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HOLLYWOOD — Jim Fitzpatrick, re-recording mixer for Family Guy, the long-running animated series created by Seth MacFar- lane for Fox, is a busy man. Each week during production season, Fitzpatrick has just two days to distill dialogue, sound effects and music into a mix ready to air the following Sunday. He also mixes two other animated series for MacFarlane and Fox, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, which have similarly breakneck production schedules. as anything I’ve ever done. It’s one of those things where you sit down and look up and six hours has passed and it felt like 15 min- utes. It’s the minutia and getting everything to balance perfectly together but feel effort- less at the same time.” Cars 2 was mixed in six weeks on an AMS Neve DFC Gemini. It was mixed in 7.1 first for IMAX 3D release, and then folded down to 5.1, and finally to Lt-Rt.“7.1 gives you more discretion in the surrounds since you have side surrounds and discrete back surrounds. Since it’s a 3D film, especially for the racing, and moving things off screen,we want to spa- tially increase the dimension.We really used the surrounds a lot. For the whole history of Pixar we always used a lot of surround infor- mation.We have a lot of fun with that.” TOYOTA: CARS FOR GOOD These cars may not talk, but they defi- nitely have a strong message, and the audio artists at South Music and Sound Design (www.south-music.com) in Santa Monica helped to make that message sound even more amazing. Jon Darling, head composer/creative direc- To keep pace, Fitzpatrick arrives at work early. On the first mix day for an episode of Family Guy, he is typically at work at Todd-AO in Hollywood by 6am.“The only people in the building are me and the guard,” he says.“If someone walked by, he might think I’m crazy, sitting alone in my room, laughing my head off.” Fitzpatrick enjoys the challenges involved in mixing the show. Family Guy is very dialogue driven and although there are plenty of sound effects, they are never allowed to get in the way of a punch line. Because dialogue is almost never mixed over effects or envi- ronmental sounds, Fitzpatrick has to ensure it is unusually pristine. “The dialogue is very exposed; there’s nothing to hide under,” he explains.“You hear every single spit and tick that comes out of someone’s mouth, stuff that normally wouldn’t bother you.” Fitz- patrick notes that his first task for each episode is to comb through all of the dialogue tracks and carefully excise any such blemishes. The mix style of the show is also designed to keep the dia- logue front and center. Processing such as EQ, compression and reverb that are commonly used to create depth and perspective are virtually banished from the show.“It’s a stylistic thing that we do,” he observes.“It’s like a rock ‘n’ roll mix; it’s in your face.” Such conventions, says Fitzpatrick, derive from MacFarlane and his very hands-on production style.“The show has very strict, cut and dry rules for things like when we play perspective, or use re- verb, or when you hear someone before you see him,” Fitz- patrick says.“It’s because Seth knows exactly what he wants.He keeps an amazingly complete vision in his head.” Despite having more than 100 episodes under his belt, Fitz- patrick continues to enjoy his work and to find the show fresh, funny and utterly unpredictable.“I can’t believe the stuff these guys come up with show after show after show,” he says.“I look forward to coming to work every day and getting to hear the jokes before anyone else. I sit there laughing all day.” 40 Post • July 2011 tor/partner of South, along with senior com- poser/sound designer Chris James, worked with Saatchi & Saatchi LA to create music and sound design for a 1:18 Web spot for Toyota. They are also creating a cut-down version for air.The commercial promotes Toy- ota’s donation of 100 cars to worthy charities over 100 days this summer.“The concept of the spot is really cool,” explains Darling. “It gives you a lot to work with, and we wanted to bring a lot of support to the idea, which is nice in a longer format like this spot.” For Darling and James, great sound starts with source.The organic and folksy look was the starting point for their creative direction. James, who created the sound design for the commercial, says, “I wanted to keep the sound very natural. Using a high def TAS- CAM DR-680 with a Neumann KMR 81 shotgun mic, I actually recorded sounds of a Toyota Prius for the car sounds. I also recorded my dog for the dog effects.” In the studio, James prefers a Neumann U87 combined with a UA 6176 channel strip. “I really like my 6176. Everything sounds good through it.” Once the source material was recorded, James pulled everything into Pro Tools. Since the sounds were natural, little processing was needed. James focused on EQ and level.“Making sure the sounds are the right level to fit the scene is important. I like the Waves SSL bundle for EQ and compres- sion. I really like their Linear Phase EQ.” www.postmagazine.com As James was starting the sound design, Darling was busy with the music.Working at the studio in Santa Monica on an Avid D- Control, Darling used ISDN to connect with their other studio in Nashville to track the songs on an SSL 4040 E/G+ with Total Recall and VCA automation. “The talent in Nashville is too great to ignore. It’s great to tap into their creativity.” Supporting the Avid D-Control in Santa Monica, they have 24 independent channels of different combinations of pre-amps and EQs.“We have a lot of options between the Neve mic pres, the API mic pres, Chan- dler mic pres and Brent Averill (BAE) 1084s,” says Darling. “We have a pair of those, which are really great.They’re basi- cally the (BAE) 1073s without the EQ on them, just with a high pass.” Darling and James both believe that hav- ing a good selection of gear really benefits the quality work.“At South we have world- class studios to work in, as opposed to working in converted edit bays,” explains Darling. “It really makes a substantial differ- ence to have enough room, proper tabling and a good gear selection to do quality work. I have a one percent rule, if you can improve your signal chain or your process by one percent, and just do that 10x, you’ve made your piece of music or your sound de- sign 10 percent better. It takes awhile to build up the amount of gear you have, but it’s well worth it. I’m addicted I’ll be honest.” As with most commercial work, speed can be as important as creativity. For this reason, a combination of plug-ins and out- board gear was used.“I’ll be in the box to come up with ideas and once I settle on something I’ll use the outboard piece of gear,” describes James. “Other times, it’s more creative to work on the actual piece of gear when trying to come up with some- thing. Generally I’m more creative working hands-on as opposed to tweaking a plug-in with my mouse,” agrees Darling.“The one thing that’s great about hardware is that you can turn two knobs at once.” As for speed, says Darling,“I know I can achieve a certain sound with a plug-in with the amount of time that I have. A lot of times I’ll buy time between revisions by throwing a plug-in on it and then after the fact I run it through the hardware version.” After a few rounds of revisions, the pro- ject was complete.“Overall, the sound design and music worked together to compliment the spot,” concludes James.“The music and the sound design put together as a whole work well to compliment each other.” Audio for Animation T mixes for ‘Family Guy’ odd-AO’ s Jim Fitzpatrick