Post Magazine

February 2013

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unsung audio gear are a lot of really nice stereo reverbs out there. If you find a sound that you like, you can take that stereo reverb and use the width envelope to alter the sound. You can take that stereo information and center it. Or you can dial it down a little bit and suddenly it's way easier to match ADR." Choy has been using Reaper as his primary DAW for the past two years. He also uses Sony Vegas to edit. Because Reaper can import and save Vegas .TS files, he can seamless integrate the two programs in his workflow. The studios in Silver Sound run Sony Vegas, Reaper and Pro Tools LE. "We have Pro Tools in the studios for the same reason that people have [Neumann] U87s, because it looks nice and people know the name and they ask for it. That's why we have it here. Is it our weapon of choice? No. Do we all know how to use it? Yes." MONKEYLAND AUDIO Peter Lago is a sound designer/supervising sound editor at Monkeyland Audio (www. monkeylandaudio.com) in Burbank. He started at Monkeyland as an intern in 2003, and has Monkeyland Audio's Peter Lago calls on M-Audio's MicroTrack 24/96. "It's easy to use, and it's portable," he says. 34 worked his way through various projects, both for the studio and on the side. He doesn't like to say no to work, and that philosophy has paid off. He records Foley, cuts backgrounds and runs sessions all in the same day. He also handles publicity for the company, from updating the company Facebook status to composing company-wide emails. Monkeyland Audio offers a variety of audio post services, from Foley/ADR to final mix for feature film, indie film, TV shows and commercials, documentaries, and straight-to-video projects. They have five Dolby tuned dub stages, two ADR stages and a Foley pit. Each dub stage has its own iso-booth, in case a new line needs to be recorded mid-mix, the client doesn't have to book time on the ADR stage. Post • February 2013 Post0213_032-35-audioMLV3finalread.indd 34 Also, the entire facility is networked together. "Often, there will be several films going on at the same time, and because of how our systems are networked, and since we use iChat, we are linked virtually to all our mixers all the time." During mix time, the editors are on stand-by in their suites to provide any necessary elements or fixes the mixers may request. The editor drops the files onto the mixer's computer, and the mixer can put the files into the mix with no downtime. Lago doesn't travel anywhere without his M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96 recorder (www.m-audio.com). Whenever he hears a sound that he may have been looking for, or that has been brewing in his head, he just pulls out his MicroTrack recorder. "It's good for when you're in a pinch. It's easy to use. It's portable. All you need to do is hit record to capture the sound and then bring that back to the studio." In the studio, Lago finesses the sound in Pro Tools to fit his need. M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96 ($200/used) is a portable digital recorder that records WAV or MP3 files directly to a CompactFlash or Microdrives card. The files can then be transferred to a computer via USB. It can record and playback 16-bit or 24-bit audio at 44.1kHz or 96 kHz sample rates. It has a 1/8inch microphone port to supply the 5V of power needed for the included electret stereo "T" microphone. This product is no longer manufactured. While creating the sound design for Sushi Girl, a crime/thriller film written and directed by Kern Saxton, Lago used his MicroTrack recorder to give a unique sound to a section of dialogue as it comes through a pair of headphones the police are using during their surveillance. "In the scene, you see an old analog reel-toreel machine, and the cop has the headphones on and he's listening to what's going on. The director wanted the sound in the headphones to be slightly analog but not really, just a little bit different." To create the sound, Lago worldized the dialogue using a baby monitor. He placed the microphone portion of the baby monitor in his edit bay in front of his monitors, and the speaker portion of the baby monitor in the iso-booth with his M-Audio MircoTrack in record-mode right next to it. He captured the sound of the dialogue as it played back through the baby monitor. "There's a weird color to the sound as it goes through the baby monitor, plus that was blended with the color of the recording device. It gave the sound this cool, gritty, worldized texture that I tried to emulate in Pro Tools just using EQs and filters, and I couldn't get that." Sushi Girl is Lago's "passion project." It's the type of film that made him want to get into audio post in the first place. He describes the feature as a crime-caper, grind-house type of film that is blended with a classic style of filmmaking. "It's very Kurosawa with a huge helping of Tarantino. When I saw the trailer I was completely blown away. I told the guys that whatever they needed, sound wise, at any stage, to please let me know, I was willing to bend over backwards 60 times, despite budget, despite timeline. This is a movie that I really want to be associated with. We really worked every room in this studio to make it pop." Sushi Girl is currently in a limited theatrical run, and it's also available on video-on-demand. CLEAN CUTS Joe Powers is a senior audio engineer at Clean Cuts (www.cleancuts.com), which has three separate locations: Washington DC, Silver Spring, MD, and Baltimore, MD. Powers has been working at Clean Cuts for 15 years. He worked his way up from making coffee and cutting political ads to designing/mixing documentaries for Discovery Channel. He mainly works in the DC and Silver Spring studios. Clean Cuts started as an "original music for advertising" company and expanded into audio post by providing voiceovers and sound design. Today, they have 14 studios spread over their three locations. Powers studied Music and Recording Arts and Sciences at Duquesne University. His music background is a natural fit for Clean Cuts. "My whole approach is that I don't want the music and the sound design to be noticeably separate entities. I want them to play together seamlessly. My music background has really helped with that factor, especially considering that Clean Cuts does original music for advertising and cable shows. When the composer comes in to record, we can really have a collaborative effort on the music and sound design." When working with production sound, Powers likes iZotope plug-ins (www.izotope. com). He finds them to be quick, clean, and able to produce a big result with little processing. "I need to use noise reduction all the time. On a long-format project, I'll hear a piece of SOT (sound on tape) that is a little bit dirty or mucky. With the iZotope RX plug-in, I can quickly go in and grab it, bring the background noise down by 6dB and be done with it." Powers also uses the Alloy 2 plug-in as a channel strip on all his projects, along with www.postmagazine.com 1/25/13 7:34 AM

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