Having worked on many film and television productions – including major series such as Killing Eve – London-based sound recordist Adam Williams was also boom operator for Kristoffer Nyholm’s film production, The Vanishing, starring Scottish actor and film producer, Gerard Butler.

With much of the action outdoors, the sound of ocean waves breaking on the rocky shores of Scottish island locations and strong winds saw him making heavy use of Cedar Audio’s DNS 2 dialogue noise suppressor throughout the shoot.

The Vanishing is based upon the true story of the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers on the Flannan Isles in Western Scotland and was filmed at three lighthouses in Dumfries and Galloway – Killantringan, Mull of Galloway and Corsewall.

While the climate was an integral part in creating the film’s atmosphere, it caused a lot of unwanted background noise to be captures across the audio tracks. To solve the problem, Williams used the Cedar DNS 2 to clean the audio during filming: ‘I’ve gotta give this little Cedar DNS 2 trinket a shout out for helping us massively on set,’ he reports. ‘It’s a game changer.

‘The DNS 2 proved to be vital in our battle against the elements and was valued very highly by the producers and director when listening to and watching the daily footage throughout the production,’ he adds.

The raw, unedited Dailies from the making of a movie are developed and synchronised with the location sound recordings to be viewed the following day by the producers, director, actors and crew to see how filming is progressing. If they are unable to hear the dialogue, or can’t hear it clearly, they are unable to assess whether the location sound will be usable in post, or whether expensive reshoots or ADR will be necessary. Williams is happy that the DNS 2 was able not only save production time, but considerable potential expense too.

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