Sound Post for Verity's Summer

We recently completed sound post production on Verity's Summer, a new feature film by Palme D'Or nominee Director, Ben Crowe.

Verity's Summer is the story of a young woman’s journey from the security of childhood to the compromises of adulthood and moral ambiguities of love. It is also an intimate portrayal of a family coming to terms with the traumas and violence of distant war that are brought back home.

The film stars, Indea Barbe-Willson, Martin McGlade, James Doherty, Nicola Wright, and Christian Hogas and was shot on location in the North East.

'The ambiences play a big part in this film and we wanted to create distinctive 'backgrounds' for each part of the film', comments sound designer, Alex Hudd. 'The coast is ever present in the film and so from a 'sound tag' point of view I wanted to make sure the sea sounds were distinctive and repeatable if necessary in order to reinforce the scenes.'

For the ambiences, Alex spent a weekend in West Wales recording lots of different locations for the film. 'I had already spotted the film for what I needed to record but I took a rough cut of the film on my iPhone so I was able to get an idea of perspective there and then when making decisions on where to position the microphones for the best recording. I took many different sound perspectives from close up to the waves, to many hundreds of meters away, at times. I also took recordings of the countryside nearby as these also play an important part in many of the scenes in Verity's Summer.

A chance recording I made of some sea birds defending territory on one of the beaches was also very useful in several scenes during post production. I chose Wales partly because it offered the same 'sound feel' as the visuals had suggested to me but also because it is largely free of interference from transport such as aircraft, motorways and trains. In fact, recording on location in many parts of Wales is, at times like having your own outdoor studio, such is the absence of external sound interference. And I also love visiting this area, so it was a good excuse for a short break!!'

Ambience recordings were combined with other sounds in order to subtly change the mood of the film as a scene progressed. For example, we were keen to make sure we had simple but dark textures in some scenes, particularly the more difficult dialogue subjects. In others, such as Verity's garden we wanted to make the sound detailed and comfortable, as the garden is often a place of solace for her.'

Among the many Foley sounds we recorded were a variety of Trangia sounds for when one of the characters (Martin McGlade, as Castle) is eating in his encampment. Dreambase Studios' co-director Mark enjoyed a 'camping' lunch of cold baked beans and stale bread that day in order to complete the Foley recording for the scene, but once edited in it worked tremendously well and was absolutely necessary due to rain interference on the original production tracks.

Verity's Summer premieres on 21st April 2012 at London's Shortwave Cinema.