Robot Art Documentary
Pre-production Plan/ Briefing document
Synopsis:
Uki artist, Robert Todonai, uses his scientific background, and passion for new and unique art forms, in order to create a series of robot arms which paint. As a primarily traditional artist, Todonai experiences scepticism from the wider art community because of an inherent western bias against robots, this scepticism leads to Todonai fearing for his reputation as an artist, as a loss of reputation will mean a loss on income. Todonai must come to terms with this fear and stay focused as does truly believe that Robot Art will be a mainstream and accepted part of the Art Community in the future.
The documentary will be 7-12 minutes long.
Our work:
- Original Soundtrack – Delivered
- Foley – Week 11
- 2.0 Mix – Week 13
Foley –
The foley will occur in the parts where the robots are painting and no dialogues are present (refer to Netflix’s Chef’s Table intros, where the chefs are preparing their dishes in a dead silent space).
The session:
Studio: Audient B (due to the better monitoring and lower noise flooor)
Gear: 1x shotgun microphone (best available)
DAW: Pro Tools session with monitoring path bypassing the console, that way, our mixes will be made in the box in the pace as we track it.
—————-UPDATED FOLEY ASSETS —————
– Robot’s motor working –
We will borrow the power drills from the tech team. This will be 80% of the foley work and we should focus on making it as intimate and as pleasant as possible.
– Brush touching the paint –
I (JP) will bring a brush and a canvas to the foley session. If the brush becomes too quiet for the room’s noise floor, we will attempt other objects to reduce the signal to noise ratio.
– Paint tube being squeezed –
A toothpaste would be great, however, it may be too quiet to record. We could try a mix of lots of different objects and see if it is enough to trick their eyes.
– Paint mixture –
Mouth squeaks and car keys
– Brush being put in place –
Car keys, real brush and water bottle cap
—- AMBIENT TRACKS – DELIVERY AS A SEPARATE STEREO TRACK —-
– Rain – Processed pink noise.
– Plants outside in nature – Zoom field recorder outside the street.
———————————————————-
In this case, the foley’s goal is not to recreate a precise real-world environment but to bring an intimate and focused feeling to the audience. There is a high probability that we will discard the ambient tracks to enhance this in your face, intimate feeling. That said, our foley recordings will need to be of absolutely high quality as they will possibly not be masked with atmospheric sounds.
Original Soundtrack
The director wants a modular soundtrack that basically reacts to the vibe presented at the screen. This will be hard to implement without seeing any actual footages, however, the director pointed two music genres: synth based 70’s rock (Beatles, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd) and Victorian-era classical music.
Update: The director decided to remove the classical music idea as she enjoyed our calm, ambient hand-pan/synth-driven songs.
The acts may also guide us to where each song style should sit:
Act 1 – Introduction to Todonai and Robot Art
Calm ¾ background handpan in C#Maj with ambient synths resolving in an epic guitar and drums Deep Purple style intro. From there, we’ll maintain an uplift 4/4 major 70’s rock pace.
The goal is to keep the audience excited and engaged.
Act 2 – Fear of losing reputation and respect as an artist.
Classical music vibe, staccato strings, oboes and dreamy pianos could come in place. Handpan could be a good addition as well. Let’s try to keep it as elegant and minimal as possible so we don’t have to spend much time in programming midi.
Acoustic guitar doing a jazz melodic minor scale could also be handy. Key will still be in C#Maj.
The whole idea is to give the audience a feeling of doubt and intimacy, with some amount of hope.
Act 3 – Moving Beyond Fear, believing that Robot Art will one day become mainstream.
This is where the heavy synths come in, the future is here, we could actually experiment by blending both classical and 70’s rock genres to create an idea of successfulness, happiness and human growth.
Update: Since we have successfully recorded all the songs and got the green light from the director, the film editor will now decide where the tracks should sit.
Deadlines –
So far we have successfully fulfilled the sound track’s deadline at week 9, and we can safely assume that the foley will be delivered by week 11.
However, the mix should ideally be done by week 11-12 (when we receive the final cut) and the film crew encountered a couple editing issues. So we should expect that the delivery will happen only by week 13. That said, we should make a fairly simple, but well balanced, 2.0 mix with possible upscaling to 5.1 in case we have spare time. This will assure that the delivery will be done in time, although unfortunately perhaps compromising the quality.
João Pereira 