Some Kind of Universe
Some Kind of Universe is a project made up of six individual "capsules of inquiry" in which each of the artists from the Professional Actor Training Program contemplated, created and collaged some of what made up their complex universe in the Fall of 2020. Filled with curiosity, passion, frustration, humor, and sometimes brutal honesty, these collages are an expression of how creativity will out - and hopefully provide sympathy and meaning to help us through.
Each capsule is wholly conceived by the individual actor - but the making of all of them is a true collaborative effort between the PATP, film supervisor & editor Christopher Ash, directors Tracy Bersley and Vivienne Benesch, sound designer Brandon Reed and Stage Managers (new newly appointed cinematographers) Liz Ray and Chuck Bayang. Students from the Costume Design Production program also contributed.
Below are selected pieces that I want to highlight the work that I found to be excellent. If you want to hear the full context of these pieces in conjunction with the others please visit this link!
Each capsule is wholly conceived by the individual actor - but the making of all of them is a true collaborative effort between the PATP, film supervisor & editor Christopher Ash, directors Tracy Bersley and Vivienne Benesch, sound designer Brandon Reed and Stage Managers (new newly appointed cinematographers) Liz Ray and Chuck Bayang. Students from the Costume Design Production program also contributed.
Below are selected pieces that I want to highlight the work that I found to be excellent. If you want to hear the full context of these pieces in conjunction with the others please visit this link!
The Lonely LeafWriter & Voiceover: Anthony August
Featuring: AhDream Smith Supervising Filmmaker: Christopher Ash Director: Vivienne Benesch & Tracy Bersley Sound Design & Mix: Brandon Reed Camera/AD/Gaff: Elizabeth Ray & Charles K Bayang This piece is probably my favorite of all of them. August came to us with a poem that he wrote in his past in response to a prompt that Tracy gave to the students. We decided to record his poem as a voiceover, that together with August we went through and comped the best takes. Afterwards, Christopher animated video footage of him exploring the campus around the voiceover. I then took that animation and added sound design and music in response to the footage and the voiceover. This was the final result.
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Listen, Lord A Prayer
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Just Have To Laugh
Writer & Director: AhDream Smith
Supervising Filmmaker: Christopher Ash Director: Vivienne Benesch & Tracy Bersley Sound Design & Mix: Brandon Reed Camera/AD/Gaff: Elizabeth Ray & Charles K Bayang For this piece, we wanted to give the illusion that AhDream was speaking to a parallel version of herself or perhaps she's speaking to her own inner mind. To pull this off we kept the camera on the exact angle the entire time, but recorded on location different takes with her positioned differently each time. I would play back the previous take for her to interact with via a monitor on the other side of the room, that I would later remove in post-production. I did some additional audio restoration, and did some ambience matching to make it feel like she was in the same room the entire time and felt seamless.
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Corset PieceWriter: Sergio Mauritz Ang
Costumer: Lauren Woods Supervising Filmmaker: Christopher Ash Director: Vivienne Benesch & Tracy Bersley Sound Design & Mix: Brandon Reed Camera/AD/Gaff: Elizabeth Ray & Charles K Bayang This piece was meant to show Sergio's connection to his love of theatre and specifically women playwrights as well as to the women in his life. We recorded on location in our dressing rooms, which I was on site for to monitor the recording feed direct into the camera. From there I performed some audio restoration and added sound design and music that Sergio requested to be added in the end. For the SM announcement, we recorded our own stage manager giving a call and I mixed to sound as if it was over the monitor system.
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The InvitationWriter: Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Performer: Tori Jewell Supervising Filmmaker: Christopher Ash Director: Vivienne Benesch & Tracy Bersley Sound Design & Mix: Brandon Reed Camera/AD/Gaff: Elizabeth Ray & Charles K Bayang This piece may appear natural and not overly complicated, but in actual reality it features a ton of ambience replacement and audio restoration. This was recorded on location in an incredibly noisy older home. I took the dialogue from the initial recording and performed a lot of audio restoration to make Tori's performance as clear as possible. Later I added replacement ambience and mixed several layers with the original dialogue track to give the appearance of it being natural as possible. This is the final result of all the ambience replacement and cleanup.
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Slippery RockWriter/Performer: Tori Jewell
Supervising Filmmaker: Christopher Ash Director: Vivienne Benesch & Tracy Bersley Sound Design & Mix: Brandon Reed Camera/AD/Gaff: Elizabeth Ray & Charles K Bayang This piece was recorded entirely as a voiceover that we comped together with Tori to give her the best performance possible. It was meant to be her recalling a memory of her childhood, so we added reverb and processing to her voiceover as if she was talking to herself inside her mind. I replaced the ambience we recorded of her walking through the park with artificial ambience as the original had too much background noise from people nearby that would distract from the voiceover.
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Taco FridaysWriter/Performer: Omolade Wey
Supervising Filmmaker: Christopher Ash Director: Vivienne Benesch & Tracy Bersley Sound Design & Mix: Brandon Reed Camera/AD/Gaff: Elizabeth Ray & Charles K Bayang Similar to Tori's piece, we wanted Omolade's to feel as if she was recalling her childhood. We took the same approach and recorded her text as a voiceover. As she recalls how she met her childhood friend, I added some sound design with children playing in a playground to help us connect a setting with how they met. As she begins to explain how they drifted apart as they aged, I added some atmospheric underscoring to help give the piece a more somber and grounded mood.
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