Beneath Still Water

Film Making, Sound Recording

This is the current filming project I’m involved with, recording dialogue and creating other foley effects as required. Beneath Still Water is a ghostly thriller based around the legend of Blake Mere Pool near Thorncliffe just outside Leek. Written by Steven K Beattie http://www.stevenkbeattie.com/beneath-still-water.html and Directed by Philip Kempson. The film comprises a cast and crew from Stoke on Trent and features many beautiful locations within the Staffordshire Moorlands. We’ve been shooting now on and off for nearly a year and principle photography is now almost complete. This weekend saw us once again shooting at The Heath House in Tean. A wonderful Victorian house set in acres of lush Staffordshire Countryside.

The Heath House

A place we’ve been fortunate to visit several times during production. Mostly we’ve been filming indoors, using the lavish rooms as a backdrop to the story. A real privilege to film here. 

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This weekend though we were filming outdoors. And it rained. A lot.

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Oh. It was night time. And cold.

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Notice the water spray bottle on the car bonnet….In case things just weren’t quite wet enough…

The lousy weather added a marvellous atmosphere to the scenes we shot but its still fairly gruelling and making a film does involve an awful lot of standing around.

Moisture and water can play havoc with cameras and sound recording equipment and for this project especially, buying a decent water-proof Portabrace case for my Tascam HD-P2 digital recorder has paid dividends. Not to mention covering myself head to foot in decent wet weather gear too!

We did all survive the evening and even returned the following morning to pick up a couple of daylight exterior scenes. The rain just about held off but the wind blew. Another challenge for a sound recordist…

Have to begin somewhere…

Film Making, Radio Production, Sound Recording

There something a little bit daunting about writing the very first post on your own blog site. What do I write? What might folk want to know? Should I be funny? Serious? Political? Controversial even? After pondering over these questions way longer than I should I made the bold decision to just get on with it. Write and post stuff to please myself and see how it goes.

So, here it is. My corner of the internet. I feel at this point I should write a little about me. I live in the Staffordshire Moorlands, in England. About an hour’s drive south of Manchester, in the small market town of Leek.

May day job is in IT but it’s my hobbies and pass times which will feature more often here. I was a founding member of the board for Moorlands Radio, our very own Community Radio station. If you’re in the Staffordshire Moorlands you’ll find the station on 103.7FM otherwise online at: Moorlands Radio – Community Radio Station or www.tunein.com if you prefer.

These days rather than management, I’m a Studio Engineer, Production Assistant and Sound Editor for The Anything Goes Show, a specialist music show presented by my friend Simon Jones, which goes out every Sunday evening from 7pm.

We even have our own website here: “Anything Goes” with Simon Jones

Though not often heard on air I mix and record all the live sessions when we have a band or artist visit the programme. All our pre-recorded ‘specials’ are produced and edited by me and I help Simon cover gigs and festivals such as Cropredy and Rewind North, to name but two.

More recently and quite by accident I’ve become involved in film making. Dialogue recording mainly. You know, the guy with the boom Mic. It seems everyone wants to be in a film, or the camera operator but no one it seems wants to do sound. The first feature I was involved with was a film called How Not To Work And Claim Benefits And Other Useful Information For Wasters. A black comedy by these guys: Rotten Park Road – Award Winning Film & Theatre Company

It was a great experience and fantastic fun.

I’ll draw to a close my first blog post with the much over used phrase…To be continued….