2008 April

New Theatrical Poster

Thursday, April 24th, 2008
by Zak Forsman

Effects Recording – Day 2

Sunday, April 6th, 2008
by Kevin K. Shah

Today Zach Seivers and I recorded some foley effects for White Knuckles, as well as played around with our effects recorded in our first session (i.e. the eerie effects recorded in the underground parking garage…)

We recorded some ‘julie flipping through a book at a library’ as well as her walking, petting a cat, etc… Zach Seivers, the master sound guy that he is did it all in one take - and it was amazing to watch him in the Foley stage through the monitor feed (while I was in the Sound Booth hitting ‘record’ and ’stop’). Such a pro, and so much fun to watch him work.

We also did some William reading the newspaper sounds in the Park - we weren’t able to bring the sound crew to the Malibu location we shot at, so the entire scene is created by foley and mixed effects - and Seivers again, at his best - making it seamless in real.

A few times Zach threw in the over-dramatic television horror set of notes over scenes just to make us laugh and keep me on my toes. It’s fun to throw in random effects during mixing just to keep yourself on your toes and crack yourself up.

It could have been the caffeine and sugar - we both had Sunkist with our delicious lunch from HyMart Deli - 2 spicy falafel sandwiches. Highly recommended. Yum.

One strange and fun highlight of our day was closing down the White Knuckles project after a good long day of work and then messing around with sound.

I went into the VO booth and recited a poem (the one listed in produckt) and Zach added our recorded WK effects from session #1, and distorted the voice (thank god) into this amazing, hard-to-describe sensation - a voice that reverberates through your soul - and he wants to include it on our Effects Release disc which we’ve tentatively titled “sonic infirmary - effects from white knuckles”.

Zach plans to mix together a beautiful symphonic song (ultimately in 5.1 DVD) that will be available with the recorded effects on our upcoming release of the CD. He wanted to include the poem he mixed with the effects on the CD as an example of what can be done - and also as “performance art”. His excitement is contagious!

Can’t wait to share it all with you.

Zach Seivers – Sound Designer

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
by Kevin K. Shah

Zach and I spent the day exploring the sonic landscape of the production offices at Sabi and the surrounding studio, including

WHITE KNUCKLES - SOUND EFFECTS - VOLUME 1

1. Heavy metallic door closing, slamming.
2. Slamming with 5 floors of echo reverb.
3. working elevator shaft sounds
4. deep and shallow air duct vents
5. metallic and concrete stairwells
6. electrical generators
7. electrical hums, buzzes, (great for sounds of lights, flourescents)
8. door slams with echo (sound of a large car door slamming with echo & reverb)
9. empty spaces and shafts
10. whirring fans
11. deadly dark corridors.
12. heavy boiler rooms,
13. morbid silences
14. and haunted corridors
15. a REALLY freaky drippy faucet that everyone will want to use for their next horror film
16. THE HIGHLIGHT;

16. Was the highlight of the day - MOST AMAZINGLY it lasted for 15 minutes of recording : Zach set up for a 15 minute take of the most horrid, horrifying, electrifying, beautiful sounds of beeps, screeches, screams, chains, scraping, mettalic slams, chatter, haunted rhythms and echoes (recorded simultaneous, raw & live — 4 levels beneath the bowels of a los angles building structure in a large tunnel (think Rave). Probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard.

It’s astonishing one man generates such sounds, and his true genius came out. It must have been what it was like to have watched Mozart muse on the piano.

We hope to make available the WHITE KNUCKLES Sound Effects Volume 1 soon…

When came back and listened to the results - we know that we have recorded what will make for excellent sound design options for the abstract sequences in a key moment in White Knuckles, when a character is in great distress…

Sound Design Production Day

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
by Kevin K. Shah

We had an excellent sound design session one day last week with Mr. Zach Seivers - an incredibly talented sound designer that we’ve been lucky to have worked with on a number of projects, most notably White Knuckles and Heart of Now. Zach’s attention to detail and enthusiasm for exploring his art with sound was in full effect during the session, which was grueling and lasted most of the day.

For anyone that’s never went around field recording in a large, old building - (that’s operational but after hours) - please, please try it. It’s a mediation of sorts on the sonic landscape that surrounds you that most of us barely notice. It’s and adventure, and we explore with our ears, and use our other senses to grasp how in fact we can better record what we are hearing.

Zach used a Sanken CSS-5 and swears by it: