Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1353865
46 I M PS E . O R G not my movie, it's your movie." SSS: Did you do your pre-dubs and final dub at Warner Bros.? JJ: Yes, yes we did. David Fluhr did all of his dialogue pre-dubs there as did Greg (King). So, that was good because I was able to sit down through a lot of the pre-dubs, which, a lot of the time if you are battling visual effects and things like that, there's a lot of traffic control that I do. But this time, it was really good because Greg and I sat there and went through the effects side of things and it was a job of subtraction. We heard something and said, "Well, actually it's a little bit better in Foley, maybe if we move it…" It worked out quite well. We had a very direct soundtrack I guess I'd call it. It reminded me of the last time I did that, it was on a little film called U-571. SSS: A little film. JJ: We had six weeks to pre-dub it and I was there for the whole … everything. We did exactly the same thing (on The Little Things). It was a nice tight package by the time we got to the final. We don't do that anymore. SSS: Didn't you win a little Oscar for that? JJ: I like to bring that up every 20 years or so, yeah. SSS: Weren't you the one that said, "OK children, Daddy won his Oscar, you can go to bed now." I'll never forget that. (laughs) JJ: We're going to be home real late now… SSS: Yep! That was classic! Let's talk about post-production during a pandemic. JJ: They got The Little Things shot right under COVID. I think they finished (shooting) in December (2019). Then they were cutting and by March (2020), we were all shut down. I was supposed to start in March. That got delayed a couple of months. The thing I will say on the over-reaching arc of all of it is we had a little more time to ourselves to work on it. I think it helped editorially. A lot of things got explored, and the best was chosen. SSS: Do you feel that if it was not a COVID circumstance, you would not have had that opportunity to explore or spend more time editorially? Do you think COVID gave you that? JJ: I think so in the ADR and dialogue section. It's almost unprecedented that we had the time to do that. Darren (King) took about two or three weeks with the assemblies going through all of the B dialogue (outtakes), then submitting what he had found for alternate takes of lines or clunks or whatever instead of having to wait until hearing it when we get to the pre-dub stage or even when we are on the final stage. When Darren got a cut of the picture, we got some EDL (edit decision list) to work with. We assembled the dialogue off dailies. We were able to start to look at the other takes of a scene, which we call B-roll, to see if the dialogue matched, or a little bit cleaner, or could we put this sentence together with this word from this scene or this take, and, what I call "Frankenstein" a line. The production dialogue was well recorded. We worked with that for two or three weeks before we really started in earnest when we got a cut (locked picture) and started to program (ADR) and cut (dialogue). SSS: The opportunity to explore the B-roll is usually not available but, because of COVID, you guys had the time to explore the B-roll? JJ: We had time to do it exclusively before the turnover (of locked picture). When we did sit down for a spotting of the ADR, nobody wanted to be in the same room for over an hour, because we were talking about March or April at that point, nobody knew (about COVID). It was so crazy. We had to sit in separate sections. Fortunately, King Soundworks has the perfect room to screen it in that actually has Atmos. They just upgraded to Atmos for their TV programs. So it worked quite well. By having that time to do it, we were on the same page from the get-go. Participation was appreciated rather than exclusive or inclusive. SSS: What else happened regarding COVID? How did it change your workflow? JJ: My office was at King Soundworks' Van Nuys office. Greg was doing a huge remodel at that Jon Johnson in 1999 for Mix magazine article about U-571 (2000).