Creators Message

Creator's Message

Beg started as an idea in June of 2016.

A couple months before that I was taking private lessons on audio engineering from a friend of mine who’s primary focus was on live events. As someone who had clocked over a hundred hours doing location sound for student films junior year, the tutoring diverged into audio speculation, and specifically, 3D audio, and immersive audio experiences. In these conversations, obviously came the mention of surround sound, like 5.1, 7.1, etc. I remember later when I saw Dunkirk in the theater, while the sound design was spectacular, I remember the initial gunshots coming from speakers behind me and I thought to myself, “There’s a speaker playing gunshot noises behind me.” The speaker, in my head, was a barrier to the idea of a fully sound-immersive movie. It didn’t feel right.

Later on, researching 3D audio, I stumble across binaural audio and ASMR. ASMR is weird, but the concepts behind the audio, not the visuals or narrative, resonated with me. I researched the microphones a lot of the popular artists used and at the core of it, they used two microphones, one acting like the left ear and one acting like the right ear. They also used some sorta barrier to act like a head. This created an illusion of a space that I thought was more believable than surround sound.

So what ended up being the final setup for Beg was two matched pair microphones with the camera (an FS7) on a fig rig acting like the head/jecklin disc. It workedish. 

While I was researching 3D audio, and binaural audio, I thought a fun summer project could be a sorta audio-play. I toyed with a lot of ideas, but I ended up settling on a audio play that was centered around a school shooting.

Shootings have always been one of those American events that been present with me. As a Coloradan, I grew up with the events of the Columbine massacre and the political rhetoric, tasteless jokes, and culture that came with it.

The Sandy Hook shooting always resonated with me. A bunch of little kids in an elementary school massacred. And jack shit had been done with it. It was incredible, the lack of any meaningful action following it.

Anyway, with senior year coming, I figured that I might as well turn this audio play I hadn’t done anything with and turn it into a film. And since film is a visual medium, I returned to ASMR.

ASMR is fascinating, I personally don’t get those “tingles” from watching them but it’s such a weird culture. I noticed that due to the unusual ambience of a binaural space, there was a focus directed towards the subject. And whenever the subject on screen would do anything, their actions, words, mouth noises, their entirety became the focus. It’s calming and captivating.

One of the things that has eternally annoyed the fuck out of me when shootings happen, especially shooting where there are minimal casualties, is the complete disregard of the victims. They were in a shooting, but rarely you will hear about how they will feel, what actions they want taken. It’s political rhetoric to political rhetoric, and in the end no one will give a shit about your experiences.

So what I thought would be interesting about Beg would be the eternal focus on the students, the ones experiencing the shooting. Nothing to cut to, nothing the shy away from it’s just their voices, their experiences, their trauma. There is one cutaway in the entire film. Every shot is locked onto their faces. Much like an ASMR subject, you just can’t look away. 

I chose the ending on no casualties and the shooter is apprehended because I figured that would be a celebration. “No one died! Everything’s fine!” No, it’s not, because the shooting happened and they’re all traumatized, all before you can legally vote. If there is anything worth truly celebrating, it’s when the rate of domestic terrorism goes down. When there is a positive change in society.

Production and Post-Production-wise, there were issues, as with any film, but I definitely feel the obsession over the audio made it a sub-par film. The visuals, while they focus on the students are inconsistent sometimes. In hindsight, that annoys me. In the end, I also felt the binaural experience could have been further explored by doing a couple things differently. One of the other things I experimented with was having a speaker play sound effects through a speaker out in the hall, during production, which was super cool on for everybody but post-production. Post hated that.

But in the end, I had a wildly experimental film, with a mild ASMR experience, with a subject matter I cared about that told what I thought was needed. I’ve learned a lot, and will probably never do a thing like this again, at least without a proper 3Dio microphone. But for now, I’ll be on sets, dangling microphones off the end of a boom pole, telling people to hold for planes and to turn off their air conditioners, and pretending putting a lav on actors is a lot less awkward than it is. Thank you for your time and have a good day.