Recording for 'No Country For Old Men'

As well as recording sounds specifically for the sound exercise, for which I've been putting sound to a clip from the Coen Brothers' 'No Country For Old Men', I made use of other recordings I've collected recently, including one I mentioned in an earlier blog post ('Designing sound for a poetic documentary'). I used this recording as the atmos of outside/through the window when the character (whose name I don't know, having not seen the film before) looks outside from his (presumably) motel room, in order to keep consistency with the rest of the scene, in which I tell the story through sound from his perspective.

Another recording I've discussed on this blog that made it into the mix was the vending machine recording I wrote about in the blog post 'Atmos recording'. I edited this recording at home using Adobe Audition, and tried to make the sound as realistic and as flexible as I could. However, because I wasn't editing the sound to the picture I'd be using, when I came to mix it as an atmos, the recording was far too loud and sounded very aggressive, as though I'd recorded from very close to the machines (when, in fact, the track is layered with a recording made close to the machines and another made at the other side of the room to the machines).

To compensate for this in the edit, I reduced the amplitude quite a lot, and added a reverb using Space Designer within Soundtrack Pro, which made the recording sound much more like it was in the acoustic space we see on-screen.

Although I did some work in the Harmer Protools studio, almost all the foley and atmos recordings I used were recorded at home. This is partly down to having more time to record when at home, and also because the mic stand I have at home is more sturdy than the two different ones I booked out from Stores at university - most likely because they get a lot more and much heavier use than mine does.

Recording foley at home added complications, however, because I had to work around unwanted noises like traffic noise from outside (whichever room of the house I went in at whatever time of day, this was an issue, apart from late-night recording, which wasn't always practical due to getting up for university or work), and also sound of neighbours and people passing by the house when I recorded near the front of the house, and wildlife sounds from the back of the house.

I compiled a list of foley that needed recording, which I followed for most of the sounds, recording each sound separately and then checking that it matched up with the picture, although some sounds, in particular the rustling of paper towards the end of the scene, I recorded whilst playing back the video in order to help synchronise sound and picture.

Although, as this screengrab shows, the recordings didn't always synchronise properly with the picture anyway, and had to be arranged in Soundtrack Pro to sound right.