SciFi Filmmaking Discussions - Audio Post Production and Sound Design Team Part 1

photo credit: Lukasz Strachanowski One of my goals with moviepals.org is to create a community of movie lovers and filmmakers that provides fun to read blog posts, but also a window into my original filmmaking endeavors.  I hope that independent and aspiring filmmakers can learn something from my movie making experiences.  By creating collaborative films we're breaking new ground and hopefully making a least a small tiny dent in filmmaking history (I know overly dramatic, but hey I'm a filmmaker )

We're about to release a prequel trailer for the open source SciFi movie Jathia's Wager and I've been in back and forth communication with amber audio, an audio post production team which specializes in sound design and composition for films.  The following is some of the back and forth correspondence I've had with them over the last 3 weeks in preparation for the prequel trailer.  I wanted to publish it, because I think it will be of interest to my audience to see how all the parts of this filmmaking project are coming together. This entire discussion started out when I posted some specifics online of what I was looking for in an audio post production team for this film.  You can see that post here.  I received a response and started communicating with Dopplegang who is working in partnership with amber audio.

A joy to hear from you. Your specifics sound very doable and quite understandable, but any questions we will ask if needed. We hope first off that there is a contract we can see, though I know you may have  mentioned something to this effect, and we know it's open source. Just  run it by us again. Running through at this moment, will watch this scene tonight! We shall have a demo score for the scene very soon, as close to the real time of the scene as possible. Excited Dopplegang

Here is a link to the rough cut of the teaser trailer / prequel - assembled with some effects.  It still needs a few more effects (like when Jathia and Ashira disappear into a ball of light), but the main cut of the scenes are complete. http://www.myotherdrive.com/file/448.301621.07102008.21738.6a64fi/rough-cut- trailer.mpg Update November 07, 2008 - This link is ancient and is not worth downloading, it's provided for reference, we'll release a finished version of the trailer this week, unless you want to mess around with the source files I'd recommend waiting until we release the finished version so you don't spoil it for yourself. Notes on the audio: Notice the red eye, if you can add sound effects to add robotic life to this eye, that would work to set the mood.  The dissonance in the first sound clip is good.  Regarding the first audio clip you sent me, the dissonance is good, but a little too harsh.   I'm thinking maybe it starts with more of a subtle melody that turns into more dissonance in the climatic points in the video. For the melody, I'm thinking some epic strings with an interesting mix or actually a very direct "invasion" of mechanical, artificial sound (think video-game-ish) with a strong bass beat, that then turns into dissonance at climatic points in the trailer.  What do you think? I scheduled  some conference calls through the meetup and we went over the audio with feedback.  I'm going to invite you to the next one when we do that so you can get live feedback on your work.  I'm still waiting for you to join the meetup and respond with the credits / credentials you'd like to present on this film.  I'll be available 24/7 from now on. Solomon Rothman View part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 of this series of filmmaking discussions on audio post-production for the open source SciFi movie Jathai’s Wager.