Recording Day – We recorded the script ‘The Estate’ at 4pm on Friday 8th March. Overall I feel the recording went really well, the actors really suited their parts and worked well together. Their personas were exactly what I was hoping for and therefore each character came out just as I had hoped/thought.

A problem I found during the recording was that I did not realise or see that Jeremy had asked for a copy, on the recording day, of a recording schedule. This was therefore not ready for Jeremy and we were not able to print out a copy for him either. Therefore I had to re-write the schedule and therefore the problem was overcome, however It looked unprofessional. The recording schedule went find and I set it so we have 10 minutes to record each scene and 5 minutes between each scene to make any set changes at all. We found the schedule difficult to keep to as we had to split up two different scenes throughout the recording which we were not aware of before. I gave us half an hour leeway for mistakes and problems to occur so we had enough time to rectify them without causing the actors to stay later than they expected.

Before the recording, I was given the role as assistant director by the director Minnie. I feel this role worked well for me as I was able to give my input into their acting and ideas for the scenes. Beforehand, during the rehearsal back in February,  I was reluctant to give direction as I knew this wasn’t my role and did not want overlap with ideas or annoy the director as this was not my role. I feel Minnie felt more comfortable giving out direction with myself as assistant as I was able to agree or disagree with her ideas and gave her support when she speaking to the actors throughout.

We started them off with a couple of read throughs to get a real sense of their characters and for us to listen out and see if any acting direction needed to be given out. We also tried to ensure before recording that the actors felt confident with their props and exactly what they were doing as this made it easier in the long run. Each scene sounded as we expected and wanted them to be. We made the most of using the screens to get a sense that it was set  in an enclosed area. All of our scenes were either in a car, an ice cream van or an office. We turned the screens around and used both the shiny side and the cotton type material side to get two different sounds. The scene I thought was most difficult to convey was the ice cream van and getting a sense of customers outside of it. We wanted to focus the audio on the people inside of the van and therefore we had them closest to the microphone, followed by the screens and then the ‘customers’ behind them to get that sense that they are further away. In that scene we also had to record moaning from the customers separately so we could really highlight that they were angry and annoyed and that will therefore be put in in post production. The only other thing we had to record separately was the sound of a kettle boiling, this was due to the fact that we didn’t know how long it would take didn’t want that to be the focus of the scene as it was a casual action. Fortunately that was it and everything was able to be recorded all together which will benefit us when editing as well as it sounding real and in time.