A Year Of Working Remotely

This tidbit of a post has been sitting around and collecting dust for several years…making it go live just a memory of the COID era. I just realized that the Blog here hasn’t had any entries in almost a year. While the page has been quiet, Hands on Sound has been keeping busy.

Like so many, I have been working remotely for much of 2020 and 2021, serving my clients from a distance for most of the year. With the exception of a handful of location sound gigs, it’s been all Post Production editing and mixing, Podcast production and Music Production.

Music Out Of Thin Air

While Sheltering In Place for the past couple months, I’ve been working on some techniques to create ambient music tracks and have put together a few compositions. In particular, the task has been to make music using items that interact with air movement in some manner. Currently this involves a 4 string aeolian wind harp placed in an open window, some sensors with Arduino boards and a theremin that I built from a kit. All of these are interfaced with Logic Pro X and software instruments. It’s a very organic process which is as simple as capturing wind generated signals and then playing the theremin live to the recordings.

Without any further explanation, here Is “Music Out Of Thin Air #1 and Music Out Of Thin Air #2.

enjoy….

Electronic Music Composition for Aeolian Wind Harp, Theremin & Field Recordings. Captured, Recorded, Mixed by Will Mitchell @ Hands On Sound San Carlos, CA May 2020 www.hands-on-sound.net

"The Sanctuary of Distant Voices" Electronic Music Composition for Aeolian Wind Harp, Theremin & Field Recordings. Captured, Recorded, Mixed by Will Mitchell @ Hands On Sound San Carlos, CA May 2020 www.hands-on-sound.net

Project Tiny Home

Back in February, a film crew from StudioB and I joined forces with the production team from Project Tiny Home to shoot the tail end of an episode of their web series.

Project Tiny Home is a venture between Sutter Home wines and Operaton Tiny Home that helps build homes for those in need. The show we worked on focused on a traveling nurse, her getting a tiny house and moving it from Oregon to San Jose. As someone who moves every 3 months or so, this housing choice was a good fit and also a new lifestyle to get accustomed to.

As with these reality shows, host Zack Giffin, had surprises for our nurse, including some great gifts and a grand reveal featuring a surprise visit from her mother. All in all, a real feel good experience.



Post Sound Mixing-Globally (Update)

It’s always nice to see a project get completed and then made available to the public. One such example, which I discussed in a blog post back in 2018, is the French short Zero One. While doing some updates on my IMDB page, I found that the film has been released and well received on the festival circuit. With a Sound Mix and Sound Design by moi, Zero One was indeed a global collaboration having been filmed in Paris, edited in New York and mixed in California.

Enjoy the trailer.




Corporate Video Sound- Google Cloud Platform

A few months ago I got hired on by Google to help them kick up the audio quality of some of their web videos for the Google GSuite channel and the Google Cloud Platform channel on YouTube. A combination of experience, knowledge and properly selected gear has been the recipe for delivering Google solid production sound and Post-Ready deliverables. Here is one the pieces, this one from the series “Get Cooking In Cloud”.



Production Sound For A Comedy Short

It has been just about a year since we spent 3 long cold nights out in the woods of Northern California, shooting the comedy short Grave Digging. This fun little tale came from Tommy Jordan of Fade To Black Pictures. He wrote, directed and edited the film. So far on the festival circuit, Grave Digging has been picking up awards and mentions on almost every stop.

As with most of these types of projects, I was a one person Sound Dept. carrying the load of recordist, mixer and boom operator. What you’ll hear in the edit is mostly the boom work coming from my trusty Sanken CS-3e microphone.

enjoy…..