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.