This evening I booked out the foley room and composition lab with the intention to record the feet of the clip in a quiet place. Before the session, I laid out blank regions and had every feet recording ready for recording. I also set up the session to grid and frame. Also, the session to run on timecode.
I then used a Sennheiser MKH 416 for the feet sounds. I decided to not use the blimp this time as a test just to see the audio difference. I placed the mic pointing at the concrete floor in the foley trap to match the floor in the pharmacy in the clip. I made sure the microphone was about 20cm away pointed down directly at the source due to the hyper-cardioid polar pattern.
We began with the feet of the small child running around. I told Dan who was being the foley artist to make some noise so I could adjust the gain structure. I then gave him my opinion on how I wanted the child to sound like. I wanted each footstep to be different although quiet. Still to have a personality within the steps. The child is younger and unaware of the severity of making loud noises would run a little louder but with less bass, in his steps as he is smaller. The daughter is in between, she walks on her tiptoes and really avoids silence, although she is deaf and has a cochlear implant she is aware and scared of the consequences. Later in the clip, we have the mother who is the most cautious of them all, and she moves the slowest with the heaviest but lighter volume of all three.
To begin dan played out the walking with the intention I set him. We did a few takes as there were issues with the sound of the foley trap with his skin against the concrete sort of material. His feet bare skin like the actors created to much noise when lifting so I told him to walk even more cautious and it was successful.
We then continued to the part of the daughter. This is currently a very early stage so I didn’t worry about my POV choices with this specific character yet and focused more on laying foundations. I was behind on my atmosphere so it didn’t have any context or sounds to blend together with to create more immersion. The rawness did put us off and made us nitpick a lot. After I while I decided to do the opposite. I felt tired and a bit frustrated with not getting the perfect sounds but after getting home and listening I realised they were good. Not amazing but pretty decent and I just need to trim them up a bit and they should be good.
The last character was the mother which Dan did great with. He really felt the movement of the mother. Perhaps as he could play an adult and she walks a lot slower in the clip he was able to immerse himself more without thinking whether it matches and just method act.
Overall it was a good session, I’m glad I had the blank regions recorded before it. Helped with the flow and planning of the three hours. I think this was a good foundation to help other sounds flow, as getting started after doing a lot of research makes it difficult when you have so much information so anything helps.
I know the sounds are perfect and have not been mixed or anything yet but I’m open to changing footstep sounds as I add more sonic layers. As it currently stands I needed a basis, to begin with, and this was more than enough. The next session is on Friday so I hope to have recorded the atmospheres by then to add the next layer before doing cloth and props.