My first truly difficult filming experience

This was one of the hardest films I’ve ever had to work on for a number of reasons;

First of all, as a university project, we were assigned groups based on greenlit films, and despite assurances otherwise, these group and film allocations were final. At the film’s then-state, I fundamentally disagreed with what it had to say about the homeless community and it completely missed the mark, bordering on tone deaf, which led to tensions between myself and the module leader. Despite this, after my concerns were aired within the group, I was invited to consult with them on the subsequent rewrites, which eventually were a great success in changing the films representations and really captured the original essence of what the writers wanted.

Secondly, I was sound designer, recorder, mixer and the foley artist. At the time of the start of the production, we had a different sound recordist but he dropped out. As well as this being an extraordinary workload, it was in the one department I didn’t want to work, which did make things mentally difficult at times.

On top of this, picture lock came in 4 days from delivery, before changing again 12 hours before the deadline, during which time there were significant differences in the creative vision for the final soundscape between myself and the producer/directors regarding the score; I wanted slightly different music in the middle and at the end, as I felt the score in the middle section was too “sci-fi” in their cut, and the ending’s levels were completely flat without fading, and mismatched. It was particularly hard for me at the time, as I’d put a lot of work into the mix and to be overruled and have my mix altered by them before the hand-in was very upsetting.

However, this was an extremely important lesson for me regarding working with and for people cereatively, and how pieces take their shape, and I wouldn’t change the process at all - I’m very proud of how this worked out and I’m more than grateful to Kai and Daniel for being so open to the idea of rewrites and facilitating a great collaborative atmosphere.