Life changing decisions are either made by careful deliberation and step-by-step planning, or… instantly, completely off the cuff and without a second thought.

Such is the nature of our in-house sound artist Marius, that it took him more or less one phone-call with an old friend, designer-turned-cinema-director Andrius Žemaitis to embark on his first ever film production project, code-named “Tabasco”.

A full-feature, 2+ hour long arthouse drama, shot on 16mm Kodak film. We’ve set sail on a passion project of our lives, with the aim of earning one billion exposures, or DIE TRYING. Call it based or call it stupid, but that’s where half of the story begins for Electron Transition.

Rash decisions come with unexpected consequences.

Right from the start, we were under-prepared and overwhelmed in all the ways imaginable – the usual fare of no-budget productions.

Marius, the entire film sound department on two legs, had to improvise and learn to set up recording, use the boompole and even construct camera dolly tracks right on the spot, during the first day of shooting.

Messy, difficult and uncomfortable as it all was, skills had to be gained, teamwork had to be sharpened, and workflows invented along the way as production rolled through our first year.

Extreme conditions, cold and heat during different seasons and authentic locations (from rotting abandoned houses, to beautiful swamps) only added fuel to the fire of our “independent production”. No wonder that after scanning the film, filming period had to be extended for another year in order to correct various mistakes and shortcomings made along the way.

Much can and will be deliberated on various technical challenges encountered while working on film’s sound. But needless to say, there was one colossal problem to solve, that is, recording all the diegetic film sound (dialogue, foley and sound effects) with zero budget available to rent a proper recording studio.

Someone brings some energy drinks to the party.

This is where Augustinas comes in, with hack-&-slash DIY building expertise and no-prisoners-taken attitude. In late 2022, right after the last film scene was shot, we started building acoustic absorbers, using derelict soviet furniture, plywood and mouse-infested old rock-wool in order to construct something resembling a studio.

Fast-forward a few months and at least one psychotic break with resulting hand-injury – and here we had our own, fully-equipped and production-ready foley studio; all built with our own hands in a true zero-waste, environmentally friendly fashion (now, where’s our ESG score?). From here on out, the really difficult work of total film sound production commenced…

The foley.

Keyboard takeover – Marius embarked on rummaging through garbage and bringing half of the surrounding forest into our foley dumpster. His work become a habit that got out of hand and Augustinas resorted to buying a wood chipper.

A lot of sounds that are required for the movie are very subtle, quiet or intricate and required the most sensitive equipment that we could acquire.

Therefore we opted for AKG microphones – two P420’s, a Perception 420, two P17 from a Drum Session 1 kit, loads of piezo microphones and a ridiculously sensitive and transparent MOTU 896mk3 Hybrid.

Full list of our equipment can be found on the bottom of About Us.

The soundtrack.

Marius is insane, because not only he’s taking the foley, but wants to compose the music as well, using reed instruments as the basis of the entire soundtrack.

He ended up utilising his intrusive thoughts and bought the vintage Swedish pump organ and then proceeded to bring the rest of his collection of instruments, into our little foley studio with an actual truck.

More about the soundtrack in the future, because its only in the earliest stages of composition – vacuuming the foley studio after recording half of the forest.

Mixing & restoration.

The movie will have to be mixed in 5.1 surround, so, Augustinas sorted out the lack of gear, by making kleinanzeigen.de his homepage and binge scrolling it for speakers.

The other issue is that the camera equipment was pretty noisy while filming and a lot of dialogue and sounds recorded in the location has to be extracted, restored and made to sound like there was nothing wrong. That’s why Augustinas bought a 4K screen, to help him see into the spectograms and fit all the different windows.

The sawdust:

As we cut through the deadlines, we’ll be left with a lot of things used for the production.

Impulse responses.
We’ll be using those to shape the spaciality of the music and mixing in the foley. Do you want your modular farts to reverberate in an abandoned remains of a church?

A collection of instruments.
They will be used not only for the soundtrack of the movie, but abused for our other creations. Do you want to include your list of creations with our/your Music Production, before their impending sampling sessions with Marius?

Sample libraries.
We will be sampling a lot of things, that may, or may not be instruments to begin with. Everything is a drum if you hit it.
We’ll even bring out the tools and make some ourselves.

And everything we’ll learn or acquire in the process.
Will be available as Services, or distorted spiritual maintenance.

The team:

Director / Operator – Andrius Žemaitis.
Sound director / Composer – Marius Paulikas.
Assistant director – Jonas Bulota.
Scenography / Lightning – Kipras Unikauskas.
Sound engineer – Augustinas Buizina.

The cast:

Rimas Šileikis
Gaudentas Aukštikalnis
Stasys Germanas
Aurimas Vilčinskas
Milgedas Aleksandravičius
Gabrielė Šaulytė

and more.

Disclaimer – the photos used in the blog are not actual shots from the movie, but from behind the scenes, or associative photos.

And with all that said – you in? Subscriebs and let’s go.