Departure is a coming of age film set against the backdrop of the implosion of an English nuclear family in their holiday home in France. The film has done well on the Festival circuit, picked up a fair few prizes and got cinema releases right across Europe, click here to see the various posters for different languages. More info available on the Film Facebook page
I worked on it nominally as foley supervisor/editor and I also recorded the ADR and mixed the M&E/supplied deliverables afterwards (I usually handle the deliverables and-time allowing- am involved in the ADR of most films I work on ).
Foley was recorded at Aquarium studios with Meltem Baytok as foley artist and Rob Price as foley recordist. I enjoy being involved in foley sessions as I learn so much from watching other people at work, Meltem and Rob are a pretty slick team. I speak decent French which helped when I was shooting/ editing ADR for the French language scenes. Andy Stegell- director- is an accomplished theatre director and gets good performances out of his cast but was- at this time less experienced with ADR.I believe he managed to raise performances in the studio as well as covering the technical nuts and bolts which made for a satisfying session.
The thing I found hardest was getting the various mixes to hit broadcast spec- nowadays most countries work to an average loudness spec. The theatrical version had an extremely wide dynamic range- some loud shouty scenes and long passages of comparative stillness and minimal dialogue in the French countryside sometimes underscored by very delicate classical scoring which doesn’t react well when the dynamic range is squashed to hit broadcast spec. It took longer to produce mixes which both ticked all the technical boxes and were faithfull to the original theatrical mix, but I believe i got there in the end. Nice to see the film do so well.