MPSE Wavelength

60 I M PS E . O R G The way I work actually matches nicely with the way I work on documentaries. I've been working on dialogue editing, building the production sound, for a lot of years, so I'm less annoyed by the quality of production sound and mistakes in recordings. They don't bother me that much. It's much more fun to work on it these days than when I was younger, especially on documentaries. EM: How long do you typically get to work on post sound for a feature documentary? SRC: It depends. They're mostly on festival schedules. I often get a project without much lead time, as the team has just heard, "Oh, we have to release it, we have to send it to festivals." That's how I work. It could be about three weeks of editing for the festival submission, or it could be six weeks. But the mixing is typically just one week, that's how we plan that. For feature narratives, I do three to six weeks of editing and then five to seven days of mixing. They often come to me right before picture lock and have just gotten selected by the festival. They come to me saying, "Oh, we got into Sundance ... we have to send it out in a month." So then I start working on it. The good ones are actually the hardest work I've done, because they got picked up by festivals so early on. EM: When you talk about these timelines, are you typically a one- person operation, or are you hiring on a team for specific roles? How do you usually work within these timeframes? SRC: Usually I do most of the work myself. Then I send out work to my friend to do the Foley work. So except for Foley, I do everything from dialogue to backgrounds, effects, and mixing too. EM: How did you decide to go with that approach? SRC: For indie films and docs, it's a budget restriction. I hate asking for a lower rate for my friends to work for me on my films. I have one guy who I can ask freely—he happens to be myself. He's an okay editor, so I just ask myself. I make it work that way. It's a restriction, but the restriction has actually evolved into a style. I try to make that my working style as opposed to a film aesthetic, so I try to make that my approach to sound design too. I start with dialogue and production sound, then that evolves into sound design. I try to think of that as my style for how I do my films. EM: You talked about seeing yourself as a dialogue editor first. When you begin working on a project, how do you organize your time? SRC: I try to do dialogue first, and then move into backgrounds, and then add in effects, and finish with Foley and then mix. I spend more time working on dialogue than everything else. For bigger projects, it differentiates. Effects can get more time. When effects go quicker than expected, I like to spend any extra time on dialogue. EM: Is it tricky to factor in ADR and voiceover recording into your schedule as well? SRC: These days I try not to do ADR. Sometimes we need to fix something unintelligible, and that's OK. But I aim for zero percent ADR. Lately when I do ADR, it's because of a performance need or a story need, not for a sound quality issue. More and more, I find myself liking the performance in production better. But sometimes you have to do ADR, it's unavoidable. " I actually think the Foley might be more important in a documentary than in a narrative film, because that's what makes b-roll come alive with picture. There are a lot of interesting moments that can be found in documentaries, sometimes not motivated by the picture. "

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