First up in my list of new filmmaking tools are a couple that really prove my point about how suddenly the internet is actually useful. Soundcloud which exists at http://soundcloud.com/ describes its self like this…

“SoundCloud lets you move music fast & easy. The platform takes the daily hassle out of receiving, sending & distributing music for artists, record labels & other music professionals.”

And just to prove its up to the moment ecommunity credentials, the site then better explains its self in a flash video voiced by one of the early users. However, to get to brass taks its basically just an online storage depot designed for users to upload audio files. It then offers two ways of sharing these files, one via a social-network friendly embeddable player of the sort myspace or ilike users will be well familiar with, the other via streaming direct from the soundcloud site. This last option is what caught my eye because it enables you to send a file privately to a specific email address, that user can then not only log in and either stream or download the file (in either full quality or as an mp3) but they can leave comments on the track directly in a timeline.

SoundCloud: The Tour from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

This instantly struck me as a massive boon for working remotely with a composer or sound designer. It’s long been possible for the composers that Chris and I work with to send us tracks either via email or ftp. This generally means waiting for the file to download, listening through and then calling or emailing back with notes, usually emailing if Chris and I aren’t in the same place. A three way conversation of this kind is unwieldy and prone to confusion.

With Soundcloud there’s only one upload. The listeners just log into the site and track plays instantly. Then we can mark the exact points we either love or doubt and those comments don’t get lost in a slew of emails. Working this way can, if necessary, much more easily accommodate the sharing of mixes and ideas between a wider group (producers, execs, other musicians) as well as working perfectly as portal for delivering high quality final mixes.

Chris and I tested the system on a recent job we did where, whilst Chris did the final fx work, I ended up doing the soundmixes for a series of twelve short videos we’d shot for a charity. I was able to mix the films and upload them, so he could quickly listen through and give me feedback linked to the specific moments he wasn’t happy with. In a fraught 48hrs with a deadline upon us and two machines eating up render time, overall I thought this was a great way of working… though there were problems.

Firstly, one of the big bonuses for me is that having streaming audio can effectively cut out half the download time. However to be honest there is only so much you can do without hearing the track in sync with the pictures and obviously at the moment this means downloading the mix and syncing it up.

The site is also surprisingly expensive in a world increasingly used to seeing everything available for free. There is a free entry-level stage but it doesn’t offer much. The service is then in three price bands raging from €9 a month for 15 uploads to a rather off putting €59 a month for a limitless upload service. Since Chris and I were working on twelve different films I rapidly had to purchase the middle option of €29 a month for 50 uploads which if I’m honest was expensive for the value I got for this one particular project.

Also, a minor but important thing, the player on the site doesn’t respond to the editor’s universal play/pause spacebar… so swapping between editing software and Soundcloud left me endlessly missing the point I wanted to comment about by hitting the spacebar to pause the track only to find I had instead just jumped to a different part of the page. Like I say it was a fraught 48hr session and with no sleep this became quite a problem.

Never the less I remain a fan of this service which does seem like it can really enable easy and effective communication between a composer and the many interested parties that exist in a film project.