So I finally got a copy of the most recent update of Guardian, it’s still in it’s rough cut stages with a lot of the elements missing and with only a few days until the deadline for this project I need to work out what I’m going to be able to do and what I’m not.
An agreement made with Guardian stated that I would require Picture Lock of the final animation by no later than the 25th of April, this was due to constructing the sound design for two separate projects, as well as composing the final soundtrack and constructing the final mix, as stated in the Composers Agreement.
My initial plan that myself and Shannon set out in a production meeting stated that I would require 2 weeks for the synchronisation of the sound, 2 weeks for composing the music to the final cut of the film, and week to mix the project. This is due to not overusing my ears and making sure that I don’t get over tiered and make rash mistakes. One of the meetings that I held with Shannon she stated that she planned to have the final edit done by late April and early May at the latest. After my tutorial with Lee mid april I checked up with Shannon to see how the project was progressing and to see if everything was to be expected on time. You can see the correspondence below.
There was a final production meeting on the 21st of April for me to pick up the films from each team to synchronise the sound and music for the animation. But both teams said that their projects we’re still in their rough cut stages. Shannon told me that she just needed to finish drawing a few more scenes and then the project will be completely drawn over. She said it would be a couple more days until the rough cut would be ready for me to sync up sound for my project and that they have an expected deadline for picture lock on the 9th of May.
With the project in it’s current state, there are a lot of unfinished elements such as colouring and some missing drawings, the cue sheet however labels all the sounds that are needed throughout the project, so I can work off of that as a rough guide to where I need to synchronise sound, some of the visual elements may be missing but that’s where they’re supposed to be. With limited time I am unable to process a full mix of all the sound effects and imported music. The mix will have to consist of the adjustment of levels, volume automation and panning. I will however still use specific automation on key scenes such as the main character opening the window, filtering in the noise of traffic outside.
There are a few sounds which I am unable to provide, mostly the vocalised textures for the girl, if given more time I would have recorded a female in the vocal booth of the sound theatre.
For this project I have most of the sound effects and foley already edited, so it’s just a matter of synchronising it to the actions on screen, but this will be found difficult in certain scenes where the character is not clearly visible as they are still unfinished, unfortunately this is out of my control and I can only do so much constructing a sonic landscape to where there are missing elements. With the limited amount of time available I also had to miss out some lesser sound fx that were stated in the cue sheet, such as breath sounds for when she’s running through the park at the end as well as a slight sob.