Disconnected (Short film, 2021)

In my final year, my primary project was as sound recordist and sound designer for the short film Disconnected. This is where I have focused most of my work for the year, but in addition, I was a runner on Permanent Halloween, and an extra in both My House of Things and Objects of Desire, in the latter, I also lightly assisted in the sound process and the sound designer for that film also supported me where I needed it.. Using experience from these projects, I joined a small group of other student filmmakers in making a film outside of university, shadowing the steps and procedures we took in making our covid compliant graduate films. This film was significant as it took intense time management in my final week of sound design for Disconnected.

Disconnected is a film about a girl trying to build the confidence to call her father, discussing it with her mother and using music and other types of escapism to avoid this. In her fantasies, she tries to find safety by revisiting her childhood bedroom and trying to lose herself in dance and art, all the while the fear of her father calling her looms over her. 

This film was made entirely during the coronavirus pandemic, during production, the country was in a national lockdown, and during pitching and post production I was in isolation. The isolation had a severe mental toll where working through it became increasingly difficult. Social distancing and limited locations, causing us to lose our planned interior locations in pre production and re-plan to use just the two locations, the garden and the void. The filming period was delayed to follow lockdown restrictions, leading to less post production time, leaving no time for ADR and my foley work was done at home in far from ideal setup. The university building where I worked in post production had limited hours meaning I had to work both in person and at home, leading to technical limitations. I further felt that being the sole member of the sound crew limited my potential.

Disconnected was always my opportunity to show what I knew and what I wanted to showcase my abilities but also develop new skills. The script was written with my wants from my final year in mind; My partner was the writer and production designer for this film, leading to lengthy discussions about our wants to showcase our talents in our graduate films. Until now, all films I had worked on had had little to no sync dialogue, my second year film had a single word, the actors mouth was not in frame and my experimental had no dialogue. I was very proud of both these films but both followed the same tone of rising intensity in their soundscape, using largely acousmatic sound effects. Both films also didn’t have a moment to breathe and reset themselves. I wanted a film that had moments of acoustic density but that would slow again and take a moment to breath, “Instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.” Taking this on board, the script for Disconnected had sound opportunities in moments of silent thought, moments led by music alone, moments of intensity that I felt I’d proved myself on before and moments with a focus on pure dialogue. 

On learning sound design, we were pushed to a rule of the Law of Two-and-a-half , a technique described by Walter Murch as having three specific sound effects is the point that the audience no longer follow the specifics, for example, when watching one man walking, the synchronisation of his footsteps is essential, when watching two, it is the same case, but when watching 3 or more, the mind cannot place them as distinct sounds and perfect synchronisation is less important. A perfect point of 2 and half is where the audience can appreciate the specifics and the wider scope of the intent. This was something we were taught and reminded of in previous years, but that I had found before is easy to break as a rule, which Walter Murch had also gone

on to say, our brains read different parts of a scene in different ways, and using this, you can have 5 discreet audio sources. The reason I bring this up here in pre-production is that I wanted a film that acoustically wandered across the spectrum (see image) but also came together in intense moments where each of these acoustic elements would cooperate in a single, intense mix, and from the first draft of the script until after I was signed on to the project, I was confident that the film was meeting the key things I wanted to explore and demonstrate my ability in my graduate film.

Pitching for this project was relatively simple compared to my previous year’s pitching. Due to covid restrictions, the sound crews could not pitch for experimentals, only the 9 drama films. There are only 9 students pursuing sound, and we had a meeting where we found we almost all had different first choices to each other. I was the only student wanting to pursue Disconnected, so when it came to my pitch, I instead focussed on talking about the idea I was most excited to explore, a “radioactive motif” revolving around the character of the monster / father. I regret choosing this route instead of a traditional pitch as I feel I lost the confidence of the producer for some time, as I was clearly not pitching to get the film but instead just talking about ideas knowing I’d be chosen anyway. The director is a close friend of mine who knew me, and I had already been told I would have been their first choice before pitching.

To regain the producer’s confidence, I arranged a formal meeting with the writer, director and producer where I annotated that version of the script and shared my ideas and plans for the film as a whole. As the script continued to be edited and I made a more in depth annotated script later as part of another filmmaking module, I have deleted the original annotated script. Attached is the latest annotation of the film.

Unlike nearly all of the other drama films made this year, the director of our film was not the writer, and there were several drafts in script development that moved away from what I wanted to explore in the film. Despite this, I was encouraging because I was keen for the director to make the film her vision, and the versions she wrote were of the film she wanted to make. I still feel it is more important to my work that I feel that I am working to a vision of the director, and my ideas are applied through her lens than to focus on it showcasing my own wants from sound. Despite this, in the directors script development the story and tone returned to that of the writer’s vision, thanks to their collaboration.

In early december, I decided I was going to make a 5.1 mix film and for my on set ambience and room tone, I was going to make a radio microphone array to record an instant 5.1 mix. This was inspired by my tutor speaking about making a stereo microphone array out of two radio microphones and a coat hanger. In a 5.1 mix, there are 5 speaker locations, so I planned for 5 microphones, the center channel would be set at the primary dialogue location, and then using the master shot position, I’d find the ideal locations for the front left and front right locations and then place the read left and right microphones towards the camera in a wider position to focus on reading ambiance. On the indoor set days, I was advised on arranging to attach this array to the ceiling as we were supposed to be in a location that would allow that, however due to the building we would be filming in being incomplete, we ended up filming in a different studio that did not allow ceiling mounting, so the plan was abandoned.

I continued my pre-production for this time, as a part of my sound work with the university, I had a thorough pre-production portfolio by January 23rd, where I had broken down several parts of the film. I had a thorough foley list which I used to record extra sound effects on set as wild tracks. I knew from all of my previous work that my preferred style of post production editing is to discard all audio except the dialogue and in this film, I only planned to record the dialogue and the ambiance / room tone of the locations.

Throughout pre-production, I took extra responsibility in finding a composer. Even before pitching, the writer and I had been recommended two film composers from Leeds Conservatoire by a friend, and when our director joined our film after her pitch, we passed on the information. She was grateful but asked to hold off on contacting them while we followed professional channels in finding a composer. Later on, the writer and I prepared a composer's call which we sent online and received many responses. One of the best responses was a work in progress score that a composer had made for us. This composer was one of the original two we were recommended, and despite not contacting him yet, he had shown a lot of interest and resolve by making a score when applying for our film. We contacted him and told him he was currently on our shortlist, but coming up was a mixer with film composers at Leeds Conservatoire and we were wanting to see all options. When the mixer took place, we again saw this composer’s work along with many others. I focused on recording our favourite composers’ websites, showreels, professional pages and contact information. Even after this point, we still favoured our first         Boom pole on a C-Stand, composer, and he was still interested in choosing our film.     counterbalanced by a sand bag

I worked closely with the production designer in Pre-Production, largely assisting in tasks that needed more than one pair of hands, which as we lived together, we were able to do without breaking social distancing. I also sourced as many fake flowers as I could while the production designer worked on set planning and frequently accompanied the production designer when collecting items like fans, the monster mask and materials. I gave as much wanted advice as I could, but as she was very capable I often only needed to be her moral support and to help construct the larger props and costume pieces I also donated many props to the bedroom scene.

Disconnected was filming in the second week, I was acting as a runner on a night shoot for Permanent Halloween and an extra on Objects of Desire the previous week, I was very lucky to do this as it put me in good stead for my production week, otherwise I’d have been off film sets for just over a year, but this helped me get my mindset to the right place. Permanent Halloween was an intense night shoot with a lot of demands for me when helping as a runner, having been the most physically taxing work I have done in filmmaking with large complex props and kit, and issues with batteries and locations requiring constant work. Objects of Desire had some issues in the team, leading to different complications on set, that helped me address issues on my own set and deal with them constructively. I felt very prepared coming from pre-production into production, I felt very confident in my abilities, and with the shoot times being delayed due to coronavirus, I had several extra months to solidify my preparation. 

In the morning of the shoot, I tested my kit and confirmed it all worked. After confirming everything, I saw that I had been given the Sennheiser HD 25 Plus headphones. I had asked for a pair of BeyerDynamic DT 100 headphones as I find the other pair gets uncomfortable after long use. After arriving on set, we set up equipment for the first shot and I was having issues with losing audio and general noise in the wire. I eventually found the problem, the aux to jack adapter wasn’t making a clear connection with the headphones and would fall loose easily. I knew that there was a shop only 5 minutes away in Headingley that would sell the adapter but due to the current Covid-19 restrictions, they were closed. Additionally, our driver helping had already been sent on an errand, when he returned, we sent him to collect a replacement from the university while I finished my preparation using my cheap phone headphones. Due to this delay caused by me not testing the second headphone pair, we were delayed on the first shot and as a crew, we had to work especially quickly to regain time. In addition, we were plagued by unpredictable weather, including two sudden bouts of snowfall, we were further delayed by having to make changes for consistency

Working with the DOP and Production Designer, I mounted my main radio microphone out of shot to the underside of the table and covered the top with a small foam windshield, allowing it to work as a plant mic that was very close to our lead actress. I then went off set and collected tufts of grass to cover those that I’d place on the ground. This worked very well, with the exception of one of the Daughter character’s scenes where she stood on one of my radio microphones in the front left position. Thankfully the microphone wasn’t damaged but that microphone’s audio was unusable for that moment of audio from that take. This was additionally one of the harder shots for me to boom, and until post production, I was concerned about the quality of the sound. Thankfully, a combination of two other radio microphones caught a close perspective. That scene was cut from the final film regardless.

There was some tension on the first day of set from the producer, after everyone had worked well together to and we had regained time to the point of wrapping an hour early just in time to avoid a long slow flurry, our producer took a moment to address us as a crew where she only gave strong criticism, to me, this was largely about the sound delay in the morning, but fault was found with all of the crew with no positive feedback, despite the fact that this was the most smoothly a film I had worked on had gone and the happiest we had

The plan of the boom and radio mics for the master shot       Focusing on the daughter’s dialogue while avoiding camera pans

been as a crew collectively. After hearing on one of the other films from crew that issues had been left unsaid and on the final day, tensions had risen to their highest, the production designer and I took the director aside before going home and asked if she could have a word on our behalf. The director did a great job, raising the issues and supporting the producer, visiting her after the shoot to keep each other company while they did their production write ups and notes.

The second day of the production was even smoother, despite having many shots, we finished ahead of time and got safety shots of most shots, and everyone enjoyed their time on set. The majority of this day was focused on the scene between the Daughter and Reason, which was cut from the final film. As I lived with the production designer / writer of the film, I knew the size of Reason’s headdress meant that framing would be much higher than normal, I adjusted my radio microphones and hidden a microphone in a flower box next to Reason, I attached it to a flower stem and stuck flowers to it, allowing it to be as close as possible and unobstructed by the flower box. I continued to boom but in shots with dialogue from both characters, I focused on using the boom to record the Daughter as her dialogue was being picked up less by the microphone array. Also, learning from the microphone being trod on, I was able to attach the closer microphones to the stone wall by the stairs and I attached a second to the branches of a tree.

Throughout this day, we were repeatedly struggling with the sound of a prop plane as a pilot was learning to fly over the area. This rarely ceased and left a difficult sound in much of the dialogue, especially in the reason scene. The plane was small and the sound it made was a high enough pitch that it’s frequencies overlapped with dialogue, but as it wasn’t leaving and we had to keep to the schedule, we pushed on regardless.

In the final two days, I had relatively little sound to record. On day 3, I recorded the room tone and a scream, and on the final day, I recorded the phone call between the Daughter and her Father. In this final conversation, I attached two radio microphones to tripods and positioned them behind the characters. In previous meetings and notes, I was expecting them to be standing back to back and it was a surprise on set when there was about four meters of space between them. Without the boom, I needed the radio microphones, and couldn’t attach microphones to the actors due to covid restrictions, but thankfully, as the characters and camera were stationary, I could position the tripods behind the characters, totally obscured from the camera, less than 30cm from the actors’ mouths.

On the outside shots, I used a shotgun microphone to minimise external noises sources like traffic and wind but on the indoor days, I switched to a supercardioid microphone that functions better indoors as it cancels out reverberant noise from the enclosed room. As the shots became close ups, I reused the c-stand to record clean dialogue without any boom handling. I can confidently call the audio I recorded here the best I have ever recorded, it had perfect clarity with an almost inaudible noise floor.

Due to the extra time I had from only recording dialogue, I could go back to my previous simple notes from the other days and focus on polishing them, marking all specific noises I was unhappy with, tagging the wild tracks, adding everything that may be relevant for post-production, highlighting good takes and renaming takes to have clear titles to make their setup and take number as clear as possible.

The main thing I wish I had planned for was mounting a radio microphone in Reason’s headdress. The idea only came to me on set and as the headdress was delicate, we chose instead to use the nearby planter. But as I live in the house that the headdress was built in, I am sure that I could have planned for this with the production designer if I had realised earlier. Overall, this shoot was by far and away the best I have worked on, everyone was confident and skilled and the various small issues found each day were handled as a team and overall, the group happiness was consistently high. It was a pleasure to work with each and every member of the cast and crew.

Sadly in the post production process, we realised that the flow of the film did not work from script to screen. In the changes, the scene with reason was cut, as was the majority of the footage of the monster. I was keen to keep the film as close to the original script as possible. This was a difficult situation for me to give feedback as I wanted the greatest possible audio opportunities but all feedback we received from peers and tutors was focused only on the flow of the film; the performances and editing. In the end I stepped away from giving feedback on the screenings, as did the writer and production designer, as showcasing our wants and the best possible film to show our specific work was detrimental to the story we were telling, and neither choice is superior to the other.

For the two cut scenes; Reason and the Monster in the garden, as they merged imagination and reality the most, they were the scenes I spent the most time planning for and experimenting with. I always had big plans with the father’s scene, I had an idea I’d struggle to convey to some people to effectively show the father as having a radioactive presence. I was inspired by the fact that photographs of the radioactive decay of Chernobyl are often blurry and have strange artifacting and bleeding from other photos due to the excessive radiation that is exposed to the film. I planned to make the acoustic equivalent of this, and layered several sound effects together to create the effect, including a geiger counter, Vinyl crackling, tape spooling and other sounds to create a filmic, threatening aura. The reason I was keen for this effect was due to the fact that the father only exists on the phone for the daughter in the film, and the compression and technological fear of waiting for the phone call would manifest in this filmic tone. I chose a filmic distorted ambiance over the digital counterpart as it felt more physically corrupted and stylistically worked with the fathers age. In my latest version before learning the scene was cut, I introduced a heartbeat for the daughter made from a recording of my phone’s own dial tone. I wasn’t entirely happy with the final product but the composer was particularly interested in the idea and was keen to work with me to turn this mix of ambiance and SFX into something that was also music. With the scene being cut, we decided to focus on what remained and revisit the idea at a later date.

The other cut scene was Reason’s scene. This had a similarly fantastical ambiance that I’d referred to as a pagan carnival before post production. I planned to combine bells ringing and jingling, slow accordion notes chimes and the crackling of fire to create her ambiance. In the development of this ambiance, the idea morphed into something like a fey nature ambiance, with forest and coastal tones. I used recordings of shells as well as recorded wind chimes and bells to make an ambiance. Her appearance and disappearance felt jarring which I alleviated with a temporary shop bell a few seconds before you see her and before she leaves. I intend to replace this with something more like a fairy bell but again, I plan to complete this too at a later date,  after submitting, for my own sound portfolio. 

These scenes with a work in progress sound cut can be found on one of my previous exports

There were scenes in the film where I was unhappy with the noise floor with the dialogue, this was mostly for the mothers and reason’s dialogue in their respective scenes. I made plans to ADR, and had ran these ideas past the tutors and crew. The actress for the Mother was to come in for ADR in a studio but the actress for Reason lives near London. We planned to make a specially subtitled edit for her scene as she has a microphone that is good as she is an internet brand promoter. While having meetings with the director and writer for any potential re-writes to her dialogue, the decision was made to cut her scene. In the final edit for the mother, I found the dialogue suitable to not require ADR; although it isn’t perfect, the complexity of the ambiance hides the background noise.

When I began working on the Pro Tools edit, I set up my busses for Dialogue, SFX, Foley, Ambiance and Music. This project did not call for any extra busses like some of my other projects, so setting up my I/O work was simple enough. Each bus was set up as a 5.1 bus, and I began working exclusively in  5.1 audio tracks, and when my own recordings wouldn’t support 5.1, I’d pass those tracks into discrete 5.1 busses, simplifying the experience. As there are only two 5.1 edit suites amongst the students, which close at 4pm, I had to work from home as a main location. I was aware that I wouldn’t have an audio setup to truly test 5.1 at home but I was confident that this would not matter as long as I frequently entered the building to check how the film was sounding. 

This turned out not to work as the version of Pro Tools available to students at home does not support 5.1 and would clear my 5.1 busses and tracks when I’d import them. This meant I would have to complete the film as a stereo mix and then use the university facilities to convert the film to a 5.1 mix or only work in the 5.1 edit suites and severely limit my time. I chose the former option as I always intended to do a stereo mix for the film after submission anyway.

One of the earliest scenes in the film is the black void scene where the Daughter dressed in white is followed by the Daughter dressed in black, with a wet ground. This was very similar to work I had done in my 2nd year experimental film, Mercury Grounded, featuring a woman clad in white walking through several rooms, one of which was a wet floored black void. I had recorded several water effects for that film which I had saved into my soundbank that I could use again in this film. The main exception to this was the footsteps; in Mercury Grounded, the water was never shown, only alluded to in the sound, and the footsteps I had recorded were too crisp and sharp, closer to stepping in a shallow puddle than wading through inch deep water. I layered the sound effects in with new sound I generated from stirring water constantly, and making long oar motions for the dragging of the daughter’s feet.

At the end of the scene, the daughter collapses to the ground. I experimented with a large splash but it sounded wrong. And as it was only a second before the daughter’s mind returned to reality, I eventually settled on the sound of her falling on hard ground. After a few tests, I eventually used the sound of the protagonist dying from the end of my previous drama film, All is Lost. This suited the scene, being both subtle and clear.

The final effect of note in this scene is the bottle smashing being twinned with the pencil snapping in the next scene. I was confident I could find the middle sound of these two effects, something akin to a sharp branch snap, that would form the Syncresis of both shots, forming an acoustic match shot. In the working version of this film, the bottle smash happened, then the daughter fell, then the pencil snap would occur. This stopped the shot being a match cut, but I was keen for the soul shots to pair together, as the intention in the writing was for these shots to symbolically match and losing that gave the bottle smash less purpose in the film. I returned to Mercury Grounded, where I had used some royalty free sound effects of ice cracking to simulate the camera cracking, found a pair of loud crack sound effects in the sound file and gently cross-faded the splintering after one into the splintering of the other, the first being with the bottle smash and the second being the pencil snap. When I explained my choice to the director, she agreed with the meaning of the shot and had the shots be re-edited to appear next to each other again, as they are in the final cut. I feel that the ice crack worked better than a branch snapping and I am happy to have a sound effect that works so effectively from this. The version with the two cracks cross fading is in the work in progress export.

I generally struggled with balancing the dialogue and ambiance of the mother and daughter’s dialogue scene. Even now, I am unhappy, but I have kept moving in circles in changing it. Initially, I set the dialogue to average at -12db, roughly a standard volume for it, and mixed around that accordingly, but the dialogue always felt too loud compared to the ambience, even once cleaned up. When mixing, I would either bring up elements of the ambiance or lower the dialogue, but it felt constantly unbalanced, I eventually lowered the dialogue below a -12db average and also lowered the ambiance to let the dialogue sit clearly in the mix. I researched loudness and found specific loudness plugins that would measure loudness considering frequency ranges, decibels and other elements to score the film's loudness and this scene came exactly in the range it was supposed to. Given more time, I would still like to ADR the mother and if this film is thinking of being entered for festivals, I will definitely push to ADR her. I cleaned both character’s dialogue as much as possible and I am overall satisfied that I removed the general noise of the scene and resonance in their voices.

When altering the dialogue for the argument, I needed it clearly muffled as it's never meant to be the focus of the audio. Using the automation in Pro Tools, I gradually increased the reverb and low pass filter so the audio became more muffled but simultaneously more encompassing. I heightened this on the door closing, but I chose not to remove the argument as it is still important to the daughter as she seeks some form of childhood comfort from her room. I allowed the volume of the argument to wander up and down, choosing which intersecting with the room actually distracted here and which failed to, bringing the argument back to the front.

When foleying this film, I enlisted the production designer to help me. We recorded a breathing track and foley all of the pencil drawing, clothes rustling and footsteps, excluding the footsteps from the water scene. We also recorded small effects like sweeping debris off the paper and an Iphone unlock sound. Many of these effects had a high noise floor and as I encroached on my final submission time, I chose to cut several, including the phone unlocking sound. I substituted some footsteps for alternatives from online and brought the pencil drawing as low in the mix as to still be audible, and did what I could to clean it up. This was a difficult experience as I knew my home recording setup would result in a high noise threshold but I was pushed for time and didn’t have time to record in a studio.

For the dance scene, I applied similar techniques to my bedroom scene. When setting my film to 5.1, I set the background argument to the rear speakers and the music to the front, I then pulled the dialogue towards the front throughout the scene while moving the music toward the back of the room. After some trial and error, I found that panning the argument from the absolute front to the absolute back while I panned the music from about 80% to the front of the room, to the opposite, at about 20% to the back of the room. I was inspired by Under the Skin (Glazer, 2013) in the scope of all of the black voids, which either commits to the soundscape being entirely the score or being entirely the close perspective of effects. I initially kept the foley of her clothing through the scene but it placed the perspective wrongly in the space, I cut it as I developed the scene but I kept elements of it in the garden immediately before, while the music is still diegetic. I am very happy with this effect, as the ambiances in the background gradually fade out in order of their distance from the protagonist, leaving her with just her clothing and breathing, and then finally just the music which carried the scene.

Working with the composer in post production was surprisingly easy; I think our dedication to finding our composer in pre-production really paid off as he was very fast to adapt his score to our ideas and often came to us with compex scores with elements we hadn't thought of. When making the primary score which the daughter dances to, I took the first 30 seconds of the score, roughly to the point where the scene transports to the black void and tried to make the sound seem like it had the quality of headphones by applying a strong low pass and high pass filter, I also applied the avid stock lo-fi preset to the music. This didn't work as the sound felt digitally limited, and as a solution, I downloaded the score to my phone and played it back through its speakers. I passed this onto my composer who applied the same technique to future music scores. He also added a low frequency riser to the moment that the space transported to the black void which was a simple addition we’d overlooked that really enhanced the transition. He also made two extra scores, one for the bedroom scene and one for the watery void. The bedroom scene was too intense in its first iteration, however, it was perfect for the ending of the film, and he made modifications to the intensity for the bedroom scene. As a whole, I think the composer’s impact on this film has been huge, his music has had a vast range that carries the expansive range of the sound design.

In the final week of post production, I signed onto an independent film made by fellow film students shadowing the production process, utilising locations we’d otherwise not had access to. As this was in the final week of production, I was hesitant to join, however I eventually decided to join it to increase the range of films I have worked on. To work around this film, I had to push myself in the penultimate week, in the first week of post production, I had to isolate due to covid, and between these two limitations, I had 11 days access to the post production studio across the weekdays of two weeks and the following monday. Despite this limitation, I feel I largely achieved my intentions, but I did feel rushed, and managed all my intentions but without as much polish as I’d have liked, although I will manage that by the time we enter this film for festivals. I learnt a lot from time keeping but most of all, I learnt not to take on too many jobs that overlap so I can give my best to each project.

In the phone call scene, I again utilised the movement of elements in the 5.1 mix, The father’s conversation pans gradually to the center of the room as the music appears moving from the back. I also applied the muffling effects I’d made before. This scene had to remain delicate where the rest were carried by their intensity, and to achieve this, the score and dialogue both remained out of focus with neither drawing attention, allowing the audience time to think. I am very happy with this effect, it utilises most other techniques I developed for other scenes but takes a gentle approach. As the scene ends outside with the daughter hanging up, I let the film end thoughtfully, with my cleanest outdoor ambiance petering out with the music. The moment immediately after the film is neither happy nor sad, but thoughtful, which was my main intention.

For overall tone, two focus films I referenced were Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977) and Climax (Noe, 2018), both were tonal focuses for the void scenes, Eraserhead has an intense tonal presence, using ambiances to create “‘non-music’ like noise, drone, and dark ambient” to emulate the purpose of music. This is most prevalent in the watery void scene, in the others, the daughter’s delicacy favoured a different tone that often wandered into the horrific. As inspiration for these scenes, I used Climax to explore the score and the overlap of beauty and horror, using it for musical reference. For the score itself, I also recommended The Prowler’s Theme from Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse as the instinctual fearful score that would underpin the monster’s scene, as well as Long way Away (Intro) by Clipping. Both of these scores underpin the theme I wanted to explore in both the father’s score and daughter’s scenes, and I passed both on to the composer, as well as use them for reference for the sound design of my film.

To summarise, my experience on Disconnected and the other films I was involved in this year has been very positive, and the adaptation and learning experience has been heightened by covid. I have developed skills I can use outside the film school in my further careers as a sound designer and recordist, and I have developed a setup to work from home that will allow me to work from the end of university. I have developed my ability to prioritise my projects due to issues I had from time management to achieve deadlines as in the industry, nearly meeting deadlines will not be an option. I still feel that there is a lot of room for improvement in my work, I feel my home recording of foley and SFX was subpar and I’d want to improve my skills working in 5.1 in future, and work on a project that is focused on 5.1 from the start without limitations. I do feel that I have both captured the emotion and spectacle of this film, although I feel a lot of the spectacle comes from the cinematic and powerful soundtrack made by the composer. I still feel uncertain of my own critical view of my work, I felt a lot more confident coming off the end of my 2nd year drama film, where I had weeks to focus on perfecting what I was already happy with, this time, I struggle to see my film with an objective eye and hope to develop this as I work on future projects.

I think Disconnected is a strong film and I am proud to say that my sound design is a definite aid to the film, but looking at the other departments, I am equally proud of the production design, directing, performance and all the other aspects that brought this film to life. Of all films I have worked on, this has been the most pleasant and everyone has had the opportunity to showcase their skills. I am proud to call this film my graduate project.