31st December – Charlie Campagna – Recording Sound for Film
Charlie Campagna, composer, sound designer, sound librarian, sound recordist, musician, talks about working with sound in Hollywood.
Track listing:
1. Corvette ZR1 for The Last Stand.
2. Slinky – Traditional slinky suspended and stretched out with two contact mics through a couple of guitar processors. This was recorded for Star Trek.
3. Gunshots for Django Unchained.
4. Creating thunder for Prometheus
5. The elevator shaft was recorded for the movie Devil by M Night Shyamalan. I stumbled upon this leaving a friend’s house at 2am; the drone was actually quite loud and I was lucky to have a dpa 5100 rig with me. I added a Waves Mondo Mod to the front right channel and to the surround left with a very slow sweep. I then duplicated that plug-in instance and inserted that on the front left and right surround. The aim was to have an out-of-phase occurrence when the plug-ins crosspaths to create an unsettling feeling. You would need to monitor this in a 5.0 environment to hear the full effect – I hope subtle but effective.
6. Hurricane Irene, (inside and outside perspective). When visiting family in Baltimore, Maryland, we discovered all flights out of the eastern coast were cancelled due to the storm, leaving me nothing else to due but read and record. The 1st segment is one 800T mic in a crack of a window pane that was very vocal from the wind creating a eerie vocal moan good for many uses. The second segment is a recording of the storm approaching (interior perspective). I was surprised to find out how warm and misty the rain was – it was truly a tropical storm, I felt “this is it?? Wimpy warm misty rain??” After the first 40 minutes I noticed my B&K 4011s were sensitive to the lightning spiking my signal, maybe because they were near the window pane. Then we switch to an interior perspective for the 3rd section of these recordings.
The 4th and last segment is the storm in full fury, exterior perspective. By the 3rd hour power transformers exploded and 200 hundred year-old oak trees were ripped out of the earth like toothpicks. The mics in standard zepplins held their composure as I was in a covered entrance way out of the direct sideways gale force gusts. The sound you hear is mostly oak trees blown from the side. I remember a parking sign blown by in a blink of an eye.
7. Quarks – High Neighbor (1991). Directed/edited by Steven Soderbergh. Starring Ron Bartlett (drums), Charlie Campagna (guitar), Oscar Mitt (vocals), Forrest Pierson (guitar), Eric Potter (bass). You can watch the video here
8. Long Wave mix – Skin Would Shed (Trip Dance Theatre, 2002) – Bell Frenzy (Trip Dance Theatre, 2004) – The Lights in the Sky are Called Stars (Commissioned by Erica Rebollar Dance Theatre, Modern Dance, Created in the tempo of 120 BPM (actual time) so the clocks and watches can create the polyrhythmic structure, gated guitar, layered cello) – Guitar Pattern x5 (2013)
Station IDs: Eva & Pepa