Synopsis: “After years of being routinely drugged, Sugar Baby must try to piece her memory back together in a desperate bid to stay alive and escape the only person she loved.”

Working on the sound recording team on Sugar Baby was difficult but rewarding. My participation consisted of two outdoor overnight shooting days during the dead of winter, so the project quickly became challenging. On night one we shot the pickup truck scenes, with the sound recordists operating out of the front seat. The entire night we had to contend with strong winds, necessitating the use of wind buffers on the lav mics, as well as placement within the folds of clothing.

On the second shooting day we were filming from 10:30pm to 4:00am in the parking garage on the TMU campus. This time, wind and snow were less of a problem, but the reverberant recording space created new challenges which demanded adaptability. I used a combination of techniques to minimize the unwanted echoes and reflections. Initially, strategic microphone placement played a big role. I positioned microphones closer to sound sources while carefully angling them to reduce the pickup of room reflections. I also used acoustic panels to create makeshift isolation areas, mitigating the impact of the reverberant environment during recording. Post-production, some noise reduction and equalization were added to further attenuate the reverb without compromising overall audio quality. Despite its difficulties, the experience taught me a lot about improvisation and the critical role planning and proper equipment play in capturing audio results in the challenging environments.