Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1434375
64 W I N T E R 2 0 2 2 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y Because you can just go for it! It's totally organic, it's happening right in front of you. Yeah, exactly! Well, I can only assume that in this day and age, that is no longer the norm. It's completely not the norm! Double-edged sword or not, in most cases these days, you are recording orchestra separately section by section. Does that recording then go to a music editor or do you go straight to mixing? Different projects require different things. For super complex things, like on Luca, I had an additional editor, not a music editor, but a score editor who makes all the separate sectional recordings play together like a single group. For a while now, I have been working with David Channing and Larry Mah. Sometimes we are in a rush and we don't have time to get another take to get the rhythm exactly in sync. The score editors will iron out the issues between these stripes, the groups of sectional recordings. So, I'll have an editor do that and otherwise fix takes. If there's a stage noise, or the need for some RX-ing [audio repair via iZotope], my assistant will receive the files from them and place them in my mix template; often while I'm still recording. Then I'll start mixing. And, in a unique part of my process, after I get a mix together, I'll have Larry and David go back and open my sessions and listen to whatever balances I have made and they will fine-tune their edits. Then I'll go back and fine-tune my mix afterward. So, at this point, are you printing your stems? Yeah, and most of the time these days, I'm doing offline bounces of these mixes in one rig. It has been a couple of years, but I used to have a three Pro Tools system workflow. One where the pre-record material would be on one rig, the live recordings on a second, and then we would print to a third. These days, I like having everything in one machine. Now with the higher track counts and the hybrid engine, it's allowing me to record at 96 kHz, and sometimes even 192 kHz! Previously, you were limited to three hundred something tracks at 96 kHz, and I know that may sound like a lot, but those get eaten up quickly. Is every stripe 48 mics wide? Basically, yeah, depending on what the stripe is. For example, woodwinds can be a few less, but… You're trying to record the room! To make them appear to be in the same space. You are striping strings, winds, brass, percussion and many times there are multiple stripes of each section, so that adds up. With percussion, for example, sometimes we'll do tympani, then bass drums, and cymbals separate from hand percussion. Or when we go really wide, [we'll record] short strings then long strings, high string effects separate from the low strings, and so on. It all depends on the film and what the composer likes to do after the recordings are made. So, after I get stuff back from being comped and edited by the score and music editors, I'll do my mix pass, and then I'm playing back for the composer. During COVID, that has meant a lot of virtual playbacks and Zoom meetings. I try to find out what kind of listening environment the composer's going to be in because that's critical, especially when mixing in a multichannel format. From there, I'm printing stems and, these days, those stems can be pretty wide. For certain shows with a dense amount of material, I've printed over twenty 7.1 stems. The idea [behind this is] to avoid getting a phone call from the dub stage asking for something separate because we all have a crazy amount of work to get through, and we are trying not to slow the process down. If post has to constantly come back to me asking for things on an additional stem, then they don't have what they need when they need it, and I'm having to go back and do more work on something that we thought had been put to bed. And when they are asking for something from the stage, it's because they just figured out that it's a problem and they want a solution right away! Yeah, exactly! Because one of the filmmakers had a request [when, for example] the triangle is tied to the bass drum and they want to get rid of one or the other. In any event, this is why communication with the dub stage is critical. You've alluded to this earlier, but how many other persons are involved in the recording and mix? Here in town it's a team of people. On my team there is