Sound Replacement Project - Reflection

Here it is! This is the final version of a complete sound replacement project that I undertook with peers George Hickman and James Reynolds, replacing all audio in the 'Spaceship Scene' from The Lego Movie:

As a reference, here is the original clip too:

So firstly, I think for our first go at this whole side of the industry - post-production, sound effects, Foley, composition for film - we've done really well. The main aim was to replicate the original audio rather than changing it or doing any sort of parody, and I'm just super proud of how we've executed it; and probably one of the biggest takeaways from the project is that we've all realised how crazy fun Sound Design for narrative is!

As this is one of my first major projects undertaken in a professional team environment, and one that has turned out to be quite successful: I'll be reflecting on the project, analyzing some of our main processes and key events, and what to look out for in the future!

Project Environment & Planning

Most of the production took place in a couple very long sessions in the Post-Production studio at SAE, with our final mix being finalised in an 11AM - 11PM session. Lots of coffee. Before these sessions, we were finishing off a pre-production plan, composing 4 soundtrack pieces for the scenes and throwing as many potential audio assets (that needed to be created in the box, eg. lasers, spaceship FX) as we could into our Google Drive, so that we had more than enough to choose from when we started layering everything in.

George, James and I - once we got stuck into the Post-Pro sessions - realised how quickly we were progressing through things and coming up with new ideas to implement into the project. It was a great dynamic!

For example, George would explain that we needed more sounds of the spaceships flying past the screen: whooshes and lots of air to fill those spaces. I jump onto Ableton and record a bunch of different FX using white noise and a low-pass filter sweep whilst watching the visuals for timings and panning. All the bounced files go on our Audio Assets drive, downloaded, dropped straight into the Pro Tools session and we can test them in the mix within minutes and give ourselves feedback. A lot of these super quick ideas occurred on our mixing day because we would continuously watch the whole clip from the start and re-assess what jumps out at us as something that should fill the space, or feels unbalanced compared to previous scenes. Another example of this is that we realised 'The Citizens' part really needed the group voices to make sense for Uni-Kitten's line:

Snippet from our dialogue asset-list in the pre-production plan

There's a bit of a gap between the dialogue which is where at the last minute we added the "Tally-Ho!", "Yeehaw!" a little "Calla Bunga!" and some cheering which created the whole Citizens team sound effect right after the antagonist is shown. Basically we all sat in front of a C414 mic and performed lots of different "Wooooo!"s and stuff on the count of three so we had that sense of a group or crowd, and it straight away sounded perfect for the scenes as soon as we layered them in which was very satisfying. Overall, it made a huge difference to the level of production having filled that space well.

Whilst our work-flow as a team was fast and efficient, the negative side of it is that it may have been a little too free-flowing and lacking in structure in terms of a proper milestone schedule set out in the planning. This would be a side-effect as to why we were coming up with a lot of ideas on the spot, and that different elements of the project were coming into place at random times rather than focusing on specific goals. In future projects and especially depending on different team environments, these processes are certainly not going to always work as well as it has in this situation. When it doesn't work out, and we haven't set self-prescribed deadlines for specific aspects of the project right from the beginning - pressure will kick in, stress levels rise and the quality of the production suffers.

One of the bits of feedback we received on our pre-production plan was that we didn't have a milestone schedule set. We added it after the fact (midway through production) which meant we weren't using it for the right purpose. I don't believe I can really fault our work ethic and flow within the team on the production itself, however in future we definitely need to have it organised at the beginning - specific goals in a spreadsheet and deadlines of when to hit them. That way we will always have a timeline structure to fall back on and refer to when checking on our progress; and I believe that would have allowed us to even further push the quality of the final product. For me, considering this now will help massively when I undertake projects of much larger scopes and demands (or even projects with much tighter deadlines). In one of my previous blogs I talked about how I've got a Gantt chart template ready to go for my next project, (my bad on not using it for this one haha) I definitely need to utilise it to start properly structuring my time management.

What we did do well in our planning documentation and overall group structure, was having a very clear and concise description of what we intended to achieve with the project, target audience, deliverables, communication and file hub (Google Drive) set up and all the risks involved with mitigation plans.

Right from the start we had a clear vision for the sound design, for example: in the case of George and I's composition (song during the entire flight scene), we wrote this brief to work with on the document:

"2-minute track - Very ‘digital’ and ‘arcade’ vibe. High tempo with simplistic/minimalistic digital elements. To be composed through Ableton, 48/24 bounced stems to be mixed down in ProTools or Ableton, mastered through Ozone 7."

So I believe we had a really good idea of how we would approach each element of the project, we just didn't put those time-frame constructs in.

Creative Processes - Positives

Probably one of the biggest things we had to get right to start with was the Lego sounds. If they weren't believable then it would really drag the entire production down. It's The Lego Movie after all.

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Here's a couple shots of the studio space we were in over the ADR/Foley recording sessions and the final mix session.

I unfortunately didn't take any photos of our Lego box in the Foley booth, however we had a few Tupperware containers full of them and started performing sounds to fit different crashes, impacts and click sounds to suit the different purposes the Lego serves in the clip. Most of the box contained lots of little chunks and flat pieces - not as much variety - however it served the purposes of the scene really well as the visuals show lots of smaller pieces crumbling, breaking or connecting at very quick pace.

One of the main Lego Foley sounds I designed/performed was the two cranes hitting one of the villain spaceships at 01:09. For the impact to have weight but still feel like Lego (or perhaps even could be described as hollow), whilst watching the visuals with the screen inside the booth I would hit the lid Tupperware container full of Lego with the palm of my hand and then follow through whilst holding the container up with my other hand to make sure the tail of the impact has some of the Lego rattling/characteristic sounds present. I then used some of the chains in the props box in the studio to get that initial swing from the two cranes since they're meant to be swinging wrecking balls.

I think what really worked well in terms of the Lego sounds was how when layered with a lot of over-driven sub-frequency information, gives it that weight and sounds super satisfying. 00:43 is my favourite one. For all of the impacts that we felt needed this layer of punch, I started by layering various different/abstract 808's in my sample library on Ableton, compressing and then bouncing out several different length versions with varied fades for variety. Once these were in Pro Tools we were able to shorten them with fades or automation and pitch them in order to tailor the sound to each spot it needed to be used, and without sounding like the same sample was being used in multiple parts. When it's layered under the Lego, it's much more difficult to identify the sounds and it more just feels like we've added punch and depth to the Lego itself - which was its intended direction.

For each of us, it was our first go at recording dialogue and doing ADR for the visuals - and it was an awesome experience. I believe all of the voices were fitting and overall sounded great. What I'm really please about is that we managed to get both the citizen's sounds and the female character voices (thanks to the excellent work by James' girlfriend Chloe) actually quite close to the original in terms of quality and performance! Using the 2-second beep count-ins and recording in the sound booth made the whole experience feel very close to what you would expect out in the industry, so I'm glad we utilised that space.

You'll notice in the video description in Vimeo, we have a couple creative commons samples from FreeSound referenced. Those are the car/vehicle engine samples. We had feedback that it would have been cool to hear what it would have sounded like if we recorded our own engine sounds and I fully agree. Unfortunately we all took public transport to our sessions and just didn't factor that in when we put it on the asset list initially.

What can we improve on?

So some of the feedback we received from peers was that in some sections, a little bit of wind or other types of subtle ambience could have filled it out more; and that in the falling scene the voice from the character Emmett could use some vocal processing to make it feel more like he's going through some kind of time-slowing warp hole. We actually did put a noise floor in the entire production to try and glue everything together more in conjunction with reverb, however below I believe I've identified a better cause and solution as to why we're getting comments about sections that need something to fill silence.

After completing our compositions, George and I identified that (apart from the fact that the mixing is superb) the whole score for the original audio was specifically treated for the dialogue and SFX that are present in the scene. Brass/orchestral stabs occur when sudden objects appear on screen, lead melody instruments will come into the mix in between dialogue lines, and the energy of the music builds and falls dynamically as the whole scene progresses. Whilst we set ourselves a brief and knew what type of sound we were looking for, we didn't consider timings or writing specifically to react to the visual - which is something really important to think about for future projects. Next time I would approach a composition similarly to Foley where you basically perform and shape the sound to what you see; and I think it'll result in a much more fitting, natural and flowing score which really drives the level of production rather than compliments it or fills a gap of silence. So in response to the feedback on ambience, and after re-analysing the original as well - I believe by crafting the music to fit not only the theme but everything on screen, the whole production will feel richer and have more depth straightaway, and may very well fill out some of those gaps.

Hans Zimmer is one of the masters of this craft, and there is a lot of content on YouTube which shows his obsessive attention to detail into tailoring the music right down to individual characters:

His approaches to film compositions are super interesting, and this area of songwriting is definitely something I would love to delve deeper into and then have another crack at! I think researching that level of detail for scores would allow me to achieve what we're after in terms of filling those gaps and treating the music to this high-energy scene of The Lego Movie.

On the mixing front overall, I believe there's a level of polish which the original possesses and for ours it's not fully there yet. Things like impacts and explosions sounded big, full and sat in front of the mix - however there's quite a bit of compression and EQ we could've used to round a lot of sounds out and allow important parts of dialogue to cut through with all those other sounds going on. One thing I wanted to try which we didn't get to do was applying subtle side-chain compression to the music for when dialogue or important Foley happens, which could've really helped out the mix too. It's a bit difficult to tell whether this technique was used in the original audio (volume automation is probably more likely), but it is possible. Look-ahead ducking is also used in post-production where the side-chain will technically read what is happening in the future so you get gain reduction before a loud sound occurs, and would accentuate that sound even further. I would be able to achieve this in Ableton by duplicating the track I want to use as the audio input for the side-chain, muting it and then delaying it by how much is required or results in the desired effect. That way it still reacts to what audio you're hearing, but does so earlier to provide more room for the sound you want to stand out!

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How did you think we went in our first venture in designing audio for narrative? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, I'm definitely going to be doing more of this in the future - it's a lot of fun and so rewarding!

Thanks for the read!

Lachy :)

Link References:

Hans Zimmer - The Dark Knight Making Of. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 29 March 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-L1RCtgtoE&t=94s

Rose, J. (2017). Audio Postproduction for Film and Video. Google Books. Retrieved 29 March 2017, from https://books.google.com.au/books?

id=zdcJAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT271&lpg=PT271&dq=sidechain+compression+film+post+production&source=bl&ots=aq0Nd3pgUF&sig=LPFaMVVssYzOQCJ1wdZHgdQf2f0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjr4cjM_PrSAhXKrVQKHdDJDF0Q6AEINjAE#v=onepage&q=sidechain&f=false

The LEGO Movie Benny's SPACESHIP!!!!!!!!!!! Scene. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 29 March 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUN6KP__ozM