Six feet above

• Main Author: Foong, John Shu Min
• Other Authors: Sebastian Grobler
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Mass media::Broadcasting::Motion pictures and films; DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Film
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/74441
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This report will document the entire process of pre, post, and actual production sound for the making of the film, “Six Feet Above”. The first part of the report will cover the pre-production planning for the film and the steps taken to prepare for production sound recording. Onwards from that, the report will cover the actual day production recording – positive and negative experiences will be documented, along with the solutions developed to tackle difficult situations on set. The final part of the report will document the post-production workflow of sound for the final film. This will cover the acquisition of extra ambient sound, the results of the quality from production sound, and the process of refining the captured sound to deliver it into the final production. Conceptualization: Six Feet Above takes place in the near future where technology has been able to thin the line between reality and the virtual world. The concept of the film revolves around a device that is able to bring people to life based on their memories or information stored on their characteristics. While being a part of the discussion for the film during the writing stages of the script, I understood that the film would rely heavily on this technology and with it, a facility would be needed to serve as a platform for real life people to “enter” the virtual world. Building up this concept into the sound world was an internal debate within myself. Would the sounds be different in the virtual world or would they sound real in order to immerse the audience and the characters into their environment? Settling on immersion, the concept sound for the film would focus on mechanic hums and beeps for the housing facility while keeping those out for the actual virtual environment. This would help emphasise the fact that the real world still relied on technology to bring them into a new world but since the new world looked and sounded real, it would bring the audience to the conclusion that the setting of the film was not too far ahead into the future but still showed the advancement in virtual technology. Conceptualizing the environments also played a major role in the film. Since the films would be shot in multiple environments, it would be necessary to have the ambient sound in the film accurate. In one such example, a scene was shot in a park with trees and forests surrounding the area. The scene itself didn’t have any signs of wildlife (birds, animals, etc.) but in order to bring an extra element of a “park” into the film, bird sounds from a sound library were added in post-production to give the film an extra layer of immersion.