Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/145624
working around the clock to meet the deadline for Machinima. He had new picture almost every day. In the short time frame he had to create the sound, he admits it was challenging to keep up with picture changes and animation changes. Rajan worked with a team of freelance sound editors to divide and conquer the Foley, ADR, sound effects backgrounds, and dialog edits, while he focused on the sound design. Rajan edits at his studio in Los Angeles on a Pro Tools 10 HD system using a Control 24 control surface. He owns over 4TBs of sound effects. When Tainted Love was re-worked to be a Web series, the original 30-minute cut was broken down into six episodes, each being about five minutes long. Rajan explains, "To make each episode work, there was a lot of re-writing in the editorial, in terms of scene order and the narration of the scenes. We recorded ADR to help tell the story better for each five-minute episode." They also used voiceover, narrated by Orlando Jones, to help tell the story. Rajan approached the voiceover as if it were production dialog. It has a very casual feel. "It feels like Orlando is just talking to you." The ADR and voiceover were recorded at Tibbo Sound (www.tibbosound.com) in Los Feliz, CA, with the Emmy-winner Stephen Tibbo. For a few lines of voiceover, Jones was unable to make it into the studio, so he recorded his lines using an iPhone and sent them to Collins for the mix. "As much as I complained about the fidelity, ultimately I just realized that it doesn't matter too much," he says. "If the script was not working, or the copy was lame, that would have been way worse than whether or not it was recorded on a great sounding mic. These kinds of things were huge challenges and we had to figure out how to make it work." The music on Tainted Loved, composed by Joey Newman and Matt Hutchinson, had a huge impact on the picture edit, the sound design and the mix. Rajan says, "The music was the life of the series. Even though I spent hours and hours working on the sound design, I told the director that we should mute all the sound design and let the music drive the scene. The music was so good that you just had to hear it." Director Youabian also edited the series. He cut the picture to fit the music, so the whole series has a musical feel. Collins says, "The music was constant, and so we decided that the whole series needed to feel like a constant dance. If the music drops then there is something else to take its place. Everything is up, and if it's down, then it's to land a punchline, or a laugh." As a sound design manager at Sony PlayStation, Collins' day-to-day work is mainly on videogames. Tainted Love, though, fits right into his area of expertise. The six-minute long, high-intensity episodes are non-stop, just like a game trailer. "When you're given bite-sized content, you want to constantly keep the ball in the air. You're constantly juggling the sounds and guiding the ear." To make the big soundtrack fit a small screen, Collins mixed the series in stereo, paying close attention to how wide he panned the sound. "If I panned something too much it would become distracting in a strange way because you're looking at such a small screen. It was an interesting challenge. Everything has to translate down to the tiniest screen and the tiniest set of speakers. I learned a lot from listening on headphones and watching it on my iPhone." Collins would post the temp mixes on the Web, and check playback very often on his iPhone. He notes that it was one of the best tools he had for playback. There are no set loudness levels for the Web, so Collins measured different Web programs to see what they were mastered to. He found everything from -5 dB of headroom, to just completely slammed. "It's gotten better over the years, but it was clear that I couldn't do the standard home theater levels. It had to be pretty slammed overall." By constantly listening to the mix on his iPhone, and through headphones, he made sure the levels remained in check. "That was a really great way of figuring out what was going to pop out and what wasn't. When you're listening to something full frequency it doesn't translate the same. That was the idea. Someone had to be able to watch this series on a bus, on the subway, on a laptop, on an iPad or iPhone, and it still needed to read." Collins mixed the series at his home studio on a Pro Tools HD2 system running Pro Tools 8. He monitored the mix on Mackie HRH24s and also on a pair of Beyer T 70 headphones. Normally, Collins uses his home studio for tracking, voiceover or ADR for freelance work on projects like documentaries. Mixing Tainted Love on his HD2 system was a bit of a challenge. "As you can imagine, my horsepower situation, in terms of TDM, was not the best. But, we were mixing in stereo and I was able to manage my voices and use a lot of plug-ins natively, as well as using TDM. I drove my system as hard as I could in order to do the mix." Collins uses the Waves Mercury bundle in his home studio. He notes that it was something he couldn't have lived without. "There are so many great tools in there for me to work with, from meters to compressors to effects." One interesting side note is Collins' home studio just happened to be across the street from Youabian, who would make changes to the picture, and then walk over to Collins's house to check out the updated mix, just as if they worked down the hall from each other in a studio. "That was really crucial," Collins says, "because we mixed the whole thing, all six episodes and the trailer, in about two weeks, on our off-hours. It was very much a late night and weekend type of job. It was awesome that Avi was across the street. At one point towards the end, Noam Dromi, the producer, and Avi came over to my home studio. I've got a 46-inch flat screen above the desk so they could sit behind me and look over my head at picture. It felt like a little studio project." Dave Miraglia and Justin Walker just completed audio post on Season 3 of Burning Love. BURNING LOVE: BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE Re-recording mixer David Miraglia (http:// davidmiraglia.com) recently finished mixing Season 3 of the Streamy Award-winning Web series Burning Love. Miraglia has been the re-recording mixer on all three seasons. Though Burning Love started as a Web series, Season 1 made the jump to TV; it premiered on E! on February 25. Conforming a Web series to fit the TV format took a lot of extra www.postmagazine.com Post • July 2013 35