Holy Cow, Sound!

Today I had a class in Sound. It was the craziest thing, because: 1) I never knew sound was so complicated! and 2) I never knew it could be so interesting!

We watched this raw footage of a movie with Adam Sandler in it, called Bulletproof. It looked awful, but that's a different blog.

Anyway, the people sent this raw footage, and then all of the tracks with the sound. There had to be 100 tracks. One track was just the production sound, which was the dialogue track. When they filmed it, everyone in the background was quiet, and the actors weren't making any noise. There was a little ambient sound, but just the humming of a beer cooler (they were in a bar). 

Then we looked at the same clip with another track instead of the dialogue. This one was with the extras talking. These tracks are called "Walla-Wallas," because they literally bring people in to walk around and say things that aren't real words, and then when they put it together, it sounds like bumbling conversation.

Then there was a track just for footsteps, done by a foley artist. Look them up. I've wanted to do foley work since I learned about it in Intro. to Film in my sophomore year of college. It's amazing. They're people who go in a studio and march around on gravel or hardwood floor or stone or grass or corn starch, which apparently sounds like snow. It's just incredible.

And then there was another track for just guns going off. Then one for the ricochet of bullets. Then one for a stripper's leather costume. You get the point. It was nuts.

I also had my first production design class, and that was pretty cool. I think it's gonna be hard, but I'm excited. Production design is everything: sets, locations, props, costumes, hair, makeup, even greenery. Someone has to paint those tree leaves if they aren't the right color.

The third class I had today was producing. I've already had it once, but I really enjoy it. It really helps with screenwriting, because producers are gonna be the ones we're selling our scripts to. Today we learned about how producers option screenplays. It was quite fascinating. 

Oh, and The Wedding Banquet is a really good movie. Look it up. It's funny.

Anyway, editing tomorrow! I'm super excited!