1. You are also a filmmaker, can you talk about your own background and works?

Yes, I'm also a writer director. I studied filmmaking in Taiwan (where I also learned production sound & sound design), currently developing my new shorts & feature film.

My previous short film “Kampung Tapir ” is a about a family living close to the nation borders, the project was mentored from the NNW workshop “Shortcuts” where I first met Mui, Bianca, Ming Jin, & Pete (they are all in Barbarian Invasion!)

2. What was the equipment you used during the production and what do you think?

Although I did some production sound projects previously, I’ve never owned a complete set of sound equipment until I joined Barbarian Invasion.

For this film I was using director Mui’s Zoom F6 as the main recorder, which is compact enough for single person setup, but it remains proper features such as timecode syncing with camera.

We are also lucky to have our equipment sponsor from Deity Microphones, both shotgun (Deity Smic 2/2S) & wireless lavalier microphone (Deity Connect, W.Lav).

The sponsored equipment helped me a lot, I personally really like the quality of Smic2 shotgun microphones, as for the Deity Connect, it has an amazing internal battery life & I can easily adjust most of the settings from the receiver, however the 2.4Ghz wireless technology seems not working too well especially we have a lot of outdoor scenes.

3. We heard you are the only crew in the sound department, how did you handle it?

Yes, I’ve been a solo sound in many Malaysian TVC and short films shooting, booming while recording isn’t new for me. But it is tougher when it comes to feature film shooting, as the shooting days are longer & it requires higher technical specs.

I must always be alert on every possible change or problem to solve all the time by myself. I also can’t really “mix” the sound during the shoot as my hands are with the boom, what I can do is remain the best recording for the post.

Despite these, I had great help from every department during the shoot.

4. What was the biggest challenge you faced during the production? How was it resolved?

As the film involves many seaside scenes, I thought the windy location would be a big issue for my microphones, but it turns out to be perfect as I’ve prepared wind shields & covers for it.

I would say some of the biggest challenges are when actors are in the water & having dialogues. One of the scenes is when Moon is having a conversation with Cathy & later Roger, we can’t mic up Moon as she’s in the swimming pool, her dialogue was entirely recorded from the shotgun mic. Although I’m not sure if the final output for that scene was ADR or not, haha.

5. Any other things you would like to talk about?

Sound is half the picture.

I’m glad to join this team! This is my first production sound experience in a feature film, I’m not sure how the quality is, but if it “sounds good”, I would like to give the credit to the production team & crew.

Good location sound has to be recorded in certain conditions, thanks to our production team (noise control), AD team (communications), technical team (sometimes you just need to pull the generator even further, or check with the AC if it’s the correct slate number) , data wrangler (double checking for your timecode sync & files), art (who knows sometimes the props are just too noisy but art department fixed it for you), wardrobe team (their great help of mic up the talents), actors (the great volume of their voices), etc.

Again,

Sound is half the picture.