Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we get call upon regularly to provide audio recording services on interview shoots, but I broke a personal best on October 8th during the PAC12 Mens Basketball Media Day. DP extraordinaire Zack Reed and I chugged thru 36 interviews with players and coaches from each of the PAC12 schools for FOX Sports. Look for this work throughout the season during matchups that the network is covering.
Production Sound- Kaneko's Owl
September was a very busy month for Hands On Sound this year. In addition to ongoing work with The San Jose Sharks, Bay Area corporate clients and doing some film mixes, I had a 14 day shoot on the indie feature Kaneko’s Owl. Featuring a great story, cast and crew, this project was a joy to be part of.
i got to be known on set for my deployment of various plant mics and other specialty placements to complement boom and lav coverage, plus each day I would arrive early to record background ambiences and SFX (while the locations were still quite). Fun!
The production takes a bit of a breather now to do some editing and go thru another funding round to finance the remaining shoot dates and post work. More on Kaneko’s Owl as it moves forward.
Along For The Ride
On Sept 23rd, in conjunction with WWE Wrestling’s Monday Night RAW show at The Chase Center in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to work on an episode of their web series “Ride Along”. On the show, some of the wrestlers drive around a city in an SUV, chat, get involved in some shenanigans and see the sights around town.
I’ve had a lot of experience with driving scenes and vehicle related shoots, so this was right in my wheelhouse. Sound coverage for this show was concealed Lav mics and a pair of trusty Sanken CUB-01 mics on the driver and passenger’s visors. The producer and I hid in the back of the SUV during the 1 1/2 hour ride thru the streets of San Francisco, behind a black curtain that the crew installed. He monitored his array of Go Pro cameras and me the audio recordings. Once this episode airs, I’ll post it on the Gallery Page.
Film Fest Weekend In Portland
Last weekend we took a trip up to Portland OR for the World Premier screenings of Noah Weisel’s short Neris. Described as “it’s a ghost story, but it’s a love story, too”, Neris was played before two sold out rooms in one of the festival’s short blocks and was well received. In addition to the stereo and 5.1 surround mixes, Hands on Sound did the production sound on this one. It’s always nice to get the opportunity to mix one’s own recordings. Look for Neris to be making the rounds of other festivals in 2020.
Documentary Sound Summer
As the calendar turns to September and I move into another busy month of audio work, I’m realizing that I spent much of the summer on documentary or doc-like projects. There was a couple of weeks covering an innovative Math Camp at Stanford University, some news & sports gigs and very satisfying short documentary of vehicle dwellers in Silicon Valley. This last project was with Paige Bierma and involved us getting some very close up and detailed looks at families and individuals who for one reason or another live in RVs, vans or cars in what is generally considered an affluent suburban area.
The issues and story are much deeper and longer than in the edit you’ll find below, but if you take the time to watch, you’ll get a glimpse into some lives and learn about services being offered in Silicon Valley.
So often it is easy to take for granted the basic elements of survival and comfort...a safe shelter a night, toilet and shower facilities, clean clothes and the ability to get food. Those beat up old RVs you see on the side of the road have families with children inside...and they are simply people trying to get by.
Sound For A Film Noir
Post Production is now wrapped on the detective short Ghost Dick, a film noir piece shot in San Francisco on a vintage Fisher Price PXL2000 camera. This somewhat toy video camera came out in the late 1980’s and originally recorded picture to an audio cassette tape. in later years, avant garde and experimental filmmakers modified the camera to record to a digital format, making very pixelated and stylized works and continues to be used today.
Watch Ghost Dick: https://vimeo.com/346618728
For Ghost Dick we didn’t record production sound of any type except for some field recordings i made on site to capture location correct ambiences and backgrounds. Once editing was completed, we brought the show’s actors in for ADR sessions at Hands on Sound and then I went at it to fill in all the other sounds needed…doing foley and mining the sound library my collection of field recordings. The director, Noah Weisel, composed the soundtrack and played trumpet and drums. I added bass guitar and later put together the credit roll music, with was based on the film’s main theme.
Submissions to film festivals are just beginning and Ghost Dick has already been accepted in the Los Angeles PXL THIS Toy Camera Festival in November.
The 29th annual toy camera film festival features Pixelvision films made with the Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camcorder. PXL THIS, one of the oldest film festivals in LA, celebrates visionary moving image artists from seminal experimental filmmakers to 10-years-olds to homeless to professionals. This year includes entries from across the US.
Gettin' A Kick Out Of Soccer
Hands on Sound was on location last week with Major League Soccer for their coverage of the annual California Claciso match between the San Jose Earthquakes and Los Angeles Galaxy. The camera crew I was with went to Avaya Stadium for some interviews with Earthquakes player and to follow them thru team practice. The following day it was off to Stanford Stadium for the big game in front of a sell out crowd. After some pre-game interviews, it was down to field level for the contest and post-game coverage. I’d had to say one of the highlights of the day for this sound mixer was when the Earthquake’s mascot “Q” grabbed my boom and started waving it around like a banner. Oh…and San Jose won 3-0.
Rockin' The Master- Deimos Records
Just finished up the mastering on the upcoming release from Deimos Records artist 2 Lazy Boys. They’re punk, they’re country punk, they’re even a bit poppy in spots. Short fast songs and gentle edgy ballads. Well penned tunes that have kept me humming the hooks for days. This one is being released on vinyl and the various digital formats. I’ll post some song links after the record comes out.
Post Sound For REI
Hands On Sound was hired by Torin Scott to do production audio clean up and the mix on a nice piece for retailer REI. This video looks at Andy Browne, the company’s old employee. You can watch it here.
When the mission is as big as to make the world a better place, what can one person do? Ask Andy Browne and he’ll tell you; get more people to spend more time outdoors. In Andy’s case, that means backpacking and he’s been doing it for ninety years. Around a campfire, Andy will regale you with stories of hiking in Yosemite National Park and learning to take photos from Ansel Adams. What advice does he have for young people just starting out in life? Grab your gear and go backpacking, you’ll learn things that stay with you throughout your life. ANDY is a close look at one man who embodies the belief that a life outdoors is a life well lived.
Credits:
Directed, produced and edited by: Torin Scott
Cinematography by: Matt Silverman
Additional Cinematography by: Liam Delacroix
Audio Engineer: Will Mitchell
Lyft and Women's History Month
I had the honor of working on a shoot recently at Lyft HQ in San Francisco that included a sit down interview with Valerie Jarrett, former Senior advisor to President Obama during his 8 years in office. Valerie was speaking on behalf of a nationwide campaign that Lyft was running to celebrate Women’s History month. Here is the edit of the interview that Across The Pond Productions put together.