Reflection for the Soundtrack and Foley in Love (2014)

In this post,  I would like to introduce you to the people and some process behind the amazing soundtracks and foley in Love (2014).

To create the Music, Sound Effect and Audio for Love(2014) I worked with Lawrence Solon and Ellis Coopey for the music; Peter William for the foley, audio recording and editing. Both Lawrence and Peter used Avid Protools to create the music, editing and recording where else Ellis used Logic.

As the director, I made the decision to mix both the soundtracks that was created by these talents. I've used the soundtrack that Lawrence Solon made from the beginning up to when the bank became really quiet, and used Ellis Coopey's soundtrack from the robbery up to the end. By combining both their sound I was able to achieve the emotions I wanted for the film through the soundtracks. Also, the soundtrack that was used on the credits was initially made by Lawrence, for the crying part in my film. It was really good and I felt that I could use that for my credits although it was not used for what it was made for.

For the foley I have spent quite a lot of time experimenting with different sounds. I took inspiration from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. My inspiration to have some anxious breathing at the end, came from watching this movie.

I experimented recording the sound from different objects for my film. The coin sound towards the end of the film came from marbles. The breathing sound was me breathing anxiously into the mic.

Quite a lot of time was spend in the studio recording my voice and and editing the sound together. I manage to achieve a really clear and professional sound working with this talented people and using the recording studio in Middlesex University.

They were all very busy people, I really appreciate their time and talent to create the sound and music for this film. It was also an experience for me, to learn to work with other talents, and an opportunity to improve my directing skills to create what I wanted for the film, through the help from others.

Time-Lapse of Animating the Bank Robbery Scene

             What you see on the screen beside me, is the live view of the camera on Dragon Stop motion software. As I was animating the objects, I manually zoomed into the shot by bringing the camera down. This scene is the part where the man "robber" that was next to me came really close to me. I used shapes made of buttons and perspex. Colour coordinated to represent myself and the robber. The friendly circular shape slowly evolved into an unfriendly sharp-pointed shape coming towards the screen to portray the danger and terror.

GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY !

The picture above shows the calligraphy reference

that I wrote for a scene in my Graduation Film.

The 5 chinese characters in the middle 

from top left to right and the middle

is said in Cantonese, 

Bei Sai De Qin Gor - GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY !

I was inspired to use text to represent the dialogue in my film,

from Jonathan Hodgson's film, The Man with the Beautiful Eye,

it is when the man speaks to the children.

HEY little gentleman, having a good time I hope?

This is the result of my animation, done together with my assistant Stephanie Sohail.

We animated this scene using iron fillings.

Iron fillings are "not poisonous" but must be handled with care,
do not consume, or touch your face to avoid contact with your eye,

to be safe wear gloves and wash your hands after used.

This is my advice now that we didn't follow then.

So, after animating for almost two hours,

we felt really sick and dizzy,

probably from inhaling too much iron filling.

We not only needed to animate with a stick,

and control the movement using magnet

but we had to blow through the straw

to create the effect and transition that we wanted.
At times we were touching the iron fillings with our hand as they tend to stick to your hands.

However, after hours of animating we were really pleased with the result and considered this experience a success.

Poor Steph had to bare with my crazy experiments.

Hope you had fun though.

Thank you again.

Traffic in Malaysia

The GIF below shows the delicate but fun process of setting up my scene,
 on Dragon stop motion software.
I adjust the pieces on the grids and
draw lines on the screen using the tools in the software
to guide me while I am animating the objects.

In the search of materials to represent Kuala Lumpur,
the capital city of Malaysia, 

I decided to use metal objects to represent cars,
and create the bad traffic in the city. 

For the set-up of lighting, I didn't want to use silhouette this time,
As I wanted to show the chunky metal and nature-unfriendly "cars" in the city.

On the picture above,
you see a soft white light shining just slight from the top of the set.
There is also a light box below to give the scene a natural glow.

Kuala Lumpur Cityscape Lights (Failure)

This was my initial idea to represent city in Malaysia during night time, 

The design interest me and I really wanted to try the technique like this video.

I had to discard this idea because of the limitation of this material I had-MDF board with holes... There wasn't enough holes to design both the twin towers that I wanted. I would need to reconstruct the MDF board and I felt that it would be too time consuming for this project.

While playing with MDF Boards from the workshop I made an interesting graphic, 

I wanted to use them for the bank scene.

and a little selfie of Pam and Charlie testing out my "Home-made" 3D glasses.. 

Sensing fear

This is the process of animating the shot, "Then... he came really close to me..."

I really enjoyed re-aimating this scene. I had a digital animated version, that had flashes of red colour to show the intensity of the moment, but I found some plastic circles both red and blue, and a sharp red cog, which I thought could represent me, the man and the dangerous situation.

Emotional battles in my film

 I face emotional challenges in the process of making this film, because it brings back a very personal and traumatic experience.

Hence, my faith points me back to the book of Psalms in the bible for inspiration and comfort.

Also, I thought of promises from the book of Revelation in the Bible concerning God's new creation.
 God's words in this verse gives me eternal hope because we live in a broken world,

 This is my idea, to leave my audience with an everlasting hope that I know of instead of despair.

Almost everything from the old testament concerning Jesus has come to pass in the new testament, but the new testament have new promises from God, and
the idea of the new creation seems quite vague to people I have shown my film to,
probably because we don't share the same faith, or some say that it is talking about a totally different story,
so, I am searching for a way,  to communicate hope,
when we face difficulties in life, that could be universal to all.




I am writing this in my blog, to document the process of writing the finale of my film. 

The 12 principles of animation

I found some of this principles quite helpful to improve my stop motion animation.


The illusion of life from cento lodigiani on Vimeo.