Venn

Venn - Episode 2

Alan — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:17:11 +0000

Episode 2 of Venn has been released.

I cleaned and mixed the audio and wrote/recorded the intro and outro music. Compared to previous episodes, this was a pleasure to mix. There was a lot less processing to do to get the audio up-to-scratch.

Related links

Venn - Episode 1

Alan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:14:12 +0000

Episode 1 of Venn has been released. View the episode online for free.

Related links

Venn Episode 1 in the works

Alan — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:47:52 +0000

I've recently received the video for the 1st episode of Venn (the previous release was a pilot and called Episode 0)

Again the episode is by Spinneyhead Presents. Episode 1 picks up from that and plays on the theme of the celibacy bet. The content is better than Episode 0, the scripts are better and from my perspective, the audio is so much better. It's definitely better than the first series, Memory.

This is the first episode that I've been happy with sound-wise. The quality of the recording far surpasses anything that the team has done before. I've seen series on BBC3 that had worse audio than this.

So what's this mean for me?

I can write music to fit the scene, instead of covering up audio errors
I can write less music. Yes, that's a benefit to all concerned. Check out Memory where I had to write a lot of music
I don't have to spend days or weeks cleaning up the audio manually (automated tools get you so far, but some things have to be tweaked manually)
The speech is already clearer and more intelligible
It's already more professional
It's easier to watch
More enjoyable from a production perspective

The audio has been improved greatly by recording with an off-camera microphone. Ian used a hand-held boom and microphone to achieve much better audio than possible with the on-camera microphone.

I'll post back when Episode 1 is released.

Progress Update

Alan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:23:38 +0000

Wow, I knew I've been busy on other tasks for a week or so, but I hadn't realised it had been over 4 weeks since my last post. That's the first time I've had a gap of this size since I started out with this site.

Screening

One of the projects I'm involved in had a screening of its pilot episode in the main cinema complex in Manchester last week. Unlike other projects where I'd had more control of the timing and placement of audio, this was a project where I had only provided musical intro, outro, stings and a few themes, and some of that was in collaboration with another musician. I was interested to see how the director had chosen to place the music in the episode, how it had been mixed (e.g. forward or placed back in the mix) and I was also interested in watching the episode. Up until that point, I hadn't seen the episode.

Business Change, Process Mapping and BPR

I'm working on a long-term transformation project at the moment. As I'm doing so, I'm keeping an eye out for the common pitfalls of process mapping. I don't think there's much I want to change in the process-mapping series, what I've already written is still valid. There are a few points that I think could make it easier to understand. Plus I want to continue the series, it's only a few articles long so far and there's so much more to write. One of the main points I'll discuss is the time it takes to do full As-Is and To-Be models and how other tools and processes such as those found in Lean can be more beneficial, depending on the context.

This is actually the reason why there hasn't been much other activity on this site. The demands of a full-time client plus travel there and back is leaving little time for the updating. It does however leave me with time to write, just not time to research and upload the texts.

So what now?

The good side is that I've been writing some articles off-line for the musical creativity series. I'll publish those soon. Some will take longer than others as it will take time to prepare samples.

Status of the Musical Instrument Retail Industry

I've been watching the failure of Sound Control/Turnkey/Soho Soundhouse with interest. Over the last few years, I'd only buy from one or two named individuals in that chain to the point that I'd drive past 2 of my local shops and purchase from the shop in another city a couple of hours away for better service. Add to that the fact that the sales stock was getting progressively more budget-based for the items I'd want to buy meant that I was looking around for a better store.

New Kit

The failure of Sound Control comes at an odd time. I am looking for a new hardware compressor to complement what I already use. Sound Control didn't really sell much pro outboard beyond the SSL range, so I was already wondering how to broach this with them or to branch off to other companies such as KMR.

Indie Filmmaking

venn is still progressing. Shooting was completed a couple of weeks ago for a few scenes. Means I should have some rough edits to write to soon.

Space Opera

I've also watched a few independent sci-fi projects collapse over the last month or so. One or two appear to have collapsed outright, others have been delayed as the respective teams understand more about what's involved

Stuffed

My own short-movie project, Stuffed, is on hold while I think about what background I want. When I started out with Stuffed, I wasn't thinking about the background. That's not an oversight, just that I hadn't noticed the opportunity. One day I was looking at the footage and the idea hit me. I've had a few short attempts using Public Domain footage from archive.org but that hasn't proved sufficient quality. I'm not on the look-out for a good background which will convert well to PAL-I resolution - this isn't a HD project. I'd like to get it finished soon.

Venn TV

Alan — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:54:33 +0000

One of the indie projects I'm involved in has published its own site at Venn.tv.

Expect to see further episodes over the next as they're released this year.

Currently the only released episode (as of 29th Jan 2008) is Episode 0 which you can see in the projects section.

Venn - Episode 0

Alan — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 22:41:13 +0000

New Pilot

We've recently completed the pilot episode of Venn. This is from the same production team at Spinneyhead Presents that did Memory.

Things have moved on well since Memory was produced and this production has been a lot smoother (from my point of view at least).

The Tasks

I wasn't involved in recording the dialogue or location audio, instead I was provided with the video and audio files and had to edit the audio track ready for release. This included:

- adding driving game effects

- composing/recording music for phone text ring (including emulating it being moved and covered by hand)

- cleaning up some of the audio

- composing/recording music for the driving game

- composing/recording opening titles music

- composing/recording closing credits music

- mixing and mastering all the above into the audio track

Some Issues

If you listen to the part where the two characters meet at the door, you can hear a loss in quality. I believe that's due to it having been recorded on a different microphone. Not sure, but that's what I received anyway. Also after the opening titles, there's some distortion in the voices. I never did get to the bottom of that. It's in the source files and sounds like a digital distortion, similar to that caused by downsampling without dithering. Whatever it was, it was there in the source. I asked for an extra export from the source but with the source tracks reduced by 3dB or so in case there was some saturation. They're what ended up in the output.

At the point of recording the source footage, the actors were holding console controllers but not actually playing. I added the sound effects later.