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September 2018

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www.postmagazine.com 28 POST SEPTEMBER 2018 AUDIO TOOLS Izotope's RX ($1,499 for the Post Production Suite), a dialogue processing tool that he'll sometimes call up on the mixing stage when a shot changes. "It's not an odd occurrence," he says of em- ploying it on the stage. "They will come up [and ask], 'Do you have another take of that?' The new take hasn't been cleaned up, so I wind up jumping into Izotope very often…I can clean up and fix any problems that arise without having a dialogue editor standing by or pull him off the next show to fix something I could easily fix myself." Patrick Rodman & Aaron Gray — Bang Zoom Studios Bang Zoom Studios (www.bangzoomstudios.com) has three facilities in Burbank, CA, where they provide a full range of audio post services. The combined 15,000 square feet of space is home to seven ADR recording stages, two Foley stages, six edit bays and four Dolby-certified re-recording mix stages. Patrick Rodman is chief engineer, co-owner and head mixer at Bang Zoom, and says the studio regularly works on television programming for Marvel, Amazon, Netflix, Nickelodeon and Warner Bros. Some of the studio's work includes Tom & Jerry, Marvel Rising shorts, Lost In Oz, Guardian of the Galaxy animation and The Spider-Man. Rodman will move from room to room through- out the locations, but was at Bang Zoom's West Olive Avenue location when Post caught up with him. It's there that he performs most of their ani- mation mixing. "I am using an Avid S6 console — 32 channel with Mac computers," he notes. "I love the board." Bang Zoom's studios are all based around Avid Pro Tools and the close integration with the S6 was a huge benefit, says Rodman. "I was working on the D-Commands and D-Controls," he recalls, "and going to the S6 actu- ally sped up my workflow." He also relies on a range of plug-ins to help create efficiencies. "I use tons of them," he says of his plug-in collection. "I love the Waves bundles. Digidesign has some really good ones too. Of course we use the Neyrinck plug-ins. I am always looking for more plug-ins to affect my dialogue with, as far as treatments. That's always a challenge." Additional plug-ins in his toolbox include Audio Ease's (www.audioease.com) Altiverb ($595) con- volution reverb and Speakerphone ($495) speaker simulation plug-in. Lead audio technician Aaron Gray also spends a lot of time looking into efficiencies that can be im- plemented throughout Bang Zoom's three locations. "I have put a ton of thought into future," says Gray. "The big thing I have been working on is trying integrate more Dante hardware into our workflows. Dante is an audio over Ethernet protocol that is really robust. Basically, the stage that Pat works on is running Dante. If and when we go to (Dolby) Atmos, we will definitely be using it in here. "It makes things a lot easier when you just plug in Ethernet to a program and be done," Gray continues. "I tend to try to think in the context of, 'How do I make everything Dante, including some of our older outboard gear?'" Both Gray and Rodman agree that Dolby Atmos needs strong consideration for the future. "I personally think Atmos is the way to go," says Gray. "I am hoping to outfit a few rooms here with Atmos if the timing and conditions are right." Stage A, where Rodman currently works, is set up for 5.1 and 7.1 mixing. "To make it Atmos, we are going to have to add some more speakers in the ceiling and, of course, some amps to power those speakers," Gray explains. "And for all of our audio routing, we will route it into a device from Dolby called the RMU. And that's what encodes all the pans and all the fun metadata that Dolby needs to make an Atmos file." The RMU is Dolby's rendering and mastering unit. The company describes it as the brain of the Dolby Atmos platform, providing the render- ing engine for the mix stage, plus tools for room configuration, management, and print mastering. Using MADI–based audio connectivity, the RMU connects to the mix client via Ethernet. Sue Pelino — Sim Post New York Re-recording mixer Sue Pelino, along with fellow re-recording mixer Dan Ricci and assistant audio engineer Ryan Schumer, joined Sim Post New York in Tribeca back in June, having previously all worked together at Broadway Video. Pelino says the move was very smooth, thanks in large part to the familiar set-up they have in their temporary audio suite at Sim, which initially served as a small DI theater before becoming an audio studio to support the team while new rooms are being built at the facility. "The room sounds so amazing, I find it will be hard for them to peel me out of there," says Pelino of the temporary space. "We've already designed three new beautiful audio rooms that are be- ing constructed on our third floor that Francis Manzella from FM Design, designed for us." The new studios are set to come on line in November, and will feature similar equipment — including the latest version of Avid's Pro Tools. "We are constantly upgrading to the most recent version of Pro Tools because, collectively, all of our audio suites are running Pro Tools. We recently upgraded to 2018.7.0, so we are always keeping up with the latest upgrades." Pelino regularly mixes the Rock and Roll Hall of Steve "Major" Giammaria — Sound Lounge One of my favorite new tools is Audio Ease's Indoor (www.audioease.com - $795), a reverb plug-in that's good for placing sounds into an indoor environment. It has a well-designed interface that's highly visual and intuitive. It allows me to mix faster and gives more accurate control of sound placement in complex indoor scenes (for example, a house party). I'm also a fan of the Cargo Cult surround delay plug-in Slapper (www. thecargocult.nz - $339). I use it to create slap-backs off buildings and alleys, as well as more creative special effects and dream sequences. Unlike a traditional stereo delay, designed for music, Slapper is designed for post. It features eight independent delay lines that can be panned anywhere in the 5.1 sound field, and a unique, streamlined interface. I also have been experimenting with a Leap Motion Controller (www.leapmotion.com - $79). It tracks my hand motion in 3D space and translates it into MIDI con- trol data that powers synthesizer software called Izotope Iris (www.izotope.com - $49). Similar to a Theramin, with simple hand motions, I can control various parameters of the sampler, such as pitch, volume and various filters. This allows me to contour sound design elements spe- cifically to what's happening on-screen. It's a real crowd pleaser when you use it in front of clients. Giammaria's recent projects for Sound Lounge include HBO's High Maintenance (Season 2-3) and the upcoming A24 feature film Slice. Giammaria

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