Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1316380
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 37 crowd numbers exceeded the loop group's numbers. Sometimes an additional track was recorded of background pass byes in the court house lobby that were English- specific. The actors would form a circle and walk by the mike to match the extras' movements walking behind the principals. The next track category was designed to put words in the mouth of the BG extra's mouths because you could see their mouth movements. (We called them Spikes.) They were not verbalizing during the take, as only the principal's dialogue had been recorded during these scenes. This was done so cuts between takes would not have audio bumps between the shots. If the stunt people and extras made vocalizations during a scene, they were cut out. If their verbalizations made it into the final mix, the production company must pay them the union day rate for their work in that scene. DAY FOUR (WEDNESDAY) My day was spent mostly building and syncing the selected ADR takes for all of the five reels. This editing was a time-consuming and very detailed process as I was required to fine-tune sync on all my ADR cues. At the end of my day, I made sure that all my mixing elements for Reel 1 were loaded into the trunk of my car to make sure they were delivered on time to the Selznick mixing stage well before the start of the mix session. I would ensure all of the mixing elements for Reels 2 & 3 were ready to be delivered by my driver before the mix was completed on Reel 1. Any downtime was costing the production quite a bit of money for nothing being accomplished. MIX DAYS (THURSDAY/FRIDAY) The mix was conducted with three mixers (DIAL, FX, and Music/ Foley), mixing all first-generation audio tracks. There were no pre- dubs done as analog dupes lost fidelity with every dupe that added a generation to the a track. X-Tracking made any adjustments to the effects from effects' 2-inch tape on to magnetic film. Then spotting the mag to a new sync spot and then recording it to the FX stem without playing the 2-inch tape track. If the associate producer wanted a replacement effect and I didn't have it in my loop kit, I'd phone the FX editor and request an alternate FX to be transferred to mag stock and delivered to me at the stage. In those days, the mixing consoles were not computer-controlled that remembered all the settings at a particular footage. So, any mid- scene stops required the mixers to tape down all the volume sliders and keep all the outboard plugins on with the same setting in place. On Thursday, Reels 1 through 3 were mixed, and the fixes were done between the reel change of each reel's mixing elements. The clock was ticking, so the reel change-over process was expected to take around 15 minutes. If the fix would take longer, I'd continue working while the next reel was mixing. There were very definite protocols for the supervising sound editor on the mix stage. All communications to the supervising editor usually came from the head mixer or the associate producer. The supervisor would go down to the transfer bay on matters of dialogue fixes and order a reprint of that take's audio from the quarter- inch tapes stored there. If the fix could be done quickly, the machine room would mark a sync point where the system was stopped and hand the reel to me to place in a sync block, along with my Mylar dupe. Both film and mag would be rolled down to the dialogue track to be fixed. I'd place the reprint beside the cut track in question, look for phasing and replace the whole track. If there were clean in-and- out cut points for the dialogue line, I'd cut in the reprint. If the clipped word contained a dialogue overlap, I would request alternate takes from the same camera angle and notify the stage that this fix would be done during the reel change-over, or if necessary, at the end of the day when the mixed reels were checked. I was fortunate that I didn't spend most of my days in the change room. The prequel video and audio had been cut-in to the head of reel one, so I'd checker-board the audio cuts for mixing the head of Reel 1. Reels 4-5 were mixed with fixes, and spotting a session was screened for next week's episode. My final job after the mixing/change-over screening was completed was to cut in pull-ups to the full coat mag. Once all the reels' mixes had been approved, my final job of the day was to cut pull-ups for change-over from one reel to the next. The picture editor usually balanced the reels so the opening of the next reel was the start of another scene. I'd cut in 35 frames of audio from the head of the next reel into the tail of previous reel (Reel 2 pull-up onto tail of Reel 1). During Friday, the assistant sound editor made a Code Log of next week's episode. With the individual edit's beginning and end footage keycode and Edge Code numbers, slate information from the camera report, and sound roll number. This list was shared with all dialogue editors and brought with me to the next mix session. In comparing analog sound editing with digital editing on Pro Tools, analog editing and mixing was much more labor-intensive. In Pro Tools, all sound takes are immediately available to the editor, so transfer rooms are not necessary. The assistant sound editor's job is drastically reduced, so much so that an assistant can service several editors simultaneously. A Pro Tools editing station is installed on the mixing stage, allows all fixes to be done immediately with online access to all sound files and plugins. Cue sheets were not needed because the Pro Tools timeline is displayed on the mixer's monitors and can display all of the metadata for each edit. Sound mixing stages now have digital consoles that can record every track's cue points, slider and pan moves, outboard or plugin settings, and track assignments. All of these advantages are now available to even the prosumer sound editor. It is no wonder that digital sound editing has, in a very short time, replaced analog editing completely.