High Noon

Yesterday, Andy Poole, Paul Walters and I completed the final sound mix at SSR, the School of Sound Recording in Manchester.

We were in the studio for a total of six hours and missed the England vs. Germany World Cup match as a result, which in hindsight was probably for the best.

Andy and Paul had a majority of the sounds in place already, and it helped that we had all met up earlier in the week to have a brief chat about the project, to exchange files (including the final edit which I’d completed that same day) and to see what sound effects were still required.

The session went well, and the only sounds that needed recording on the day were drinking sounds for the shot of Jimmy drinking in the kitchen, and chewing sounds for the close up of Jimmy chewing gum outside.

Andy volunteered to record both of these sounds. To be honest I think he just wanted an excuse to eat Jellybeans, which were, according to Andy, the ideal way to get that authentic chewing sound.

As we left the studio I said to Andy and Paul that the project was now reliant on being completed by five people, myself, Gareth Crook, Pete Johnson, Peter Wobser and Mark Brereton.

In my mind I thought that it’d be possible to have the film uploaded to the Virgin Media Shorts website by Sunday night. How wrong I could be.

It is now 6am and with less than six hours until the deadline for the competition the film still needs to be graded, the logos on the cans and bottles have yet to be blurred out, I have no pixel art, the credits are incomplete, the Virgin Media Shorts website is crashing and our colourst is a German, meaning that if I do run into any problems this morning the chances of me being able to ask him for any coherent advice is somewhat slim.