its excellent sound track, but in order to research more about this series from a sound perspective, I aim to get some more knowledge concerning the challenges of SFX and Dialogue editing in this programme. Peaky Blinders is set in the wonderful city of Birmingham, so it was clear to the writers that in order for the dialogue to seem natural, some of the lines would have to be written in pretty much mumbled riddles. Steven Knight describes " we have to defend the poetry within dialogue and not throw it away just so you can have your characters mumble, as if that proves how real they are. I try to write dialogue in a way that’s closer to how people really talk, w...

For this blog post I have decided to create a step-by-step guide to using an SQN-Mixer! By doing this I hope to help others learn how to use this piece of equipment, as well as a refresher for my own knowledge :) This is what the standard SQN-4S Mixer looks like: Some of the benefits of an SQN-Mixer are that it can be used for recording multiple microphone sources, and it is more portable and easier to mix the sound recording on location and the controls are not attached to the camera. Guide to using an SQN-Mixer Step 1 Start by plugging in the umbilical extension cable, then plug in  umbilical cable to the extension. The umbilical cable has 2 XLR outputs and an AUX jack Step 2  Plug in the CH1 XRL output from the SQN into the INPUT 1 port on the camera, then plug the CH2 XRL output into the INPUT 2 port, and finally plug in the AUX jack into the headphones port The settings for both audio inputs on the cam...