This.... this is such a simple lil' lesson... I mean all it would have taken is either a) common sense, or b) one sentence mentioned from ANYONE or c) intelligence or good memory recall to realize I HAVE been told or informed of this, and I should do this... this simple little fact:
MAKE SURE THE COMPOSER AND THE SOUND MIXER ARE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER.
As I have mentioned before, we don't live in a vacuum and film isn't made in a vacuum. One of the best and greatest things about film making is that it is this immensely creatively collaborative undertaking. The people you work with (assuming they were chosen well, or assuming that you are a good leader and can bring out the best in your crew) will make your project immensely better. They will add layers to it that you didn't know existed, their work will add meaning to scenes which were dead/dull/decaying and you will owe them everything.
SO, do THEM a favor, and allow them the opportunities and liberties to communicate freely with one another.
During my experience of making my short film, I had my Sound Mixer here in Toronto, and my composer was all the way in London, England. I assumed that Film making can be approached Serially, that is, one step at a time. But as I mentioned in my last blog post, NOPE. Film Making is something where you're pulling all the oars of the ship at once, not one oar at a time. My incorrect assumption led me to have the composer do all of his work first, and then I would take his musical composition to my sound mixer and then have the mixer fudge with it. Not that the two of them messed up, but as they both mentioned to me later, I could have achieved much better results if one had been able to communicate with the other before they both got on with their work. They would have had a chance to shoot ideas back and forth about including this or that, or increasing the volume or amount of this sound or instrument, or that.. etc etc etc...
It is a wonder that in this day and age with the internet that I didn't keep the pathways of communication open between the two of them, but hey, rookie/amateur/stupid mistake.
Nonetheless, it all came together in the end and I am ever grateful to the two of them. I shall ensure that I work with them again in the future and that they have a chance to pick each other's brains before anything is created next time.
That's the rant for now!
Manu
