Day 1 at the Big Bang

Things didn't really kick off with a big bang in all honesty, as it was a quiet morning in a small production company, after arriving I sat and spoke with Laura Morris who is the runner/ receptionist at Big Bang, she asked me the kinds of things I was interested in so that she could set me up with some things of interest. My morning was mainly made up of tea runs and trips to the shops, (I can now make coffee) but whilst on my duties of supplying drinks to the higher beings I had a great chance to look around and see what goes on at Big Bang. They have several editing sweets some which run Final Cut and some that run Avid, they have specific editors for each piece of software. They also have a sound recording room where voice overs are recorded as well as foley sounds. At 1 o'clock it was time for some lunch and was given an hour of standing outside in the rain, after an hours soaking I was back to my tea and coffee runs, as you can guess I am now a dab hand in the hot drinks department, Just as I was thinking I better not be doing this all week Ben, one of the sound dubbers came in as I was washing up and said I was more than welcome to sit in with him as he was editing some sounds to "Deadly 60" which is a CBBC animal programme.



So once the drying up was finished I went and sat with Ben in his editing suite. He was halfway through his edit but he explained to me the process he had taken so far, firstly he said that he gets all the dialogue in place, and separates everything on to there individual tracks for example music on one track and dialogue on the other. He then goes through the edit each scene by scene firstly adding the atmos sounds and including any other sounds that were necessary. As he was going through the edit he was explaining each move he made which was very interesting and useful for me for future reference. We arrived to a piece in the edit where I plucked up the courage to suggest something to him, which to my shock he agreed with and added it to the edit, at this point in time I was pretty chuffed. I found the sound designing very interesting and Ben had a real knack for it and could visualise sounds in his head, I though that this would be a good technique to use for myself, he was also very quick with the key board shortcuts and got things done at a rapid pace even tho his computer was playing up, this highlighted the importance of finding quicker ways to do things. All in all a slow start to the day at Big Bang but did learn a lot not only about hot drinks but also sound design and how production companies work.