Yesterday I sat with the Director and watched the whole film from start to finish. The main reason was check over all the sound editorial stuff and see where we are at with the mix. We both came up with some things to add or tweak as we went through, but overall it is sitting in a pretty good place. I now have a list of things to work on, but it shouldn’t take me too much work to have it ready, and then music should be all completed by the end of this week for final film mix the next week.
There are some train sounds required for a scene in the movie, and while I have some train sounds in there I was hoping for something a bit nicer or more customised to what is needed. It needed an old school sounding train, nothing too modern, but not as old as a steam train, for a good pass by. Once a month the Canberra Railway Museum do a nostalgic Sunday afternoon train trip from Kingston station in Canberra, to Bungendore and back again. About a week ago I scoped out their timetable and hoped that today I might be able to get out to get a decent recording of it. Unfortunately the weather forecast was suggesting some rain and wind so I was a little doubtful that I would get the opportunity, but when it only looked a little overcast this morning, and not actually rainy, I decided I’d get prepared and go out.
First thing I did was got on Google Maps and looked for a place that might provide close access to the tracks, but without traffic or flight noise. Ideally I should be able to find somewhere that offers some wind protection, but without being right next to lots of trees either, as they tend to sound very noisy in the wind. The place should also be legal to access.
I scoped out a couple of possibilities on Google Maps in the morning that are not far from town and went for a drive this morning to see if they might work out. The first place I couldn’t really tell if it was an accessible road/access from Google Maps or not, but it had a padlocked gate so I drove on to the next place. The next place the road got me quite close to the railway, but there were lots of “Private Property – Trespassers will be prosecuted” signs on it where I wanted to access, so instead I went back to the first spot, parked my van next to the road, and went for a walk.
It was a decent trek in to the railway from the road, and I needed to jump a fence to get there. As I got close to the railway I came across a couple of guys in a ute. They were keen to know what I was doing on the property, and it turns out it was a private farm. Once the guys knew what I was doing they were friendly and welcoming. They have had issues with piggers busting through their gates, and cutting through their fences to get through to the forest just past their property, so they were a little stand-offish at first.
The spot was just on the other side from town of a short tunnel. The cutting provided some wind protection, and I figured that the train would probably blow its horn as it approached the tunnel too so I thought it was a good spot to give a go. The weather was still holding out, so I headed back to the studio to gather my recording gear and come back out in time for the train to pass at about 1pm.
I had just packed my gear in the van around 12:30pm when it started spitting rain. It wasn’t proper rain so I decided I’d head out anyway, taking some plastic bags to cover gear just in case it did start raining while I was out. The trek from the van to the railway was a long one. I was carrying 3 mixer/recorders, 2 microphone stands and 8 microphones with wind protection in total. It was a heavy, awkward load and as I was worried that I was going to run late and miss the train I hotfooted it at pace. I got there about 1pm, which meant the train could come past at any minute. I quickly set up a quasi-ORTF pair on one side of the tracks and got it running in case the train came. Then I went to the other side of the tracks and set up another pair going into a different recorder. I had also planned to set up spaced DPA 4060s on either side but I was stressing that the train was going to come past at any moment so I just ran a pair on one side of the tracks as an option, and then got away from the tracks. I just left the recorders running wild, taking a conservative guess at gain levels. I didn’t want to distract the driver and thought they might freak out if they saw a person within a couple of metres of the track within a cutting.
The train came maybe a little after 1:10pm. It was an old diesel train of some sort, which works well for what I was after. My only concern was that the train pretty much idled past the mics, when I was hoping for it to roar past at speed, so I thought that maybe the recording wouldn’t have turned out so well. I got the recording, packed up my mics, and trekked back to the van. Just as I started to drive back it started raining properly so the timing was fortunate for me.
As I loaded my recordings into a Pro Tools session to check out, I had my doubts that the recording would be particularly good, but I found that it actually sounds really great. Not quite as ferocious as I was hoping, but still really nice with some lovely tone to the train. Well worth braving the weather and getting out there.
