Sound

Last Saturday, we collected all the actors together to record the answering machine tracks for 5 Cups of Coffee. This took place at my house, which is way out in the country at the end of two miles of gravel road. It is always a challenge for people to get here, even though my husband has the directions down to the odometer click. Two of the actors and our sound guy got lost along the way.

This at least gave me some time to play with the answering machines I bought for a total of $8 at Goodwill. One of them never did work right, even though I downloaded the manual off of the Internet (God bless Google).

Once we finally had everyone assembled, we were able to lay down the tracks. First, we left the greetings which consisted of mostly, "Hi, this is Pam. Leave a message."

Then we left messages. My house has three phone lines, so we were able to attach the machine to one line and call from another. We recorded the whole thing onto Shaun's computer from clicks, whirs, and messages. Actually, we all agreed that the machine sounds were pretty darned cool. You don't get that with voicemail!

One kinda weird thing was that I had to direct my mother, Mij Bradley, who is playing, oddly enough, the mother. My mother is very expressive and dramatic, even though she's never done much on stage. However, we had to wean her from landing on her lines and projecting like a stage actress. And, like I said, it's weird directing your mother.

Everything came out sounding great, and Shaun has lots to work with when he pieces this together. Somehow we are going to use the recordings during the shoot this weekend so that Katey (Ashley) has something to react to during the scenes.

We also watched the first edits that Shaun has put together. It's very exciting to see all my little characters brought to life in such an ultra-cool way. I like this script-writing thing!