Shooting my Entire RED Picture M.O.S.?

[Tom Lowe]

After returning from my 3-week location scouting trip to some really remote and beautiful places, I am getting some evil thoughts in my head.

I am planning to shoot my RED feature next Aug/Sept, all natural light, totally outdoors, in places like Yosemite National Park and Lake Powell. The picture only has 3 actors, and a very small amount of dialog. It's a simple, beautiful ménage à trois roadtrip love story.

The picture will concentrate on visuals, like a Bresson film, or the Leone/Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns. People sometimes forget that with Leone and Bresson's pictures, you are often like 20 minutes into the movie before anyone even speaks. So it's my intention is to shoot a picture focused on stunning visuals, with only a few really good dialog exchanges, damn close to a silent film, like those Leone/Eastwood films, or like Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood, with a few poetic voice-overs here and there, ala Terrence Malick. Like In the Mood, there will be quite a few overcranked shots, too, so those are gonna be MOS anyway.

My whole budget is 200k, but I am hoping/planning to dedicate a disproportionate amount for Sound Design and ADR/Looping after the shoot.

SO...... Could I conceivably shoot the whole picture -- 30 days of principal photography in remote locations -- completely MOS? Maybe just using an onboard mic on the RED for reference? To me, this would cut out one expensive crew member, and free us up to concentrate on visuals. A lot of shots will be cutaways of beautiful rivers and meadows and lakes and such, so I suppose those will be easy for a sound designer to pull out of a stock sound library?

In a sense, it would be like sound designing an animated film, in that there would be no location sound. I'm pretty sure this is how Leone did it, although his ADR work was crappy. Hopefully the technology has progressed a bit since then!

So, for a 90-minute feature, with a relatively small amount of dialog, and a lot of outdoor, car-driving, waves-lapping-against-the-lake-shore types of sounds, do you think I could find someone to do the looping and the sound design for like 10 or 15k? Maybe a house willing to work with me? An up-and-coming sound designer looking to gain experience? Would a guy like that conceivably have access to a large library of sounds?

 

[Russ McDonald]

That his the worst idea I have ever heard in my professional career, In fact that would be in the top 5 of bad production planning choices of all time.

Having said that, it is your film. Best of luck my friend, and don't let anyone stand in your way.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

You know technically every film is mostly done Via ADR and post sound work so this isn't exactly abnormal.
It will just be more work.

 

[Tom Lowe]

That his the worst idea I have ever heard in my professional career, In fact that would be in the top 5 of bad production planning choices of all time.

Having said that, it is your film. Best of luck my friend, and don't let anyone stand in your way.

heh, i figured i'd get a lot of responses like this. could you expand on why -- specifically -- you think so? i make threads like this here to learn, and to pick the brains of people who have more experience than i do.

 

[Jason Murphy]

It's not the worst idea I've ever heard, and it's certainly doable (Italian studios did it for years, though you can certainly tell from watching Italian movies from the 50's and 60's that the ADR left a bit to be desired in terms of syncing with lip movement), but I'm not sure I'd recommend shooting entirely MOS; it's going to present some pretty major challenges. For starters, foleying all the sounds is going to be a bitch.

If the dialogue exchanges are that important (and it seems like they should be, or why would they be there?), you're going to want to get a good clean recording of them on set. It's very difficult to get the right emotional tone doing ADR; sound designers and actors almost always will say that the takes from the set are better (at least from a performance standpoint, if not from a technical one). At the very least, even if you do loop it, you'll have the original take as a reference.

Don't know how much you know about recording sound yourself, but you might want to pick up a handheld solid state digital recorder yourself like a Marantz PMD660, and go out and begin recording sound and building up your own libraries of wild sound or other effects for use in your movie. Just a thought that seems like it would go well with everything else you're doing here.

But certainly, I'd take caution with doing the whole thing MOS. You'll most likely spend much more time (and therefore money) in post trying to construct the soundtrack if you do. And if it's not done well, or your post budget runs out halfway through the soundtrack, it'll be a problem. An audience will pick up on bad audio much faster than a bad image.

 

[Russ McDonald]

Tom
I shot Eddies Night out in 10 days for 50,000 in HD I say that because I want you to know, I am a hardcore indie.

The response to your question it is going to take me a little time to type,so I will be up in about 20 min.

 

[Jason Murphy]

This isn't completely on topic, but it's definitely a very helpful read. Filmsound.org is a pretty decent online resource for all things, well, film sound.

http://filmsound.org/production-sound/openletter.htm

Edit: Added another useful article linked from Filmsound.org about doing audio on a low budget indie.
http://mixonline.com/sound4picture/film_tv/audio_freak/

 

[Mark B.]

If you know for sure that you don't want any real-time sounds, then I don't see your idea as being a bad one. I had a similar idea for something I was thinking of shooting, but my plan was to take a good off-camera microphone to collect environmental sounds when I wasn't busy operating the camera.

But then I'm kind of a sound guy at heart, hanging around the middle of nowhere with a microphone isn't such a big deal to me.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

You really shouldn't use anything from sound libraries it's a better idea to go out with some sort of sound recording device and recording everything you can think of from scratch.

 

[Tom Lowe]

It's not the worst idea I've ever heard, and it's certainly doable (Italian studios did it for years, though you can certainly tell from watching Italian movies from the 50's and 60's that the ADR left a bit to be desired in terms of syncing with lip movement), but I'm not sure I'd recommend shooting entirely MOS; it's going to present some pretty major challenges. For starters, foleying all the sounds is going to be a bitch.

If the dialogue exchanges are that important (and it seems like they should be, or why would they be there?), you're going to want to get a good clean recording of them on set. It's very difficult to get the right emotional tone doing ADR; sound designers and actors almost always will say that the takes from the set are better (at least from a performance standpoint, if not from a technical one). At the very least, even if you do loop it, you'll have the original take as a reference.

Don't know how much you know about recording sound yourself, but you might want to pick up a handheld solid state digital recorder yourself like a Marantz PMD660, and go out and begin recording sound and building up libraries of wild sound or other effects for use in your movie. Just a thought that seems like it would go well with everything else you're doing here.

But certainly, I'd take caution with doing the whole thing MOS. You'll most likely spend much more time (and therefore money) in post trying to construct the soundtrack if you do. And if it's not done well, or your post budget runs out halfway through the soundtrack, it'll be a problem. An audience will pick up on bad audio much faster than a bad image.

Jason, I've boomed a couple of features, so I have a good working knowledge of the sound dept. I have a lot of good friends who are mixers. I just can't see dragging a mixer and boom op up a 2-mile trail at Yosemite to record two lines of dialog beside a lake. Plus we want to keep our "footprint" super small in these National Parks and other such locations.

Then again, I agree with you about losing the emotion of a scene. That is the biggest factor working against my new idea. The other factor I worry about is someone trying foley or match the very specific sounds of someone splashing in the water in a river in Yosemite or something. The problem is, I don't know anything about ADR or sound design.

adobeone, thanks, i look forward to your thoughts.

 

[Jason Murphy]

I just can't see dragging a mixer and boom op up a 2-mile trail at Yosemite to record two lines of dialog beside a lake.

Clearly, your hypothetical mixer and boom op are not nearly hardcore enough. So much for their indie cred. :sarcasm:

 

[Tom Lowe]

Clearly, your hypothetical mixer and boom op are not nearly hardcore enough. So much for their indie cred. :sarcasm:

LOL.

But seriously, would you want to try to drag a sound mixer and boom op two miles up some twisting canyon at Lake Powell on a pontoon boat if you didn't absolutely have to?

 

[Jason Murphy]

LOL.

But seriously, would you want to try to drag a sound mixer and boom op two miles up some twisting canyon at Lake Powell on a pontoon boat if you didn't absolutely have to?

No, not really, but I guess the question is: is it absolutely necessary? Ask two different people, you might get two different responses.

On one hand, it's a pain, and you might be able to dub the two lines just fine, and save yourself (not to mention your poor bedraggled sound crew) the work (and maybe money). On the other hand, I've heard "I wish we'd taken the extra step and done that thing right on set" a number of times. I don't think I've heard anyone regret putting a little extra effort into getting a better result, painful as it may seem at the time.

Incidentally, doesn't have much to do with sound for an indie, but given your love of Malick, thought you might like this article, too, Tom. It's on The New World's sound mix.

http://mixonline.com/sound4picture/film_tv/audio_natural_sound_new/

 

[Tom Lowe]

Of course I have read that, my friend! You underestimate how much I worship Malick.

The New World showcases, IMO, the best sound design ever. It is my model. One thing about Terry's pictures, though, if you read a lot of articles about the editing and such, is that Malick talks constantly through his takes, giving his actors guidance. Of course, his budgets are huge enough to cover it all with sound design and ADR. If you have a university guy roaming the woods of Virginia for 7 months trying to get a specific bird call, you can do anything.

Maybe the best option for me is to hire a mixer and boom op for the small handful of intense dialog sequences I know in advance we are going to shoot. The problem is, how do you get a guy to drive from LA to Yosemite for 3 days of work, or get a guy to show up at Antelope Marina in Arizona at Lake Powell for two afteroons?

I suppose it could be done, though.

 

[Jason Murphy]

Maybe the best option for me is to hire a mixer and boom op for the small handful of intense dialog sequences I know in advance we are going to shoot. The problem is, how do you get a guy to drive from LA to Yosemite for 3 days of work, or get a guy to show up at Antelope Marina in Arizona at Lake Powell for two afteroons?

Make disparaging comments about their indie cred. :sarcasm:

EDIT:
Failing that, pay them lots of money.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Make disparaging comments about their indie cred. :sarcasm:

Believe me, when you are trying to talk a crew into hiking 3 miles, each way, to get an MOS shot of two actors sitting beside a lake, SHAME is my most often employed weapon.

That's why I always include the words "No Cupcakes Need Apply" in my craigslist crew postings.

 

[Mark Thorpe]

For that kinda work look for ex-military types. A quick 1 to 1 on the gear and off you go.

 

[R Fogg]

I swear to god the entire first half of Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalgia was shot MOS. I don't think you even see a mouth move for the first 20 minutes (and there is dialog). It allso harkens to the 50-60's italian studio films (edit-oops already mentioned.)

I had a very similar idea and to me the key to doing this successfully is to not subordinate the soundtrack to the picture. Free the sound-track from the tyrany of the image, but do it self-consiously. Create some dissonance between the image and the sound. I want to see that film. However, if you want a movie that sounds like a normal movie and you have budget constraints I think you gotta go the normal route - at least for the dialog scenes. Take a little edirol digital recorder along and record environmental sounds for your sound designer to play with.

Disclaimer: background is heavily experimental film

 

[Steven Parker]

I shot a picture last year on the Wisconsin River, near Spring Green - not exactly Yosemite, but we were out in the sticks for sure. Our one-man sound dept kicked ass: ENG-style mixer, boom, and the occasional couple lavs. We were in canoes on the river, deep woods, plus some parking lot/bait shop dialog scenes... he covered everything, just like a full dept. An older guy, too.

I mention this because you can find heroes like him if you look around (PM me if you wat his contact info, he's out of Chicago); I also mention it because you never ever get the sounds of Yosemite off of a CD you bought. The weather, the mood, the exact location, not to mention performances... I feel your pain in terms of budget, but I think it'd be a mistake to not be getting amazing wild tracks right alongside your amazing visuals...

That was a 200K picture too - and they never could have afforded building sound in post...

 

[Cam McGrath]

Tom, you could just hire something like a 3 channel Sound Devices 302 mixer, a Sennheiser 416 and a set of headphones (or two) and do it yourself...it ain't that hard. Record straight to the camera. I'm sure there'd be a spare set of hands even on a small indy to boom for ya! Not the best scenario but certainly doable. I've operated a jimmy jib and mixed sound simultaneously before and that does suck.

I'm also one of those go anywhere, do anything guys but way too downunder to be able to help you out!

cam