20/12/2019

Directing ADR recording with Danny John-Jules for short film

Recording post sync ADR for Sound Asleep short film with Nadaav Director and Danny John-Jules from Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf star Danny John-Jules was back in our East London studio with me this week to record additional audio for Sound Asleep. We hadn’t seen each other since the shoot and it was a joy to catch up.  

What is ADR?

ADR is short for Automated Dialogue Recording, also known as post sync. It’s when an actor’s voice is re-recorded after the original shoot. Often it is done to improve poorly recorded audio, change a line, or to be able to separate out dialogue and background sounds, so that a film can be dubbed into different languages. 

Sound Asleep is a unique short film: it has no dialogue. For our Automated Dialogue Recording session we did not try to record dialogue! Danny mostly recreated grunts, sighs, moans and groans, and a lot of heavy breathing. 

Different actors have different methods for ADR. It’s quite a technical challenge as they have to create sounds to match their lip movements on the video recording. Some actors are very technical while others transport themselves back to the moment and act it for real all over. 

Directing ADR

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12/12/2019

Storytelling at Natural Born Storytellers

Natural Born Storytellers logo

I’ll be storytelling live on stage at Natural Born Storytellers this Saturday. Natural Born Storytellers is a live storytelling night, all about true life stories. Performers have eight minutes to tell a true story from their life, on a given theme. This Saturday’s theme is Tales Of Our Elders. I will be telling the story of the first video I ever shot: an interview with my grandfather, telling his epic tale. 

A Polish Jewish soldier, my grandfather evaded both Nazis and Russians in 1939. After several lucky escapes, he was betrayed. He was finally captured by the Soviet Union and sent to the Siberian gulag. In my interview he told me all this and more – how he survived and became part of the Anders’ Army in 1941, how he ended up in Scotland training for D-Day, and how he and 20 other Jewish Poles were court marshalled and sent to 7 years in prison, for trying to escape anti-semitism. 

Despite the epic tale he told me, I was never able to finish the video, and despite 20 years of filmmaking experience, the first film I ever shot will probably be the last film I ever edit. 

Find out why on Saturday 12th December.

7:30pm, Psychedelic Society, 8 Mackintosh Lane, London, E9 6AE

Read more about my performance work here. 

If I ever finish the video, I’ll put it on my films page along with the rest of my directing work.

30/05/2019

Andy Lewis MBE, Paralympic Gold Medalist: Video documentary profile

It was a cold and wet London morning and I had a few short hours with Paralympic gold medalist Andy Lewis MBE. I interviewed him for a short documentary video profile I was making on his life. Andy talked candidly to me about overcoming depression and disability, even though this was the first time we met. He then told me an inspirational tale; how he bounced back and went on to win gold at the Rio Paralympic Games in 2016 and then collected his MBE.

Andy Lewis MBE

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07/02/2017

Sound Asleep, the short film I wrote, starring Danny John-Jules finally shot! Director’s report and photos

Sound Asleep, the comedy short film I have been writing, producing and directing, has finally wrapped! It stars Danny John-Jules (The Cat from Red Dwarf).

 

Long time coming – here’s how it went and lots of photos.

After 4 producers, 4 casting directors, 3 art directors, 3 times finalist for funding, 3 locations, 2 Directors of Photography, 2 builds, a gruelling kickstarter, and just one resilient director, in December I flew to Spain to shoot it.

Nadaav Soudry director with Danny John-Jules, the Cat from Red Dwarf, on the set of Sound Asleep Film
Nadaav with Danny John-Jules on the set of Sound Asleep

Director and crew head to Spain

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28/03/2019

Adobe After Effects VFX: What is rotoscoping – and something you didn’t know about Disney films!

Film frame of Ed Wynn and his character, The Mad Hatter

What is Rotoscoping: Disney To Digital

In the last few months I have been training myself up in adobe after effects vfx techniques to complete Sound Asleep. (The comedy short film I am director of, starring Danny John-Jules – The Cat in Red Dwarf).

Having completed the offline edit, I had been dreading the infamously tedious task of rotoscoping in Adobe After Effects.

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18/01/2018

Video shoot with Andy Lewis MBE, Paralympic Gold Medallist

On a very grey, late December day, on one of the shortest days, I was privileged to shoot an uplifting and heart warming profile of Paralympic Gold Medallist, Andy Lewis MBE.

Andy Lewis MBE and video crew on London Bridge looking at Tower Bridge

Filming on London bridge with Andy Lewis and the crew

Andy’s story of overcoming what must must have felt like insurmountable odds, to become a hugely successful sportsman is an inspiration and I am very proud of the project we have been working on.

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29/04/2016

Animation: explainer video for fin-tech startup

Animation explainer video

written, produced and directed by Nadaav

New animation project! I worked with the client to develop a concept and style. After green-lighting, I wrote scripts and worked with animators, illustrators, composers, VO artists and sound designers. Across all the elements: animation, script, voice over and sound design, there is a warm, playful, friendly tone.

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24/02/2014

Citi200 commercials shortlisted for Focal Awards

The sixty second commercials I directed for Citi (Citibank)’s 200th anniversary have been shortlisted for a Focal Award in the category Best Use Of Footage in An Advert Or Short Production.

Focal Awards for Best of Use of Footage

The Focal Awards are run by The Federation of Commercial Audiovisual Libraries International. They celebrate the best use of stock or archive footage. The criteria include innovative use of footage, intelligent use of archival footage that has helped the understanding of the topic or illustrated it in a way that words alone could not do, and that the footage is central to the success of the production or it has given it an added value.

 

Archive Footage in the Citi 200 Commercials

Archive was central to all of the the Citi 200 films. Although they are commercials, the films are effectively history documentaries taking a look at great moments in the last 200 years and their lasting impacts today. The archive sources are varied, from famous houses like Getty, to Citi’s own amazing 1970s commercials and internal films, to rare United States Airforce footage now housed in obscure German libraries in dingy Berlin basements.

 

Rebuilding Europe On Film

It is the archive use in Cities Reborn that I am most proud of, and that required most effort.

 

Reichstag

The team searched dozens of archives to find appropriate footage of bombed out buildings that could be traced not just to West Berlin but eventually to specific streets and addresses. The uncategorised archive was cross referenced with pre WWII maps and documents relating to changed road routes, old tram lines and so on until we were confident we had the right places. Site visits ascertained if the shot could be made today – sometimes new buildings or trees or road works were in the way. Sometimes building subsidence had changed the alignment. Then we used a top secret technique the crew and I developed, to make sure we had the exact same shot including precise, millimetre accurate location, lens, camera angle and so on.

 

Zossener Strasse

Then and only then could the detailed process of both creating the “build” effects and matching the original camera movement begin.

 

Great Stock Footage Moments in the Citi 200 Commercials

The other films also include some amazing stock footage moments. The quality of the 1904 footage of the Panama Canal construction is astonishing given the infancy of the medium at the time, and the effect we created, blending a very early aerial shot of the canal, presumably shot from a biplane, with the map graphic for the “continents splitting” shot was challenging but effective.

We took a more illustrative approach to stock footage in the Transatlantic Cable film, where footage of shipping and stock markets is blended into period style maps to give the effect of a world and markets getting smaller and joining together in the wake of this incredible new technology, now nicknamed “The Victorian Internet”.

If I have any regret about the use of archive in the series it is just that I had such fun with it I would have liked to use a little more. Citi’s archive of the snowstorm that led to the adoption of ATMs in Manhattan was brilliant, but the commercials they made from them at the time were wonderfully cheesy and dated. Unfortunately in a 20 second section we couldn’t include the original 60 second commercials in their entirety!

 

The Making of The Citi200 Commercials (Director’s approach)

Read more about each film, including how it was made, here:

 

 

Copyright Nadaav Soudry