Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1277477
46 C I N E M O N T A G E T E C H N O L O G Y her performance feel less polished, like she was finding her way in the beginning. When she really starts to hit the beat, the crowd is with her and they get into it. It feels like the performance clicks. I feel that was the right choice. I always prefer to have proper lip sync even if it's off the music a little bit." Fast-forward to Season 4 and the block party where there were multiple live acts, each with its own music chal- lenges. The f irst act, Derrius Logan, required the most time-stretching work. The sequence starts with Derrius' live performance on stage and cuts away to a tent where Kelli (Natasha Rothwell), Darnell (Aminé), and Ahmal (Jean Elie) are talking. Then it cuts back to the stage where Derrius Logan is still performing. Fo r t h i s s o n g, B ra ke h a d a ca p p e l l a vocals (live from the set and the studio pre-record) and an instrumental track. "In the tent scene, they dropped in the performance tracks behind the dialogue and then started cutting the picture. So it was a bit of a mess when it came to me. To get those pieces to work musically, I had to do some serious time stretching. Hopefully no one ever heard it and the music just passed by," said Brake. Another tricky song was "Mood (feat. Zacari)" performed by SiR. In the scene, there are two singers on the stage, but Brake only had pre-recorded vocals for one singer. "So when they're on-camera, it's all live vocals," he said. "And I ended up fixing the sync because they were singing to the pre-recorded track, and when we're on the lead singer, one of his vocal phrases was off by four frames. It's off, and you can tell he's off. To make it work, I had to stretch the instrumental pre-records and the live vocals to get the lead singer in sync. I stretched that one section across all pieces to make that moment land before cutting to the pre-recorded music for the next shot." B r a k e m a y h a v e b e e n m i s s i n g a pre-recorded vocal split, but every in- strument was fully stemmed out. "That was great," he said, "because initially, the picture editor had the music fade in under the MC. But I didn't like that. You don't see the band playing and so I don't want to hear music from the band. Every now and then you would catch a glimpse of the drummer who's just chilling and the bass player is just chilling. With this song, and throughout the performances, I went in and re-cut the songs to have the start and ending that I think they should have according to what I am seeing." "Issa is very open to seeing my mu- sical changes. It's such a dream to work with an executive producer who loves music the way Issa loves music," conclud- ed Brake. ■ Jennifer Walden is a freelance writer specializing in technology. The Pitch 'N Time interface. P H O T O : S E R A T O