Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1448505
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 65 logistics with the builders. Moving in July perhaps? March 20th was ridiculous, we were premixing fx on BandE and dialogues on Flight 93. Bill Johnson and builder Ray Tiverton met at Goldcrest. The next day I ran a crowd session on Flight 93 with Paul Carr recording. I hadn't worked with Paul for years and had missed his badly timed laconic and, rather rude, humour. Nothing was sacred, not even a terrorist plane crash! On Friday we had another temp on BandE. Flight 93 was still premixing. Saturday meant temping on BandE and a spotting session on Flight 93. A spotting session now? Sunday continuing temping on BandE. On Monday we were conforming Flight 93 and premixing on two stages at DLL. MPS was in the smaller Theatre 3 on dialogues and Doug Cooper on fx in the big Theatre 1. There was also a screening of Young Hannibal around the corner in The Hat Factory. On Monday April 3rd, we started final mixing on Flight 93 but we were also doing a temp in DLL Theatre 3! In the afternoon I sneaked off to see Paul Verhoeven. Paul was so organised it made my life a little easier. Thursday 6th, we had a Young Hannibal fx and ADR spotting session. We were also still recording ADR on Flight 93 in various parts of the world by ISDN and trying to get everything into the final by the end of the 7th. It all became a blur I had to admit and I stopped writing my diary. I do remember sleeping one night at the Soho Hotel as we were so late and we drank deeply from the "honesty" bar. I went on Friday the 14th (Good Friday) to Rank Laboratories, Denham, to check all forms of the Optical sound negative with Mike Solinger and returned to continue on the Saturday. By now the film had changed its name to United 93. Casino Royale 24/4/06 to 27/10/06; Black Book 15/5/06 to 28/7/06 On April 24th, Martin, Simon and I started on Casino Royale (CR). I handed BandE over to John Warhurst and Michael Fentum. I called Stuart who was in Prague, at lunch time, to tell him we were starting and then, almost immediately, went to ADR Rhys Ifans on Young Hannibal! I found him to be rather dour! On Tuesday we had a conference call with Stuart in Prague. More of a pep talk than anything else! On that day Mike and Bran produced a little girl, Ivy. Mother and daughter were well! Thursday we had a temp mix on Young Hannibal. The first sequence of CR we worked on was the Parkour scene near the front. Stuart had produced an exciting cut but was less than happy with our first attempt. What we had done was add in a bit, smooth out a bit more and generally "tart" up the cutting copy sound. What Stuart wanted was more or less a finished product! When we realised that, our lives were made much easier. There was no such thing as a "rough" mix in Stuart's eyes. Today whenever I want to demonstrate Foley, guerrilla Foley, fx and sound design I show that complete sequence. It still gets a round of applause. The next week the temp on Young Hannibal was continuing. I called Stuart on the Wednesday morning to give him a progress report on Casino Royale and at lunchtime I ran three reels of Black Book with Paul Verhoeven. On the 5th of May, we finished the temp on YH and then went on hiatus! I ran some more reels of Black Book with Paul. On Sunday the 7th, I flew to Prague to see Stuart and meet the crew. Stuart ran all the cut material so far. So impressive. I also fell in love with the city. Stuart and I had dinner in an Italian restaurant where Martina Navratilova was sitting at the next table! Stuart took me to the set on the Monday morning which was actually an enormous disused steel manufacturing structure about 30 minutes out of the city. The interior airport set was constructed there. I met up with Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, the producers. I returned to the UK on the Tuesday. We started Black Book officially on May 15th, although it seemed that I had been on it for many months. James Harrison would start and would have to be as economical as he could be. Herman Pieete was the dialogue and ADR editor and had come over to meet us. Valerio Bonelli had by now taken over the editing on Young Hannibal from Pietro who had gone on to Ridley Scott's American Gangster. There was another Young Hannibal temp at Goldcrest which started on the 19th and the preview itself was on the 25th. Jeanette had asked for extra work for changes to the preview. Oliver was around to sort it out. "In United 93 we had to be as accurate as possible with the crowd voices, the controllers' talk, in fact, all the ambience. We couldn't aord to get it wrong. That would have been disrespectful."