48 hour film festival preperration

I

IanB

Active member
I am going to participate in a 48 hour film festival in May. The festival is being run in Boston, and I want to participate by offering up the sound-scape or ambiance of the film. Give texture to the places where the film is silent or has gentle or important dialogue.

My question, is how to prepare to participate in this way?

The first way I have thought about it, is to shoot a bunch of audio and label it ahead of time, so that I have a good bank to choose from.
The second way I have thought about it, is to wait for the script and the locations, then grab sound throughout the actual space at the time of the shooting.

I certainly can do both, but wondering which I should focus on in terms of creating this sound scape for such a fast moving project.
Thanks
Ian
 
Last time i checked, it is against the rules to create elements before the 48 hour production period. Although location scouting (including sound scouting) is permitted.
 
I just read over the rules, and although you can not 'create' a sound-scape before the project, it does say you can create sound effects, or specifically

"As with music, pre-recorded sound effects are allowed, but you must have rights to use them."

So, I think you can record something and use it later, as long as you aren't layering or performing the 'creative' process outside the 48 hours, and in my opinion, gathering sound is not really creative, it is how you layer/apply those sounds to the visuals that make it creative. Tell me I am wrong though, I am open to idea's here.
 
yes, but you're reading it wrong way I think.

It means that you can use for example the sound of a naked lady screaming if you have it..."somewhere" and it's 64646 years old.

Not that you have a kind a script prepared in which there's a dog barking backwards and you record that dog one day before.

You can use "library" sounds (with permission) which you could have recorded yourself...

But ok... there's something like "as long as nobody knows..."

And further: have enough crew people, don't do it your own.. Trust other people which you give the shots and make "a short" of it. Trust someone to edit and have a sleep while the editor is editing...
Don't be afraid and don't be stressed... Have enough sleep... You don't need to be awake 72 hours...
 
dre83 said:
...Have enough sleep... You don't need to be awake 72 hours...
Click to expand...
Certainly! We have 50~60 (sometimes more) teams here in PDX. And only some of them are up all night(s).

Our first year out, a team of professionals won best in our group, and then best for our city, and on to win best for the US and screened at Cannes.
http://www.cinemasyndicate.com/

If was an inauspicious beginning for our team of mostly amateurs. But we always have fun and the amateurs (and the pros) learn new things.
 
Thanks for the update guys, I am right in-line with what you are saying as far as thinking 'ahead' and knowing there will be a dog barking, so you record that dog. But honestly, we (I am a small member of a 17 person team) do not have a single thing prepared per the contest rules. There isn't any script, any story, any locations, nothing right now.

I am 100% with the above posts though, about sleep, I just want to do my part and further the film with some sort of audio sound-scape. I think it is possible to start building a database of sound (as other posts have suggested for all productions, not just the 48 hour film contest) and then if the 48 hour film has a need for one of those sounds, pull it out of the database.

However, I think what most of you are saying is just wait until the festival, and work hard to get what you need and do your best to capture audio during the fest. another factor I hadn't mentioned is that I will be the back-up / second man on sound for the production I hope to just enhance what the primary role of sound will be, capturing dialogue. Is there an official 'sound title' if you are second man on the sound team, backing up the #1 guy.

PS. Great work on the 48 hour project Rich, the sound was very good with clean audio (listening to just the web version, but you can tell it is good). However, as I can see, there was SOO much work that went into 7 minutes of video, in just 4 hours. Considering 1 minute of usable audio is about an hour of work, I can see MANY hours that you put in to create the Vampire Politician release. Thank you for sharing your teams work.
 
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It sounds like you have a good start on it. Yes, I believe it is within the rules to create a sound library to use for the 48Hr or any other production.

Just to be clear, the "Tooth and Nail" video was done by a competing team, not on the team I was on!
We did a pretty respectable showing for our first time and we have had varying results in subsequent years.
But I don't think our team will be winning any awards like that for a few years.

I have purposely removed myself from shooting in order to develop the amateur team members.
I don't want to just go out and do it myself. I want them to do it and learn from their successes and from their errors.
And I have coached the team producer (and my manager at work) in the fine art of video and audio editing over the last 5 years.
So this year, she will be doing all the editing herself as I will be in South Africa during the event.
 
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