Post Magazine

HSBUJTNVTJDMJCSBSZ/dpn HSBUJTNVTJDMJCSBSZ/dpn Scoring Enter tainment • Over 6,000 tracks of fresh, exciting new music designed specifically for film, television, radio, wireless and the internet. • For the first time, a music librar y capable of scoring movies from start to finish. • Intuitive search functions, digital sound files, instant access, easy licensing and a knowledgeable staff make Gratis a dream come true for producers, music super visors and editors. Never before has production music been this good and so easy to use! Never before has production music been this good and so easy to use! 52 Post • October 2008 www.postmagazine.com add "a lot of traffic, horn honks, crickets or birds. I use what's recorded on set and maybe enhance it a little, but I don't want it to sound sweetened or it would be distract- ing." He, too, does notching and a lot of EQ'ing on the Harrison console and also taps Lexicon reverbs. Both mixers work in Studio A at Univer- sal Studios BluWave Audio (www.filmmak- ersdestination.com). Their room — de- signed by Jeff Cooper with VP of post pro- duction engineering at Universal Studios Sound Doc Goldstein, senior VP Chris Jenk- ins and chief engineer Jeff Taylor — "is a great sounding room with excellent imag- ing," Cook declares. The show's turnaround is rapid. Supervis- ing sound editor Bobby Mackston and his team have two or three days to prep a show. They deliver to Cook and Nusbaum Pro Tools sessions with about 10 tracks of dialogue and about 40 — more if there are locations and exteriors — tracks of effects. Then the mixers have about nine hours to mix the episode. "The dialogue unit is definitely not built out the way other shows with more prep are," Cook explains. "It's a conscious choice because we don't want to smooth ever y- thing out. We want all the lines to be clear, but we want an unpolished feel. A lot of times when I star t my mix I'm presented with a boom and lavalier running simultane- ously, and I'm hunting and pecking to choose the best mic or combo of mics to use.That's pretty unique; typically on other shows the supervisor will have made those choices be- fore it gets to the console." Episodes usually don't have much music. But last season's final episode featured a going-away par ty with several characters in the show performing music live. "It was fun to work with — the presence of live music played on and off camera gave the mix an interesting extra layer," Cook recalls. During the past two seasons of The Of- fice, the mixers have enjoyed good creative communication with the show's producers, Greg Daniels, Kent Zbornak and Jake Aust. "They have good ears and they told us in detail what they wanted when we star ted with the show," says Cook. "The writing team is also involved in the sound," Nusbaum adds. "When we do the playback, they bring their own sensibilities to the table." Show deliverables are an LTO archive tape containing source sessions and stems, IKIS files (Harrison automation), and a text file with notes, plus DVDs with stems. R A I S I N G T H E B A R At Todd-AO Studios in Hollywood (www.toddao.com), supervising sound editor George Haddad has finished 10 episodes of the first season of Steven Bochco's new se- ries, Raising the Bar, which debuted Labor Day on TNT. Haddad had previously been super vising sound editor for the first four seasons of CSI: New York and sound effects editor for the first season of Mad Men. The legal drama was shot largely on stage with sets representing repeat venues such as the DA's office, judges' chambers, the public defender's office and courtrooms. Once the picture was locked, Haddad merged all edited dialogue, ADR, loop group, Foley and sound effects with music then supervised the final mix on Stage D at Todd-AO Burbank. "The dialogue was pretty clean because the show was shot on a quiet set in the middle of a deser t at Riverfront Stages in Sylmar [California], but there were a lot of extras so it was a challenge to get a clean background and clean dialogue of the main actors," says Haddad. A full Foley pass was done in Hollywood with footsteps, hand pats, chair creaks, gavel hits, prisoner restraints and more. "That gave us more control in the mix to process and manipulate sounds like adding reverb to the gavel and a sense of danger to a prisoner's chains," he explains. "Foley plays a big role in a show like this." Haddad was tasked with making offices "sound different from each other but not drastically. There's more movement in the public defender's office with people coming and going, on the phone; the judges' cham- bers are more quiet and above it all but with city background sounds coming through the windows." He also had to convey the feel of high- ceilinged old cour trooms. "I have a huge sound library of many movies and TV shows for room tone, and I went to some LA cour troom buildings to record some am- biance," he explains. "That helped us smooth out any dialogue holes and add the feel of a big, historic building." The series is not SFX heavy but Haddad developed an "ominous but subtle" whoosh, which is employed for video flash forwards, which help propel the plot's timeline. Haddad and his edit team, composed of effects editor Ed Coblentz, dialogue editor Ed Lachman and ADR editor Ruth Adelman, worked on a Pro Tools|HD V.7 system recording 48kHz/24-bit. Aaron Levy, rere- A U D I O The Technicolor True Blood crew (L-R): Joe Earle, Laura Schmadel, Elmo Ponsdomenech, Kevin Roache and John Benson. for TV Series

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