Chapter 4

Success or Failure:

Before the Camera Even Rolls

“If you prep it wrong, you could find yourself
in a win-win-lose situation.”

The success or disappointment of your final soundtrack is decided by you, before the cameras even roll, even before you commence preproduction!

The above 22 words constitute perhaps the most important single truth in this book. It is so important that I want you to read it again. The success or disappointment of your final soundtrack is decided by you, before the cameras even roll, even before you commence preproduction!

You must hire a good production sound mixer along with a supreme boom person, and you must know the pitfalls and traditional clash of production's form and function to “get it in the can” and on its way to the cutting room. You must know how to convey the parameters and needs to the nonsound departments, which have such a major impact on the ability of the sound-recording team to capture a great production dialog track. If you do not allow enough money in the lighting budget to rent enough cable, you do not get the generators far enough away from the set, resulting in continuous intrusion of background generator noise. This isn't so bad if you are filming in bustling city streets, but it certainly does not bode well if you are filming medieval knights and fair maidens prancing around in a Middle Ages atmosphere. Regardless of the period or setting of the film, unwanted ambient noises only intrude on the magic of production performances.

In addition, you must know about the dangers and intrusions of cellular phones and radio-control equipment when working with wireless microphones. You must know how to budget for multiple microphone setups using multiple boom persons and multiple cameras. You must understand the ramifications of inclement weather and the daily cycle of atmospheric inversions that can cause unpredictable wind-buffet problems during an exterior shoot.

With today's advancements in wind-control devices and numerous new mounts and shock absorbers, production mixers capture recordings with greater clarity and dynamic range than ever before, but they can't do it alone. Such a recording equipment package does not come free and it's not included in the daily rate of the craftsperson. You must allow enough money in the equipment rental package, whether it is rented from an audio facility or whether it is the property of the sound person utilizing his or her own gear.

Figure 4.1 Sound boom operators must get into the middle of any action being created on the screen: from hurricane-driven rain, to car-chase sequences, to dangerously moving equipment. Here, two boom operators bundle up on padded-boy wraps, gauntlets, and machinist masks to protect themselves from flying bits of rock and debris, while still striving to capture the best microphone placement possible. Photo by Ulla-Maija Parikka.

It is important that you consult with your director of photography. After careful consideration of the photographic challenges you must overcome, you will soon know what kinds of cameras you should rent. Three unblimped Arri-III cameras grinding away as they shoot the coverage of three men lounging in a steam room speaking their lines pose some awful sound problems—that is, if you hope to have a production track to use in the final mix! The motors of three unblimped cameras reverberating off hard tile walls will not yield a usable soundtrack. Do you throw up your hands and tell the sound mixer to just get a guide-track, conceding that you will have to loop it later in postproduction? You can, but why should you?

Of all the films I contracted and supervised, I only remember three pictures where I was brought in before the producer commenced preproduction to advise and counsel during the budgeting and tactical planning, the desired result being a successful final track.

John Carpenter hired me as the supervising sound editor for The Thing a year before he started shooting. I helped advise and consult with both John Carpenter and his production mixer, Tommy Causey, before they even left for Alaska, where they shot the “Antarctica” location sequences. By this time, I had already done two of John's pictures, for both of which Tommy had served as production mixer. Tommy used to call me and ask if we could get together to have coffee and discuss the upcoming shoot. It gave me a great opportunity to ask him to record certain wild tracks while he was there. He would tell me how he intended to cover the action and what kinds of microphones he intended to use. It never failed that after the cast-and-crew screening Tommy would always tell me that he really appreciated the coffee and conversation, as he would not have thought of something that I had added, or that I said something that stimulated his thinking, which led to ingenious problem solving.

While John and his team shot up north in the snow, I saw dailies at Universal and went out into the countryside on custom-recording stints to begin developing the inventory of specialty sounds that were needed, months before sound teams were usually brought onto a picture. This preparation and creative foreplay gave us the extra edge in making an exciting and memorable soundtrack. (Oddly enough, the cold bone-chilling winds of The Thing were actually recorded in hot desert country just a few miles northwest of Palm Springs.) To this day, I have been set for other film projects because I did the sound for The Thing.

A couple of years later, Lawrence Kubik and Terry Leonard sat down with us before they commenced preproduction on their action-packed anti-terrorist picture Death Before Dishonor. They needed the kind of sound of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but on a very tight budget. Intrigued by the challenge to achieve a soundtrack under such tight restrictions, coupled with Terry Leonard's reputation for bringing to the screen some of the most exciting action sequences captured on film today—sequences that always allowed a creative sound designer to really show off—I decided to take it on.

To avert any misunderstandings (and especially any convenient memory loss months later, during postproduction), we insisted that the sound-mixing facility be located where we would ultimately rerecord the final soundtrack. We further insisted that the final rerecording mixers be set and that all personnel with any kind of financial, tactical, or logistical impact on the sound process for which I was being held singularly responsible meet with me and my team, along with the film's producers. Using a felt-tip marker and big sheets of paper pinned to the wall, we charted out a battle plan for success.

Because we could not afford to waste precious budget dollars, we focused on what the production recording team must come back with from location. We gave the producers a wish list of sounds to record in addition to the style of production recording. Because of certain sequences in the script where we knew the dialog would later be looped in postproduction for talent and/or performance reasons, we suggested they merely record a guide track of the talent speaking their lines for those specific sequences. The production sound mixer should concentrate on the nearly impossible production sound-effect actions taking place in nearly every action setup, getting the actors to speak their lines as individual wild tracks (WT) whenever he could.

Hundreds of valuable cues of audio track came back, authentic to the Middle Eastern setting and precisely accurate to the action. This saved thousands of dollars of postproduction sound redevelopment work, allowing the sound-design chores for high-profile needs, rather than track-building from scratch.

Because we could not afford nearly as much Foley stage time as would have been preferred, we all agreed to what kinds of Foley cues we would key on and what kind of Foley we would not detail but could handle as hard-cut effects. We placed the few dollars they had at the heart of the audio experience. This included making the producers select and contract with the rerecording facility and involving the rerecording mixers and facility executive staff in the planning and decision-making process. Each mixer listened to and signed off on the style and procedure of how we would mount the sound job, starting with the production recordings through to delivering the final-cut units to the stage to be mixed into a final track. We charted out the precise number of days, sometimes even to the hour, that would be devoted to individual processes. Also, we set an exact limit to the number of channels that would be used to perform the Foley cues, which mathematically yielded a precise amount of 35 mm stripe stock to be consumed. With this information, we confidently built in cap guarantees not to be exceeded, which in turn built comfort levels for the producers.

We laid out what kind of predubbing strategy would be expected and complete and proper coverage without undue separations, specifying a precise number of 35 mm fullcoats needed for each pass.

Mathematically and tactically, both the facility budget and dubbing schedule unfolded forthwith. It was up to us to do our part, but we could not, and would not be able to, guarantee that we could accomplish the mission unless everyone along the way agreed and signed off on his or her own contribution and performance warranty as outlined by the various teams involved. Everyone agreed, and 14 months later the Cary Grant Theater at MGM rocked with a glorious acoustical experience, made possible by the thorough collaboration of problem-solving professionals able to lead the producers and director into the sound mix of their dreams.

In a completely different situation, I handled the sound-editorial chores on a South-Central action picture. We had not been part of any preplanning process, nor had we had any say on style and procedure. As with most jobs, my sound team and I were brought onboard as an afterthought, only as the completion of picture editorial neared. We inherited a production track that was poorly recorded, with a great deal of hiss, without thought of wild-track coverage. To further aggravate the problem, the producer did not take our advice to loop what was considered to be a minimum requirement to reconstruct the track. The excuse was that the money was not in the budget for that much ADR. (This is a typical statement, heard quite often, almost always followed several months later by a much greater expenditure than would have been needed had the producers listened to and taken the advice of the supervising sound editor.)

The producer walked onto Stage 2 of Ryder Sound as we commenced rehearsing for a final pass of reel 1. He listened a moment, then turned and asked, “Why are the sound effects so hissy?” The effects mixer cringed, as he was sure I would pop my cork, but I smiled and calmly turned to the head mixer (who incidentally had just recently won an Academy Award for Best Sound). “Could you mute the dialog predub please?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied as his agile fingers flicked the mute button. The entire dialog predub vanished from the speakers. Now the music and sound effects played fully and pristinely, devoid of any hiss or other audio blemishes. The producer nodded approval, then noticed the absence of dialog from the flapping lips. “What happened to the dialog track?”

I gestured to the head mixer once more. “Could you please unmute the dialog predub?”

He flipped off the mute button, and the dialog returned, along with the obnoxious hiss. The producer stood silently, listening intently, and then realized. “Oh, the hiss is in the dialog tracks.” He turned to the head mixer. “Can you fix that?”

The mixer glanced up at him, expressionless. “That is fixed.”

This made for more than one inevitable return to the ADR stage as we replaced increasingly more dialog cues—dialog we had counseled the producer to let us ADR weeks earlier. Additionally, more time was needed to remix and update numerous sequences. This experience did much to chisel a permanent understanding between producer and sound supervisor and a commitment to not repeat such a fiasco on future films. Much to my surprise, the producer called me in for his next picture, which was a vast improvement, but it wasn't until the following picture that the producer and I bonded and truly collaborated in mounting a supreme action soundtrack.

The producer called me in as he was finishing the budget. “Okay Yewdall, you keep busting my chops every time we do a picture together, so this time you are in it alongside me. No excuses!”

He made it clear that he wanted a giant soundtrack, but did not have a giant budget. After listening to him explain all about the production special-effects work to be done on the set, I told him that we should only record a guide track. We decided that we would ultimately ADR every syllable in the picture. It would not only give us a chance to concentrate on diction, delivery, and acting at a later time, but also it would eliminate the continual ambience from the center speaker, which often subdues stereophonic dynamics, allowing us to design a much bigger soundtrack. In fact, the final mix was so alive and full that clients viewing dailies in the laboratory's screening facility were said to have rushed out of the theatre and out the back door, convinced a terrorist takeover was in progress. To this day, the producer calls that picture his monster soundtrack, and rightfully so.

UNDERSTANDING THE ART FORM OF SOUND

First, you must know the techniques available to you; many filmmakers today do not. They don't have a background in the technical disciplines; hence they have no knowledge of what is possible or how to realize the vision trapped inside their heads. This stifles their ability to articulate to their department heads clear meaningful guidance, so they suffocate their craftspeople in abstract terminology that makes for so much artsy-sounding double-talk. They use excuse terms like “Oh, we'll loop it later” or “We'll fix it in post” or, the one I really detest, “We'll fix it when we mix it.” These are, more often than not, lazy excuses that really say “I don't know how to handle this” or “Oops, we didn't consider that” or “This isn't important to me right now.”

Figure 4.2 Pekka Parikka, director of Talvisota (The Winter War), goes over the sound design concepts with paulJy rälä, the production sound recordist, co-supervising sound editor, and rerecording mixer. Precise planning is vital when working on a very tight budget. Photo by Ulla-Maija Parikka.

Sometimes you must step back, take a moment, and do everything you can do to capture a pristine dialog recording. The vast majority of filmmakers will tell you they demand as much of the original recording as possible; they want the magic of the moment. Many times you know that post sound can and will handle the moment as well if not better than a live recording, so you either shoot MOS (without sound) or you stick a microphone in there to get a guide track. You must know your options.

THE “COLLATERAL” TERROR LURKS AT EVERY TURN

If you are making an independent film, you must have a firm grip on understanding the process and costs involved, both direct and collateral. Most production accountants can recite the direct costs like the litany of doctrine, but few understand the process well enough to judge the collateral impact and monetary waste beyond the budget line items.

For example, on an animated feature, the postproduction supervisor had called around to get price quotes from sound facilities to layback our completed Pro Tools sessions to 24-track tape. The postproduction supervisor had chosen a facility across town because its rate was the lowest and it did a lot of animation there. When making the inquiry, he had been given a very low rate and had been told that the average time to transfer a reel to 24-track was no more than 30 minutes.

The postproduction supervisor was delighted, and on his scratchpad he scribbled the hourly rate, divided it in half, multiplied it by 4 (the number of reels in the show), and then by 3 (the number of 24-track tapes the supervising sound editor estimated would be needed). That was the extent of the diligence when the decision was made to use this particular facility to do the layback work.

The first layback booking was made for Thursday afternoon at one o'clock. Based on the scanty research (due to the postproduction supervisor's ignorance about the process) and the decision made forthwith, it was decided that, since it would only take 30 minutes per reel to layback, I would not be without my hard drives long enough to justify the rental of what we call a layback or transport drive. A layback or transport drive is a hard drive dedicated to the job of transferring the edited sessions and all the sound files needed for a successful layback; this way, an editor does not need to give up the hard drive and can continue cutting on other reels.

The first error was a lack of communication from the postproduction supervisor and the facility manager in defining what each person meant by a reel (in terms of length) and how many channels of sounds each person was talking about regarding the scope of work to be transferred. Each had assumed each was talking about the same parameters. Sadly, they were not. In traditional film editing terms, a theatrical project is broken down into reels of 1000 feet or less. This means that the average 90–100-minute feature will be picture cut on 9–10 reels, each running an average of 8–10 minutes in length. After the final sound mix is complete, these reels are assembled into “A-B” projection reels (wherein edit reels 1 and 2 are combined to create a projection reel 1AB, edit reels 3 and 4 are combined to create projection reel 2AB, and so forth). Projection reels are shipped all over the world for theatrical presentation. Whether they are projected using two projectors that switch back and forth at the end of reel changeovers, or whether the projectionist mounts the reels together into one big 10,000-foot platter for automated projection, they are still shipped out on 2000-foot “AB” projection reels.

When the facility manager heard the postproduction supervisor say that our project was 4 reels long, he assumed that the reels would run approximately 8–10 minutes in length, like the reels they cut in their own facility. We were really cutting preassembled AB-style, just like projection reels in length, as the studio had already determined that the animated feature we were doing was a direct-to-video product. Therefore our reels were running an average of 20–21 minutes in length, over twice as long as what the facility manager expected.

Second, the facility manager was accustomed to dealing with his own in-house product, which was simple television cartoon work that only needed four to eight sound-effect tracks for each reel. For him this was a single-pass transfer. Our postproduction supervisor had not made it clear that the sound-editorial team was preparing the work in a theatrical design, utilizing all 22 channels for every reel to be transferred.

Since the facility had a Pro Tools unit that could only play back eight dedicated channels at once, the transfer person transferred channels 1 through 8 all the way through 20–22 minutes of an A-B reel, not 8–10 minutes of a traditional cut reel. Then he rewound back to heads, reassigned the eight playback outputs to channels 9 through 16, transferred that 20–22-minute pass, then rewound back to heads and reassigned the eight playback outputs to channels 17 through 22 to finish the reel. Instead of taking an average of half an hour per reel, each reel took an average of 2 hours. Add to that a 2-hour delay because they could not figure out why the timecode from the 24-track was not driving the Pro Tools session.

The crew finally discovered that the reason the timecode was not getting through to the computer was that the facility transfer technician had put the patch cord into the wrong assignment in the patch bay and had not thought to double-check the signal path. To add more woes to the hemorrhaging problem, the facility was running its Pro Tools sessions on an old Macintosh Quadra 800. It was accustomed to a handful of sound-effects channels with sprinklings of little cartoon effects that it could easily handle. On the other hand, we ran extremely complex theatrical-designed sound with gigantic sound files, many in excess of 50 megabytes apiece. One background pass alone managed 8 gigabytes of audio files in a single session, a session twice as long as traditional cut reels. At the time, I used a Macintosh PowerMac 9600 as my workstation, and they tried to get by with only a Quadra 800. The session froze up on the transfer person, and he didn't know what was wrong. The editor upstairs kept saying the drive was too fragmented, and so they wasted hours redefragmenting a drive that had just been defragmented the previous day.

I received an urgent call and drove over to help get things rolling again. I asked them if they had tried opening the computer's system folder and throwing out the Digidesign setup document, on the suspicion that it had become corrupted and needed to be rebuilt. They didn't even know what I was talking about. Once I opened the system folder and showed them the setup document, I threw it in the trash and rebooted the computer, then reset the hardware commands. The Pro Tools session came up and proceeded to work again.

Part of the reason why the facility offered such an apparently great transfer deal was that it did not have to pay a transfer technician very high wages, as he was barely an apprentice, just learning the business. He transferred sound by a monkey-see, monkey-do approach; he had been shown to put this cord here, push this button, turn this knob, and it should work. The apprentice was shoved into a job way beyond his skill level and was not instructed in the art of precise digital-to-analog transfer, nor had he been taught how to follow a signal path, how to detect distortion, how to properly monitor playback, how to tone up stock (and why), or how to problem solve.

The facility did not have an engineer on staff—someone who could have intervened with expert assistance to ferret out the problem and get the transfer bay running again. Instead, a sound editor was called down from the cutting rooms upstairs, someone who had barely gotten his own feet wet with Pro Tools, someone only a few steps ahead of the transfer person. Not only was the layback session of Thursday blown completely out, but a second session was necessary for the following day, which ended up taking 9 hours more. As a consequence, I was without my drive and unable to do any further cutting for nearly 2 days because of this collateral oversight. In addition to nearly $1000 of lost editorial talent, the layback schedule that on paper looked like it would take 2 simple hours actually took 14, wiping out the entire allocated monies for all the laybacks, and we had just started the process!

These collateral pitfalls cause many horror stories in the world of filmmaking. Filmmakers’ ignorance of the process is compounded by the failure to ask questions or to admit lack of knowledge; the most common mistake is accepting the lowest bid because the client erroneously thinks money will be saved. Much of the ignorance factor is due not only to the ever-widening gap of technical understanding by the producers and unit production managers but by the very person producers hire to look after this phase of production—the postproduction supervisor. The old studio system used to train producers and directors through a working infrastructure where form and function had a tight, continuous flow, and the production unit had a clearer understanding of how film was made, articulating its vision and design accordingly. Today many producers and directors enter the arena cowboy-style, shooting from the hip, flashing sexy terms and glitzy fads during their pitch sessions to launch the deal, yet they so seldom understand that which their tongue brandishes like a rapier.

Many executive-level decision makers in the studios today rose from the ranks of number-crunching accountants, attorneys, and talent agent “packagers,” with little or no background in the art of storytelling and technical filmmaking, without having spent any time working in a craft that would teach production disciplines. They continue to compress schedules and to structure inadequate budgets.

A point of diminishing returns arrives where the studios (producers) shoot themselves in the foot, both creatively and financially, because they don't understand the process or properly consult supervisors and contractors of the technical crafts who can structure a plan to ensure the project's fruition.

PENNY-WISE AND POUND-FOOLISH

A frequent blunder is not adopting a procedural protocol to make protection backups of original recorded dailies or masters before shipping from one site to another. The extra dollars added to the line-item budget are minuscule indeed compared to the ramifications of no backup protections and the consequent loss of one or more tapes along the way.

I had a robust discussion with a producer over the practice of striking a backup set of production DATs each day before shipping the dailies overseas to Los Angeles. For a mere $250, all the daily DATs would have been copied just prior to shipment. He argued with me that it was an unnecessary redundancy and that he would not line anybody's pockets. Sure enough, two months later, the postproduction supervisor of the studio called me up. “Dave, we've got a problem.”

The overseas courier had lost the previous day's shipment. The film negative had made it, but not the corresponding DAT. They had filmed a sequence at night on the docks of Hong Kong. An additional complication arose in that the scene was not even scripted but had been made up on the spur of the moment and shot impromptu. There were no script notes and only the barest of directions and intentions from the script supervisor.

Consultation with the director and actors shed little light on the dialog and dramatic intent. After due consideration and discussion with the postproduction supervisor, we set upon an expensive and complex procedure, necessary because the producer had not spent that paltry $250 for a backup DAT copy before lab shipments.

Two lip-readers were hired to try to determine what the actors were saying. The television monitors were too small for the lip-readers to see anything adequately because the footage was shot at night with moody lighting. This meant we had to use an ADR room where the film image projected much larger. Naturally, the work could not be done in real time. It took the lip-readers two full days of work to glean as much as they could. Remember, these were raw dailies, not finished and polished cut scenes. The lip-readers had to figure out each take of every angle because the sequence was unscripted and the dialog would vary from take to take.

Then we brought in the actors to ADR their lines as best as they could to each and every daily take. After all, the picture editor could only cut the sequence once he had the dialog in the mouths of the actors.

After the preliminary ADR session, my dialog editor cut the roughed dialog in sync to the daily footage as best as she could. This session was then sent out to have the cut ADR transferred onto a Beta SP videotape that the picture assistant could then digitize into the Avid (a nonlinear picture-editing system).

It should go without saying that once the picture editor finished cutting the sequence, the entire dock sequence had to be reperformed by the actors on the ADR stage for a final and more polished performance.

All in all, the costs of this disaster ran upward of $40,000, if you include all collateral costs that would not have been expended if a duplicate DAT backup had been made in the first place. To make matters worse, they had not secured a completion bond nor had they opted for the errors-and-omissions clause in the insurance policy.

DEVELOPING GRASS-ROOTS COMMON SENSE

Budget properly, but not exorbitantly, for sound. Make sure that you are current on the costs and techniques of creating what you need. Most importantly, even if you do not want to reveal the amount of money budgeted for certain line items, at least go over the line items you have in the budget with the department heads and vendors with whom you intend to work. I have yet to go over a budget that was not missing one or more items, items the producer had either not considered or did not realize had to be included in the process: everything from giving the electrical department enough allowance for extra cable to control generator noise, to providing wardrobe with funds for the soft booties actors wear for all but full-length shots, to allowing enough time for a proper Foley job and enough lead time for the supervising sound editor and/or sound designer to create and record the special sound effects unique to the visuals of the film.

The technicians, equipment, and processes change so fast and are still evolving and changing so quickly that you must take constant pulse-checks to see how the industry's technical protocol is shooting and delivering film; otherwise you will find yourself budgeting and scheduling unrealistically for the new generation of postproduction processes. Since 1989 the most revolutionary aspects of production have been in the mechanics of how technicians record, edit, and mix the final soundtrack—namely, digital technology. This has changed the sound process more profoundly than nearly any other innovation in the past 50 years. Today we are working with Mac Pros and 1 or 2 terabyte drives with speeds that we could only dream about a decade ago.

Costs have come down in some areas and have risen dramatically in others. Budget what is necessary for your film, and allow enough time to properly finish the sound processes of the picture. A sad but true axiom in this business is: There is never enough time or money to do it right, but they always seem to find more time and money to do it over!

Half the time, I don't feel like a sound craftsman. I feel like the guy in that old Midas muffler commercial who shrugs at the camera and says, “You can pay me now, or pay me later.” The truly sad thing is that it is not really very funny. My colleagues and I often shake our heads in disbelief at the millions of dollars of waste and inefficient use of budget funds. We see clients and executives caught up in repeating clichés or buzzwords—the latest hip phrase or technical nickname. They want to be on the cutting edge, they want to have the new hot-rod technologies in their pictures, but they rarely understand what they are saying. It becomes the slickest recital of technical double-talk, not because they truly understand the neat new words but because they think it will make their picture better.

While working on a low-budget action robot picture, I entered the rerecording mix stage to commence predubbing sound effects when the director called out to me. “Hey, Dave, you did prepare the sound effects in THX, didn't you?” I smiled and started to laugh at his jest, when the rerecording mixer caught my eye. He was earnestly trying to get my attention not to react. It was then that I realized the director was not jesting, he was serious! I stood stunned. I could not believe he would have made such a statement in front of everybody. Rather than expose his ignorance to his producer and staff, I simply let it slide off as an offhanded affirmation. “THX—absolutely.”

An old and tired cliché still holds up very true today: the classic triangle of structuring production quality, schedule issues and budget concerns—The Great Triangle Formula. (1) You can have good quality. (2) You can have it fast. (3) You can have it cheap. You may only pick two of the three! When potential clients tell me they want all three options, then I know what kind of person I am dealing with, so I recommend another sound-editorial firm. No genuine collaboration can happen with people who expect and demand all three.

One False Move is a classic example of this cliché in action. When Carl Franklin and Jesse Beaton interviewed me, we came to an impasse in the budget restrictions. I rose, shook their hands, bid them well, and left. Carl followed me down the hall and blocked my exit. “I'm really disappointed with you, Yewdall!”

“You're disappointed with me?” I sighed. “You're the ones with no money.”

“Yeah, well, I thought one Cormanite would help out another Cormanite,” snapped Carl.

Figure 4.3 The Great Triangle Formula.

I grinned. “You worked with Roger Corman? Why didn't you say that to begin with? Cormanites can always work things out.”

And with that, we returned to the office and told their postproduction supervisor, Graham Stumpf, to keep his mouth shut and learn something. The first thing I asked is what was the release date. There was no release date. Then why the schedule that Graham had outlined? Because he had just copied it from another movie and did not know any better. All right, if you don't have much money then you must give me a lot more time. If I have to hire a full crew to make a shorter schedule work, then that is “hard” dollars that I am going to have to pay out. On the other hand, if I have more time, then I can do more of the work personally, making do with a smaller crew, which in turn, saves the outlay of money that I would otherwise have to make.

Carl and Jesse were able to give me six extra weeks. This allowed me to do more work personally, which was also far more gratifying on a personal level. That the picture was ready for the rerecording process during a slow time in the traditional industry schedule also helped.

Here is another point to note: In peak season, financial concessions are rare. If you hope to cut special rates or deals, aim for the dead period during the Cannes Film Festival.

THE TEMP DUB

A new cut version of a picture is seen as counterproductive by studio executives, as they are usually not trained to view cut picture with only the raw cut production sound. They don't fully understand the clipped words and the shifts in background presences behind the various angles of actors delivering their lines. They watch a fight scene and have difficulty understanding how well it is working without the sounds of face impacts and body punches. This has caused an epidemic of temp dubbing on a scale never before seen or imagined in the industry.

Back in the early 1980s, we called temp dubs the process of flushing $50,000 down a toilet for nothing. Today, we accept it as a necessary evil. Entire procedures and tactical battle plans are developed to survive the inevitable temp dub, and they do not come as a single event. Where there is one, there will be more. How many times has a producer assured me not to worry about a temp dub? Either there will not be one because no money is in the budget for one, the producer insists, or there will be one temp dub and that is it!

A comedy-spoof, Transylvania 6-5000, which I supervised the sound for, is an excellent example of what can go horribly wrong with temp dubs when there is no defined structure of productorial control. Two gentlemen, with whom I had had a very fine experience on an aviation action film the previous year, were its producers. I was assured there would be no temp dub(s), as there was certainly no money in the budget for one. But the project had a first-time director, a respected comedy writer on major films who was now trying to cross over and sit in the director's chair. Being a talented writer, however, did not suddenly infuse him with the knowledge, wisdom, or technical disciplines about how motion pictures were made, especially about the postproduction processes.

We had no sooner looked at the director's cut of the picture when the director ordered up a temp dub. I decided not to cut my wrists just then, so I picked up the phone and called the producer for an explanation. He was as surprised as I was, and he told me to forget about it. I instructed my crew to continue preparing for the final. Within an hour, I received a call from the producer, apologizing and explaining that he could do nothing about it. If the director wanted a temp dub, then we needed to prepare one. I reminded the producer that no allowance had been made for the temp dub in the budget. He knew that. He had to figure things out, but for now, he said, just use budget monies to prepare the temp dub. He would figure out how to cover the overage costs. I asked the producer why he could not block the director's request. After all, I had been trained that the pecking order of command gave producers the veto power to overrule directors, especially when issues of budget hemorrhaging were the topic of conversation. The producer explained that the hierarchy was not typical on this picture: the director was granted a separate deal with the studio that effectively transcended the producer's authority over him. I reluctantly agreed to the temp dub, but reminded the producer that it would seriously eat into the dollars budgeted for the final cutting costs until he could fortify the overage.

After the first temp dub we resumed preparations for the final, when we received a second phone call from the producer. The director had ordered up a second temp dub for another series of screenings. No compensation had been made for the first temp, and now a second temp dub was being ordered? The producer sighed and told us to just continue to use budget dollars until he could figure it out. This would definitely be the last temp dub, and the nightmare would be over.

The nightmare continued for four weeks. Each week the director ordered up yet another temp dub. Each week the producer was unable to deal with studio executives and was dismissed from acquiring additional budget dollars to offset the temp dub costs.

After the fourth temp dub, the producer asked how much longer it would take us to prepare the final mix. I shrugged and said that as far as I was concerned we were already prepared. His eyes widened in disbelief as he asked how that was possible. I told him that the four temp dubs had burned up the entire sound-editorial budget due to the director's dictates. Nothing was left to pay the editors to prepare the final soundtrack unless compensation was forthcoming; therefore the fourth temp dub would have to serve as the final mix! The producer did not believe we would really do that. To this day, the film is shown on television and viewed on video DVDs with the fourth temp dub as its ultimate soundtrack.

You can easily see how a judgment error in the director/producer jurisdiction can have calamitous collateral effects on the end product. Someone, either at the studio or over at the attorney's offices, had been allowed to structure a serious anomaly into the traditional chain-of-command hierarchy. This unwise decision, made long before the cameras ever rolled, laid the groundwork for financial and quality control disasters.

The truth of the matter: this was not a unique tragedy. I could name several major motion pictures whose supervising sound editors told me that they were so balled up by producing temp dubs nearly every week that they never had a chance to properly design and construct a real soundtrack and that those films are really just temp dubs.

Remember this one truth. No one gives you anything free. Someone pays for it; most of the time, it's you. If producers only knew what really goes on behind the scenes to offset the fast-talking promises given a client to secure the deal, they would be quicker to negotiate fairly structured relationships and play the game right.

READ THE FINE PRINT

Several years ago a friend brought me a contract from another sound-editorial firm. He told me the director and producer were still fighting with the editorial firm regarding the overages on their last picture. This contract was for a major motion picture, and they did not want to end up suffering a big overage bill after the final sound mix was completed. Would I read through the contract and highlight potential land mines that could blow up as extra “hidden” costs? I read through the contract.

The editorial firm guaranteed, for a flat fee, a Foley track for each reel of the picture. The cost seemed suspiciously low. When I reread it, I discovered it would bill a flat guaranteed price of “a Foley track”—in other words, Foley-1 of each reel. Foley tracks 2 through (heaven knows how many) 30 to 40 would obviously be billed out as extra costs above and beyond the bounds of the contract.

All the Dolby A noise-reduction channels would be thrown into the deal free. Sounds good—except that by this time nobody of consequence used Dolby A channels—and those who did had already amortized their cost and threw them into every deal free anyway. Of course, nowhere in the contract did it specify about the free use of Dolby SR channels, the accepted and required noise-reduction system at the time. This would, of course, appear as extra costs above and beyond the bounds of the contract.

To help cut costs, the contract specified that all 35 mm fullcoat rolls (with the exception of final mix rolls) would be rental stock, costing a flat $5 each. It was estimated, based on the director's last project and the style of sound postproduction tactics, that this project would use at least 750,000 feet of 35 mm fullcoat. That would cost the budget an estimated $3750 in stock rental.

Figure 4.4 You REALLY have to know and understand the ‘slanguage‘ and fine print in all the hundreds of points and clauses in the production process. Who ends up owning your film anyway?

Since the picture and client were of major importance, the sound-editorial firm wrote into the contract it would purchase all brand-new stock and guarantee to the client that the first use of this new rental stock would be on this picture. This must have sounded delicious to the producer and director. However, in a different part of the contract, near the back, appeared a disclaimer that if any fullcoat rental stock was physically cut for any reason, it would revert from rental to purchase—the purchase price in keeping with the going rates of the studio at the time. A purchase price was not specified or quoted anywhere in the contract. I happened to know that the current purchase price of one roll of fullcoat at the studios averaged $75. This would end up costing the producer over $56,000! No risk existed for the sound-editorial firm; the director was notorious for his changes and updates, so the expectation that each roll of fullcoat used would have at least one cut in it—and would therefore revert to purchase price—translated into money in the bank.

My advice to the producer was to purchase the desired-grade quality fullcoat directly from the stock manufacturer at $27 per roll. Since the production would use so much fullcoat, I suggested the producer strike a bulk-rate discount, which brought the price down to $20 per roll. This would give the producer a guaranteed line-item cost of $15,000, along with the peace of mind that any changes and updates could be made without collateral overages leaching from the budget's fine print regarding invasive use.

I then came across a paragraph describing library effects use. The contract stated that the first 250 sound effects of each reel would be free. A fee of $5 per effect would be added thereafter. First, most sound-editorial firms do not charge per effect. The use of the sound library as required is usually part of the sound-editorial contract. In the second place, no finite definition of what constituted a sound effect was given. If the same sound effect was used more than once in a reel, did that sound effect constitute one use, or was every performance of that same sound effect being counted separately each time? If the editor cut a sound effect into several parts, would each segment constitute a sound-effect use? The contract did not stipulate. I might add that this picture went on to win an Academy Award for Best Sound, but industry rumors placed the overages of the sound budget well over $1 million.

BUT YOU SAID IT WOULD BE CHEAPER!

While I was working on Chain Reaction, a studio executive asked to have lunch, as he wanted to unload some frustrations and pick my brain about the rapid changes in postproduction. For obvious reasons, he will remain anonymous, but he agonized over his Caesar salad about how he just didn't understand what had happened. “You guys said digital would be cheaper!”

“Wait a minute,” I stopped him. “I never said that to you.”

“I don't mean you. But everybody said it would cost less money, and we could work faster!”

“Name me one sound editor that told you that. You can't, because it wasn't one of us who sold you this program. It was the hardware-pushers who sold it to you. You deluded yourselves that it would cost less and allow you to compress schedules. Now what have you got? Compressed schedules with skyrocketing budgets.”

“So let's go back to film!”

I smiled. “No. Do I like working in nonlinear? Yes. Do I think that it is better? Not necessarily. Do I want to go back to using magnetic film again? No.”

“Where'd we go wrong?” he asked.

“You expected to compare apples with apples—like with like. That's not how nonlinear works. With the computer and the almost weekly upgrades of software, we can do more and more tasks. Because we can do more, the director expects us to do more. You cannot expect us to have access to a creative tool and not use it.

“Are we working faster than before? Mach 4 times faster. Can we ignore using the extra bells and whistles and use the equipment as if it were an electronic Moviola? Absolutely not! The sooner you stop throwing darts at the calendar as you make up these artificial schedules and listen to your craftsmen's advice, the sooner you are going to start injecting sensibility into your out-of-control postproduction budgets and start recapturing an art form that is quickly ebbing away. Otherwise, you had better take a deep breath and accept the fact that the reality of today's postproduction costs are out of control, fueled by directors who find themselves in a studio playpen with amazing creative toys at their disposal. They are going to play with them!”

BUDGET FUNDAMENTALS

One of the most frequent agonies in the birthing process of a film is the realization that the budget for the sound-editorial and/or rerecording process was inadequately structured and allocated. Since these two processes are ranked among the most misunderstood phases, they are the two that often suffer the most.

The process is not alleviated by those who strive to help the new independent producers or unit production managers (UPM) by trying to develop “plug-in” budget forms, whether printed or via computer software developed by those knowing even less about the postproduction process. More often than not, these forms are copied from budgets acquired from someone working on another show or even from someone trained during a different era. Not understanding the process, the software writer or print-shop entrepreneur copies only what is seen, thereby carrying only those line items and detail (especially the lack thereof) of whatever is on the acquired budget breakdown, including all the mistakes.

We often have been shocked to find that the producers or UPMs did not allow certain critical line items into their own budgets because they did not see an allowance for a line item in their budget form. Not understanding the sound-editorial and mixing processes themselves, they did not add their own line items as needed. The ignorance and ensuing budget disaster are carried from project to project, like bad genes in a DNA strain, photocopying the blueprints for disappointment and failure onto the next unsuspecting project.

Understanding the Budget Line Items

Following are some important budget line items to consider. Remember, these costs directly impact the soundtrack. These line items do not include creative noise abatement allowances. One must use common sense and draw upon experienced craftspeople to assist in planning a successful soundtrack.

Production Dialog Mixers versus Custom Sound Effect Mixers

In addition to the time allocated for the production sound mixer, the smart producer budgets time for the mixer to come on a location field trip to see and hear the natural ambience, to walk the practical location and hear the potential for echo, to note nearby factories and highways, to detect the presence of aircraft flight paths, and so on. In addition, the mixer takes a quick overview of where power generators might be parked and if natural blinds exist to help block noise or if acoustic gear should be brought to knock down potential problems.

With regard to a pristine dialog track, the boom operator is the key position. The production mixer is the head of the production sound crew, but even the mixer will tell you the boom operator is more important. If the microphone is not in the right position, what good is the subsequent recording? More often than not, the producer or UPM always underbudgets the boom-operator slot. I have seen production mixers shave some of their own weekly rates so that those extra dollars can bolster the boom operator's salary.

Figure 4.5 Production sound budget.

Most smaller pictures cannot afford the cable man (the term cable man has stuck, regardless of the technician's gender). The cable man also handles the second microphone boom as well as other assistant chores. On one picture the producer had not allowed the hiring of a cable man, alleging that the budget could not support one. One night, the crew was shooting a rain sequence at a train station. The production mixer was experiencing many pops on the microphone because the rain was heavier than first anticipated. Needing the rain bonnet, he asked the director for five minutes so that the boom operator could fetch one from the sound truck. The director said no, “We'll just loop his lines later in postproduction.” The following night, the actor was tragically killed in a stunt crash during filming. What do you think it cost to fix the rain-pelted production track, as opposed to the cost of the requested five-minute wait the night before?

On large productions, especially those with a great deal of specialized equipment, vehicles, or props that may be expensive or impossible to acquire later, increasingly more producers factor a production FX recordist into the budget. Usually these individuals have a reputation for knowing how to record for sound-effect use and for effectively interfacing with the postproduction crew to ensure needed recordings. They often work separately from the first unit, usually arranging to work with vehicles or props not being used at the time, taking them out and away to areas conducive to quality recordings.

For instance, a Trans-Am may be the hero vehicle for the picture. The director may want the Trans-Am recorded to match the production dialog, but recorded as a stunt-driven vehicle to give the “big sound” for postproduction sound editorial. Recordings of this type are usually done off-hours, not while the shooting unit is in need of any of the special props or locations in question. Those occasions do arise, though, when the production FX recordist will record during actual shooting, such as recording cattle stampeding through a location set. It may be a financial hardship to field the cattle and wranglers after the actual shoot just to record cattle stampeding. Recordings like these are best orchestrated in a collaborative manner with camera and crew.

Each situation requires a different problem-solving approach. Common sense will guide you to the most fruitful decision. However, production effects recording during principal photography demands attentive regard for suppressing inappropriate noises often made by the production crew. Such events are incredibly challenging and seldom satisfying from the sound mixer's point of view.

The project may require that precise wild track recordings be made of an oil rig, say, or a drawbridge spanning a river. These types of sound recordings should be entrusted to a recordist who understands the different techniques of recording sound effects rather than production dialog (major differences explained later in this book). The production FX recordist is not usually on for the entire shoot of the picture, but is brought on as needed, or for a brief period of time to cover the necessary recordings.

A perfect example was a major action-thriller with a huge car chase scene through Paris. The sound supervisor showed me 50 minutes of the work-in-progress footage, as he wanted me to come on the picture to work with him in handling the vehicle chase scenes. It looked very exciting—a sound editor's dream! The first thing I asked was how were we going to handle custom recording these various cars? We knew that at least two of them were not even available in the United States yet. He asked for a recommendation and proposal. The next day I presented him with my plan: hire Eric Potter, who specializes in custom sound-effect recording, and let him recommend the sound equipment package that he feels he would need, including any assistant help that we knew he would require. Send them over to Paris where they were still filming the picture, and, as a bonus while they were there, record a ton of stereophonic ambiences.

A couple of days later, the sound supervisor came in the office and told me that the producer had decided against my plan. Why spend the money when he would just have the production mixer custom record the vehicles on his off time? I threw up my hands. I knew this producer; he was the son of an ex-studio executive, a second-generation film producer. I had worked for him on another picture several years before. I knew that he did not understand and appreciate the collateral costs he was about to waste by not following the custom recording plan.

I thanked the supervisor for considering me to work on the film, but I knew what “postproduction hell” was coming down the pike. Another studio had recently offered to build a sound-editorial suite to my custom design to entice me over to them. I apologized to my friend and politely turned down doing the car picture to take the deal to move to the other studio.

Several months later that sound supervisor called me up and asked if he could come over and check out my new room. Sure I said, though I thought it strange because he must be knee deep in a difficult project and how could he afford to waste a valuable weekday afternoon with me? He sat down and told me that the temp dub was a disaster. Everything I said would go wrong had gone wrong, and then some. What was the name of that recordist I had recommended? I replied that to custom record the cars now would cost a great deal more than if they had done it during the shoot. And sure enough, after shipping the cars over to California, renting an airfield, trying to find cobblestone streets where they could record, and so on, the sound supervisor later told me the production unit spent nearly 10 times the amount of money that my original plan would have cost.

This is not a lesson about ego, this is a lesson about understanding that production dialog mixers are trained to record dialog! There is an exact discipline, technique, and approach that they are trained to utilize to capture the best production dialog track they can. It is seldom the technique that we utilize when we record sound effects. The two styles are completely different. That is why you need to hire a specialist such as Eric Potter, Charles Maynes, or John Fasal to custom record the sound-effect requirements of your project.

The Production Sound Budget

Production recording mixers can and prefer to use their own equipment. This is of great benefit to the producer for two reasons. First, the production mixer is familiar with his or her own gear and probably yields a better-quality sound recording. Second, in a negotiation pinch, the production mixer is more likely to cut the producer a better equipment-package rental rate than an equipment rental house. Remember too that the production mixer is usually responsible for and provides the radio walkie-talkies and/ or Comtech gear for crew communications. Communication gear is not part of the recording equipment basic package but handled as a separate line item.

As you consider the kind of picture you are making, the style and preference of the production recording mixer, and the budget restraints you are under, you will decide whether to record analog or digital, single-channel, two-channel, or multichannel. This decision outlines a daily procedure protocol from the microphone-to-picture editorial; how to accomplish it and what you must budget.

With very few exceptions, virtually all dailies today are delivered to picture editorial digitally. There are three ways of doing this. The first two choices involve having the production mixer's daily sound tapes or removable hard drive recording storage either digitized (if by DAT) or transferred as audio files that already exist on a removable hard drive so that they can be synced up to the visual image at picture editorial.

1.	You may choose to have the laboratory do it. This in-lab service may be more convenient for you, as they deliver you a video telecine transfer with your sound already synced up to the picture. Sounds good, huh? The downside is that it is a factory-style operation on the laboratory's part. Very few lab services have master craftsmen sound techs who think beyond the timecode numbers and sound report's circled takes. The precision and attention to detail are often lost with the necessary factory-type get-it-out schedule. More importantly, you introduce, at the very least, a generation loss by virtue of the videotape and, at worst, a lot of new noise and hums depending on the quality of the telecine. I do not care what the laboratory tells you, all video transfers introduce degradation and system noise to some degree. I have also personally inherited numerous projects that producers had had the laboratory handle sound transfer in this manner and I have been underwhelmed with their level of service and expertise. One of the underlying reasons for this is that in order to compete, the laboratories have to keep their labor costs down. Bean counters only know numbers on a page: so many technicians, working at a certain pay rate, equals a profit or loss on a foot of film processed. What is happening is that the real craftsmen who really know why we do things the way we do them, who have seen all of the freakish problems in production and with their own veteran memories can instantly access and problem-solve the issue, are let go when their pay rate reaches a certain level. On paper, a lower paid technician makes business sense. The problem is that it usually takes three to six “newbies” to handle and turn out the work that one veteran knows how to do. This is a collateral invisible chuckhole that the studio accountants just do not understand. There are more mistakes made because less experienced beginners are still learning; more and more work has to be redone because it was improperly done the first time.
2.	You may choose to have your own assistant picture editor transfer (digitize) the sound straight into your nonlinear editing system (such as Final Cut Pro or Avid) and then sync the digitized audio files to the digitized picture. This certainly bypasses the laboratory factory-style issues, but more importantly, it places the burden of quality control and the personal project precision on the picture-editorial team. This technique is mandatory if you hope to utilize the OMF procedure later in post-sound editorial; I have come to never trust any material that was handled by a film laboratory, whether telecine transfer or even digitized audio files, if I ever hoped to use OMF in the post-sound edit equation. (OMF, open media framework, is covered in greater detail in Chapter 14.)
3.	Your third choice is to have your production sound mixer do it, so to speak. By this I mean that the sound mixer would be recording sound to either one of the Deva models or to a digital Nagra or several other very high quality recorders, such as the Sound Devices 744T, the Aaton Cantar X, the Fostex PD-6. All of these units are FAT32 formatted to record four to eight discreet channels of audio signal, all capable of up to at least 96 kHz/24-bit recording (a few are rated to record as high as 192 kHz/24-bit) in industry standard audio formats BWF (Broadcast Wave Format) and some also record in .WAV audio format files. (In Chapter 20 we take a brief look at four of these units.

Timecode and other scene/take reference data are included in the directory information of these files, making them instant “drag-and-drop” transfer items into nonlinear picture and audio workstations. As you will read in more detail later, your sound mixer will simply change out the removable hard drive (or flash memory unit) and replace it, or he or she might simply make a backup clone out of the recording setup and burn a DVD-R to ship straight to picture editorial, ready to simply be data-transferred into the computer.

Music Budget

Once the producer settles on the music composer and they thoroughly discuss the conceptual scope of work to be done, the composer outlines a budget to encompass the financial requirements necessary. I am not even going to pretend to be an authority on the budget requirements for music, just as I would not want a music composer to attempt to speak for sound-editorial budget requirements; therefore you should consult your music director and/or composer for their budgetary needs.

Sound-Editorial Budget

The “Labor” line items of the sound-editorial detail illustrated in Figure 4.7 are geared toward a medium-sized feature film with a heavy action content. (I discuss the individual job slots and their contribution to the soundtrack later in this book.)

“Room Rentals” refers to the actual rooms where editorial workstations with monitors and computers are set up and used by the editors and assistants as necessary for the editorial team. This cost does not reflect the equipment, but many sound-editorial firms do include at least a 200–300 gigabyte external drive in the use of the room. Obviously, with today's digital memory requirements for digitized picture, thousands of audio files and edit sessions, that will only get you started.

Each sound editor has a workstation system requirement. A sound designer has a lot more gear than a dialog editor. Assistant sound editors have different kinds of equipment requirements than do sound editors. The workstation system rentals obviously vary from one requirement to another.

Sound editors need more hard drives than the 200–300 gigabyte drive that their room rental may allow. This need is dictated by how busy and demanding the sound-editorial requirements are; again, every show is different. I have an “informal” Pro Tools setup under the end table of my couch so that I can put my feet up on the coffee table while I spend time with my wife in the evenings and I have 1.5 terabytes of sound library drives under the end table with two FireWire cables that poke up when I want to plug my laptop in and go to work. My formal workstation room is set up entirely differently of course; here I can properly monitor in 5.1 and do serious signal analysis and mixing. It all depends on what kind of work you are doing and what setup is structured for what purpose.

Figure 4.6 Music budget.

Figure 4.7 Sound-editorial budget.

The “CUSTOM FX RECORDIST” may, at first glance, look like a redundancy slot from the sound (production) budget page. It is not! The production FX recordist covered the production dialog and any sound effects that were captured during the actual filming of a scene. From time to time, good production mixers know how to take advantage of recording production vehicles, location background ambiences, and props unique to the filming process. Later, usually weeks and even months later, the sound-editorial team is up against a whole new set of needs and requirements. It may need to capture specialized backgrounds not part of the original location, but needed to blend and create the desired ambience.

A good example of this is when I supervised the sound for the 1984 version of The Aviator (starring Christopher Reeve). The director and producers were biplane enthusiasts and wanted exact and authentic recordings for the final film, however, they were prohibited from using the authentic Pratt & Whitney engines of 1927 because the insurance company felt that they were not strong enough, especially as Christopher Reeve did all of his own flying (being an avid biplane pilot enthusiast himself). Therefore, none of the production recordings of the aircraft that were made during the production shoot could be used in the final film. Every single airplane engine had to be custom recorded in postproduction to match how the engines should have historically sounded for 1927.

In Black Moon Rising, the stunt vehicle looked great on film, portrayed as a huge and powerful hydrogen jet car, but in actuality it only had a little four-cylinder gasoline engine that, from a sound point of view, was completely unsuitable. As the supervising sound editor, I had to calculate a sound design to “create” the hydrogen jet car. You will want your custom sound effect recordist to record jets taking off, flying by, landing, and taxiing at a military airbase. He or she may need to have the recordist go to a local machine shop and record various power tools and metal movements. These recordings, as you can see, are completely different and stylized from the production dialog recordist, who was busy recording a controlled audio series of the real props or vehicles as they really sounded on the set.

Referring to the “backup media” line item, backups can never be stressed enough. Every few days, sound editors turn their hard drives over to the assistant sound editors, who make clone drive backup copies, depending on the amount of material, possibly making DVD-R disc backups of “Save As” sessions. Many of the larger sound-editorial firms have sophisticated servers, supplying massive amounts of drive access and redundancy. You can never be too careful about backing up your work.

To this day I can take a Pro Tools session document from any one of the sessions from Starship Troopers (as well as other films) and boot up the session. The software will scan the drives, find the corresponding archived material, rebuild the fades, and in a few minutes I have resurrected FX-D predub from reel 7—the invasion sequence of the planet of Klendathu (one of scads of predub passes that seemed endless). Without good and disciplined habits in file identification protocols, disc management procedures, and backup habits, resurrecting a session like this would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

“TEMP DUB allowances” is a highly volatile and controversial line item. The fact is, directors have become fanatical about having temp dubs because they know their work is being received on a first-impression style viewing, and anything less than a final mix is painful. Studio executives want test screenings for audiences so they can get a pulse on how their film is doing—what changes to make, where to cut, and where to linger—which necessitates showing it with as polished a soundtrack as possible.

Extra costs may be needed to cover the preparation of the temp dubs separate from the sound preparation for final mix predubbing. The producer(s) and supervising sound editor(s) may want a separate editorial team to handle most of the temp-dub preparation, as they do not want the main editorial team distracted and diluted by preparing temp dubs. (Temp dub philosophy is discussed later.)

“Workstation Transfer Exports” refers to the common practice of sound editorial to make “crash downs” (multichannel mixes) of certain segments of action from digital workstations and to export them as single audio files for picture editorial to load into their Final Cut Pro or Avid picture editing systems and sync up to picture, thereby giving picture editorial little work-in-progress sections, such as action scenes, to assist the director and picture editor as work continues. Figure 4.7 lists the raw stock supply for the production recording mixer—not the backup media!

Transfers and Stock Purchase

Unless you are cutting your picture on film, the “Stripe for Transfers” line item hardly affects you. This is where you would budget your 35 mm mag stripe and full-coat costs if you were still cutting on film.

Very few of today's postproduction facilities are still recording ADR and/or looping sessions to analog 24-track 2” tape any more, but you may run into one or two of them along the way, so you should understand the format. If you find that you need to use a service that still uses 2” tape, refer to the “ADR String-offs” line item. You need to consider the following: five 24-track rolls cover a 95–100-minute motion picture. Unless you have extremely complex and overlapping ADR, you should require only one set of 24-track rolls. You will require a second set of 24-track rolls if you are planning to record a walla group, especially with today's stereophonic microphone setups. We will discuss ADR and looping techniques and the recording format options later on in Chapter 16.

I cannot imagine any Foley stage still recording Foley to 24-track 2” tape, but if you find that your sound facility is still using this format, you need to refer to the “Foley String-offs” line item. The same considerations apply as before. Some films require more Foley tracks than others, so you would simply allow for a second set of 24-track rolls. Sometimes Foley only requires a few extra channels, and if the walla group requirements are not considered too heavy you can set aside the first few channels for the overflow Foley tracks and protect the remaining channels for the walla group that has already been done or has yet to be performed.

Figure 4.8 Transfer budget.

In both the ADR and Foley stage-recording requirements, I am sure you have noticed that I have not yet mentioned recording straight to an editing workstation hard disk. We will talk more about this later in Chapter 16 (for ADR/looping) and Chapter 17 (for Foley). The majority of your postproduction sound services for recording your ADR/looping sessions and/or your Foley sessions will be straight to a hard disk via a nonlinear workstation such as Pro Tools. Though this procedure will not require a transfer cost in the traditional sense of “transferring” one medium to another medium, you will need to back up the session folder(s) from the facility's hard drive to whatever medium you require to take to your editorial service. This medium could be your own external 200–300 gigabyte hard drive, or you could have the material burned to DVD-Rs, or some other intermediate transport protocol you have decided to use. If that is the case, you need to budget for it under item 4715 “Back-up Media” as shown in Figure 4.7.

In reference to the “Fullcoat Requirements,” you will probably not require full-coat for ADR or Foley recording. I have not heard of any ADR or Foley stages using fullcoat now for several years. The 4-channel film recorders have, for the most part, been replaced by 24-track 2” analog tape, and direct-to-disk workstation recording systems, such as Pro Tools.

Depending on which studio you opt to handle the rerecording chores of your project, you may still require 35 mm fullcoat for some or all of the predubbing and final mix processes, although most mixing is done digitally today using hard drive systems.

You must allow for protection backup stock when you have ADR or Foley sessions (see the “Stage Protection Stock” line item). There may be a few ADR stages that still use DAT backup, even though you are recording to a Pro Tools session. The sound facility where you contract your stage work may include this cost in its bid. You must check this, and make sure to take an overview of how many protection DATs are allowed and the cost per item if you decide to use such tape protection.

Some sound facilities charge the client a “head wear” cost for using customer-supplied stock. This is nothing but a penalty for not buying the facility's stock, which has obviously been marked up considerably. Find out the kind of stock the facility uses, and then purchase the exact brand and type of stock from the supplier. Not only will you save a lot of money but you will pull the rug out from anyone trying to substitute “slightly” used reclaim stock instead of new and fresh. This is a common practice.

Post-Sound Facility

Referring to the “TEMP DUB(s)” line item, note for the purpose of discussion that we have reserved 4 days for temp dubbing in this budget sample. This can be used as 4 single temp mixing days, as two 2 temp mixing days, or as one major 4-day temp mix.

We have a fairly good production track, for this budget example, but we have several segments where we need to loop the main characters to clean out background noise, improve performance, or add additional lines. We budgeted 5 days on the ADR stage.

Figure 4.9 Post-sound budget.

For this project, we have fairly large crowd scenes, and although we expect that sound editorial has all kinds of stereophonic crowds in its sound-effects library, we want layers of specialized crowd walla to lay on top of the cut crowd effects. We budgeted one day to cover the necessary scenes (see the “ADR STAGE—Group Walla” line item).

Note that you need to check your cast budget account and ensure that your budget has a line item for group walla. Many budgets do not, and I have encountered more than one producer who has neglected to allow for this cost. In this case, we budgeted for 20 actors and actresses, who all double and triple their voice talents. With four stereo pairs of tracks, a group of 20 voices easily becomes a chanting mob scene or terrified refugees.

Here we budgeted 10 days to perform the Foley (see “FOLEY STAGE”), giving us 1 day per reel. This is not a big budget under the circumstances—action films easily use more time—but we were watching our budget dollars and trying to use them as wisely as possible. In a preliminary meeting with the supervising sound editor, who the producer had already set for the picture, we were assured that 10 days were needed for those audio cues that must be performed on the Foley stage. Other cues that could not have been done on a Foley stage, or that could have been recorded in other ways or acquired through the sound-effects library, were not included in the Foley stage scheduling.

When it comes to “PREDUBBING,” one should always think in terms that more predubbing means a faster and smoother final mix; less predubbing means a slower and more agonizing final mix with a higher certainty of hot tempers and frustration. (You will read a great deal about mixing styles and techniques as well as dubbing stage etiquette and protocol later in this book.)

This budget allowed 8 days of finals (see the “FINALS” line item). The first day is always the hardest. Reel 1 always takes a full day. It is the settling-down process, getting up to speed; finding out that the new head titles are two cards longer than the slug that was in the sound videos, so the soundtrack is 12 1/2 feet out of sync—stuff like that. This always brings the we-will-never-get-there anxiety threshold to a new high, causing the producer to become a clock-watcher. But as reel 3 is reached, one witnesses rhythm and momentum building. . .. Eight days is all right for this picture after all.

When the primary mix is finished, one then interlocks the final stems with the digital projector and screens the picture in a real-time continuity. Dubbing reel by reel, then viewing the film in a single run, are two different experiences. Everybody always has plenty of notes for updates and fixing, so we budgeted 2 days for this process.

Now we want to take the picture out with its brand-new, sparkling soundtrack to see what it does with a test audience. Depending on how we intend to screen the film, we may need to make a screening magnetic film transfer, if we are test screening on 35 mm print. This is best accomplished by running the mix through the mixing console so it can be monitored in the full theatre environment for quality control. We take this screening copy mix and our 35 mm silent answer print and run an interlock test screening somewhere that is equipped for dual-interlock (and there are many venues).

It is a good idea to have a test run-through of the interlock screening copy materials before the actual test screening. I have seen too many instances where the client cut the schedules so tight that the last couple of reels of the screening copy were actually being transferred while the first reel was rolling in the test screening—not a good idea. While Escape from New York started to be interlock screened during a film festival on Hollywood Boulevard, we were still finishing the final mix on reel 10 back at the studio!

After the test screening, we have notes for further changes and updates. We need to allot monies to have the dialog, music, and effects stems as well as the predubs transferred into nonlinear editing hard drives for sound editorial to update and prepare for the stage.

To save money and any potential generation loss, we remix the updates stems and predubs (see the “Stem Remixing Updates” line item) straight from Pro Tools systems on the stage and interlocked to the machine room. We budgeted 2 days to remix the updated stems and predubs. We wisely have another test screening. Once we sign off on the both the film and its sound mix, we need to make the “2-track PRINT MASTER.”

Even in our digital world we still need the matrixed stereo optical soundtrack. To accomplish this, we need to make a 2-track print master. At this point, we bring in the Dolby or Ultra*Stereo engineer, who brings the matrix equipment and monitors the transfer process of folding down the multiple stereo channels into a 2-track matrix. The engineer watches the peak meters closely, ensuring that the maximum levels will make optical, and that the vibrancy and dynamics of the mix are translating properly.

Many independent sound facilities do not have their own optical transfer departments. They subcontract this work out to reliable and reputable specialists. We must budget for the optical track to be shot and processed.

Do not forget the license fees. Almost all distributors now cover all the audio bases in one print, putting the various digital formats (Dolby SR-D, SDDS, and DTS) as well as the traditional 2-track analog optical on the same print. No matter what format the theatre has been built for, the same print plays in all of them.

Depending on the complexity and the sound-editorial preparation for M&E considerations, the “M&E ‘FOREIGN’ MIX” can take as little as half a day to as much as 2 days. We budgeted 1 full day for the M&E mix for our film. The last thing we need is for a foreign territory to bounce our M&E track and stick us with thousands of dollars in fix-it costs. (I cover techniques of preparation and delivery requirements of the foreign M&E track near the end of chapter 19, “Foreign M&E.”)

Sound editorial had glanced through the picture, replacing alternate lines or looping television coverage on the ADR stage. We budgeted 1 day for mixing our “TELEVISION VERSION MIX.”

THE LOST SOUND DIRECTOR

Years ago we had an individual who followed the sound from the initial budgeting and scheduling, through the final 2-track print master and M&E delivery inventory. This individual was known as the sound director, who was, in a word, the QC (quality control) gatekeeper to the film's audio experience.

We have lost this position. More is the pity. In an age of filmmaking where mismatching technologies have mushroomed out of control and when coordinating an audio track has literally become a global challenge and responsibility, we need the return of the sound director. This is not the postproduction coordinator, like some people think. This is a management overseer, richly trained in the audio arts and with experience hash marks up both arms. Wise will be the producer who writes this position in as a budget line item.

For budgetary reasons the producer might want to structure the sound director on a consultant basis rather than as a weekly payroll position, especially as a sound director oversees more than one project at a time. However the position is structured, the project reaps the obvious creative and financial benefits.

These are only a few highlights of the pitfalls in the journey you are preparing to take. How you prepare for it determines whether you bask in the joy of success or anguish in a battlefield strewn with could-have-beens and should-have-dones. The technology is at your disposal; fine craftspeople can be found throughout the world—it is up to you.

Before I close out this chapter, I present two filmmaker teams and give them an opportunity to speak their minds about how sound affects them as well as their projects and how they have come to “prepare for success.”

SCOTT BYRNS AND PAUL GEFFRE

When producing a low-budget feature, only one thing is guaranteed—you are going to have to make sacrifices. You will, out of necessity, have to cut every conceivable corner to bring your vision to reality. Choosing which corners to cut determines not only your success as a producer, but also the long-term success (or failure) of the picture you're creating. It is vitally important that tremendous effort be expended in thinking through decisions before the cameras ever roll. Extra time spent in preproduction is relatively inexpensive, and will almost always result in a better product on the screen. More importantly, thinking through decisions all the way to postproduction will give you the confidence to improvise when your best-laid plans are blown to pieces.

We recently completed an ultra-low-budget feature. We shot for 18 days in 16 locations with a cast and crew of 60 people. It was daunting to sit down on day 1 and look at all we had to do with the extremely limited resources with which we had to work. Now we would love to tell you that we are geniuses, and that every choice we made saved us money and made the picture better, but if we did that we would only be confirming the stereotype that producers are shysters. The reality is, most producers often start out with good intentions, grand notions, and the aim to work miracles. However, there are so many unforeseens, incomprehensibles, and unfathomables that come up moment by moment from inception to completion of a film that being able to sacrifice in the right areas and then to adapt, and do so quickly, are the most essential skills for a producer to hone.

Very early on, we had to confront the issue of power on set. We knew we lacked the funds to rent a proper generator with an operator for the entire duration of the shoot, and had no choice but to bring along a small, noisy generator that would later prove to be the bane of our existence. Our decision to not spend additional funds on a studio quiet generator translated into a daily reminder from our production sound mixer that, “There's a loud hum from the genny.” After the first few days, that statement turned into a knowing eyebrow raise whenever we made eye contact. Not dealing with this seemingly minor issue early on by reworking the budget and allocating money toward the proper generator, and attempting to just press forward with the wrong tool for the job, we didn't sacrifice and adapt. We used the famous phrase almost daily, “We can fix it in post,” which is a comforting notion on set. The truth is, the phrase should really be “We can fix it in post. . .but it will cost twice as much.”

Figure 4.10 Camera operator Paul Engtrom, producer Paul Geffre, director Nathan Frankowski, and producer Scott Byrns shooting in Los Angeles with the RED ONE digital camera on the set of No Saints for Sinners (2010).

The day finally came, and we were in post. Our decision to go with one specific lower quality piece of equipment, based on a limited budget, resulted in a ripple effect when dealing with sound design. The production track is the backbone of the sound designer's workflow. With a good production track recorded on set, there exists a quality blueprint from which to build and expand the sound design. Sound is 50 percent of the movie experience. Without rich and immersive sound design, a movie doesn't really move with fluidity and grace. By providing a sound designer with a clean production track, you are inspiring excellence. With an inconsistent and troubled production track, it often exhausts the best creative expertise just to get the production track to an acceptable state. By not adapting in production, by not making the proper sacrifices each day to focus the budget into the most critical elements of filmmaking, the result is usually a much larger and more costly sacrifice in the postproduction phase. As we've progressed, we have been able to remedy some of the impact of the loud generator on our production track, but not without much greater sacrifice than would have been required had we adapted while in production.

Filmmaking is an amazing art form. It employs all the finest of what life has to offer. It involves drama, cinematography, sound, music, media, fashion, photography, architecture, computers, design, travel, innovation. . . and the list goes on. The most intriguing aspect of making movies is the collaboration that results from a group of individuals coming together with the sole intent of creating a project with a larger scope than what one individual could accomplish on his or her own. The sacrifices required during the course of filmmaking are often shared by all and spread across the entire crew from beginning to end. When an entire crew comes together and adapts to each challenge, and works around the various obstacles that arise, the results are often an exceptional finished project with a great story, both on the screen and behind the scenes.

Paul Geffre and Scott Byrns

Producers of the feature film No Saints for Sinners

Fall, 2010

RICHARD CLABAUGH AND JOHN RUSHTON (CRIMSON WOLF PRODUCTIONS)

Now hear this! A little sound advice. Allow me to share what I have learned as a filmmaker about the importance of sound. . .

Most of my life I've worked as a cinematographer and a director, which is why it makes me really sad to say this, but here goes: your movie can look like crap and it won't matter!

I don't mean you can shoot a film badly, that's not it at all, but I do mean you can do a low-budget movie with a cheap, handheld, home-video camera and all that grainy, shaky footage will just play as some kind of cool, visual “style” in the end. In movies like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and Cloverfield, the intentional, low-resolution, home-video quality picture enhances the experience.

But you can't do that with sound. Even in those films, the dialog is as clean and clear as any other movie.

I'm convinced that even if you shot it with an old, cheap cell phone, it wouldn't matter, as long as you do it stylishly. But you can't have cheap sound! Poorly recorded dialog, badly balanced levels, and missing sound effects don't earn you style points. No matter how inexpensively a film is shot, the final mix needs to be done as well as possible. For many of those titles listed above, more was probably spent on the mix than on shooting the picture.

Take, for example, one of the most famous “cheaply shot” movies ever made, El Mariachi. We all know that El Mariachi was put in the can (photographed) for $7000. Okay, I guess that's possible, if everyone's working for free, and you're not renting a lot of equipment—I can see it, but that price doesn't include the sound work done in post. I can assure you that once Columbia Pictures acquired the film, a lot more than $7000 was spent just to remix the sound. Way more! While I don't have official numbers on this, I would estimate that perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars, at the very least, went into making that little $7000 film sound the way it does now. In any case, we're talking many, many times the cost of actually shooting the film.

Why would they do that? If you're picking up a movie that only cost $7000, why spend so much on a sound mix? Will it really make that much of a difference? The answer, as everyone in the business knows, is yes, because nothing pulls a viewer out of a film faster than simple, basic sound problems. Like almost all filmmakers, I have learned this the hard way. My education began with a traumatic ADR experience I had as a child.

Figure 4.11 Directing and Producing team Richard Clabaugh and John Rushton produce independent features shot in North Carolina under their production company, Crimson Wolf Productions.

ADR stands for Automated Dialog Replacement, as David Yewdall will explain in glowing detail later in these pages. ADR is what a filmmaker is forced to do when the dialog recorded during the shoot has a problem. It involves getting the actors back to rerecord their lines long after the movie has wrapped. ADR is evil, or at the very least an annoying pain-in-the-donkey, but sometimes it's necessary. If you have to do it, you have to do it.

I was doing my first 16 mm movie after years of Super 8 filmmaking, and although very low budget, it was, for me, very expensive. It took every penny I could pull together from mowing a lot of lawns and borrowing from my parents to do just this one-day shoot of two actors talking in a park.

We borrowed equipment, including the camera and a separate Nagra sound recorder. (Most people outside the business don't realize this, but even today, professional film cameras don't actually record sound.)

Frankly, I didn't pay a lot of attention to the sound that day. I was directing. I had a million other things to worry about. Besides, someone else (a friend helping me out) was recording the sound. I just had too much going on to worry about that. Just put some mics on the actors and shoot.

After the shoot we found there was a low but clear hum on almost all of the audio we recorded that day because we had not properly set up the microphones. Instead of using a boom, the two actors had worn these little clip-on mics and I guess we'd wired them together wrong. Yeah, yeah, now I know they shouldn't have been wired together at all, and I shouldn't have used clip-on mics anyway. I needed to use a boom instead of lavs and run through a mixer and so on. All stuff I did wrong from ignorance because, unlike you, I never had a book like this to read. I paid dearly for my sonic sins. Only one shot that day (where an actor is walking away and we used a boom) had acceptable sound.

So, I had to fix this problem in the postproduction process, from whence comes the famous industry phrase, “We'll fix it in post.” Since this film had a postproduction crew of one (me), I waited till I had the movie cut and then called back the actors to do some ADR. With great pride I rigged up a do-it-yourself ADR system using the borrowed Nagra as sound recorder and a reel-to-reel tape deck to play back the previous, now edited, dialog. The actors listened to what they said on headphones and repeated after themselves, giving me pieces I'd then line up and drop into the cut to have good, nonbuzzing audio.

It wasn't easy. Not for the actors, not for me. I tried setting it up in the back yard to get a more outside quality to the sound, but a mean neighbor with a lawnmower put the kibosh on that.

Once recorded it was very hard work, manually placing each line in the movie one at a time, trying to find the best fit for each, but when it was done the buzz was gone and the sound was now clear and clean. So clear and clean, in fact, it was too clear and clean. They're sitting in a park but it sounded like they were sitting in my parent's living room, which, in fact, they were, as that is where we had ended up rerecorded their dialog.

I had recorded ambient park sound, so I put that as a track by itself playing behind the new dialog. That made it a lot better, but it still didn't sound right. Nothing could change the fact they sounded like they weren't really there.

When all was done and edited together I drove to the nearest professional mix house with workprint in hand and my 16 mm mag tracks in a box. It was an 8-hour drive each way because it was the only one in the state and I lived nowhere near any professional recording facility. I spent all my last money on several hours worth of mixing time for this little 10-minute film.

When it was over I was completely broke, totally exhausted and literally in tears because the movie was horrible. Why was it horrible? The sound.

It was better than with the buzz. The buzzed version was totally unwatchable, but this wasn't much better. The sync on each line never felt exactly right, very close, but always just a bit off on the start or the end or the middle of each line, because no one repeats the words exactly the same each time and there was only so much you could tweak. Mainly, it just sounded phony. Then that one shot would come up in the movie where we had good, real production sound. For a matter of seconds, the movie would come alive, it sounded real. It worked, just for a moment.

It was then I realized how something I couldn't define or articulate, something subtle and nuanced, something that really could only be corrected at the time of shooting, made the difference between my movie working better or not working at all. Everything else we'd done had been for lost, because the bad sound undermined it all.

Honestly, the movie was never destined to be any great work of art in the first place, but any hope of it working hinged on the subtle chemistry between these two people. That was lost in the redub. All those scenes had the emotional connection of something handled through oven mitts. It was there, but with the blunted sensation of dialog on Novacaine. There was no feeling.

No one ever articulated to me what they felt was wrong with the film when they watched it. It just didn't really work for them. I knew one reason was the sound. I knew it for sure because of the brief moment in the film that worked. For just an instant, the movie got real.

Because of that, I learned the vital importance of getting good dialog recording on set. Get it clean, get it clear, without buzzes or buses or bugs of any kind. Recapturing dialog in ADR is not something you want to do, except when you have to. The movie didn't work, all other efforts were in vain, because the sound was just slightly “off.”

My next big education had nothing to do with dialog.

Some friends and I were doing a little Super 8 film and there was a shot of a man walking down a hallway. He's the villain, carrying a small glass of iced scotch, which he sets down as he goes to answer the doorbell. It was maybe 20 seconds long and there was no dialog so we didn't even bother to plug in the microphone. Didn't need it, after all, no one said anything. Stupid! When the shot came up in the film the silence was deafening.

There is a huge difference between something not making any significant noise and the silence of a totally dead, unrecorded track. Watching the film it was as if someone unplugged the speaker in the middle of the show. There was no hiss, no clinking glass of ice, no footsteps. Just total, dead silence.

These days I have a vocabulary to describe the problem. It lacked ambience (room tone, the sound of a what you'd call “nothing,” that is particular to every individual room or space) and was also in need of some Foley effects (sounds of nondialog, such as footsteps, the clinking of ice in the glass, the subtle thunk as he set it down). Before this, it had never occurred to me that a drink in someone's hand makes a sound you need to record, but when it wasn't there, something was clearly missing.

This was Super 8 sound film, which had a magnetic stripe down the edge to record sound on, even after you had the film back from the lab. Since there was no dialog we got this crazy idea that we could just plug a microphone into the projector (which could record sound onto the film), put the projector in a closet so you wouldn't hear it, play the scene, and as we watched it, do the same action again, this time just recording the sound so it wouldn't be empty.

We did it. Took a couple of times to get it, but it worked. In fact, it worked great. Really great. The sound on that shot was suddenly, noticeably better than any other shot in the movie. Something subtle had happened again, only this time is was a good thing. I felt it, but couldn't tell you exactly what had happened. All I knew was that suddenly the movie seemed so much better there, so much more. . . It took a while to find the word but eventually it hit me: so much more professional!

It was startling to me. That one shot sounded like a “real” movie. Why? A few big reasons jumped out at me. Unlike other scenes in the film, there was no camera noise. (That's kind of a big one, I realize now.) Whenever we'd shoot before, the microphone, mounted on or near the camera, always picked up noise from the camera running—just a bit, but it was there. The other important thing was mic placement. When we did our poor-man's Foley session we put the mic very close to each object we recorded, not far away like the camera had been in shooting. We recorded the footsteps, the glass of ice, every little thing in this simple scene without having to worry about the mic being in the shot. We just placed it close to the subjects so that the sound was clear and clean. It was also recorded at the right level for each sound, not the level best for the dialog or other noises going on.

Finally, the imperfect recording setup we had made induced a natural ambient quality to the silence. We'd unintentionally laid down some room tone. Now it all worked great. Suddenly this shot in the movie seemed so much better than the others. In fact, it seemed like a more expensive movie, for just this one moment. Everything was so clear and focused.

And that was the second most educational experience about sound in my life. For the first time I realized how much the shot looked better because of the sound. We could see things we didn't notice before because the sound made them more visible. You barely noticed the scotch before, but now you saw it and noticed him putting it down. On the whole, the shot just seemed like it belonged in a more expensive show. Good sound, textured and detailed, made the movie look more professional, even with no other changes to the shot.

There are literally dozens of other stories I could tell about things that have helped me realize how much more important the sound is in a film than you'd first think, but I will limit it to one more, as it involves the author of the book you are reading.

I was taking a break from filmmaking to teach for a while and found myself on the same faculty as David Yewdall. One of the things I felt I needed to do was learn how to edit using Final Cut Pro, the system the school was using. Previously I'd been cutting on Avid, but the school was FCP-based so I wanted to know how to use the same program the students I'd teach would be using. The best way to learn anything like that is to do a project with it, so I invented a project to do as an educational exercise for myself.

I'm big fan of all the incarnations of Superman, having grown up watching the TV show, reading the comics, watching the movies, enjoying the cartoons. . . and I thought it might be fun to edit together a little tribute video of all those different versions cut to a song I'd heard. I put in a bunch of clips from different shows and began cutting them. Picture was fine, but the piece felt dead because nothing in the pictures made any sound. Most of the clips I was using had originally had a music score on them and because that conflicted with the music I was cutting to now, I was forced to strip out almost all the audio from the clips, which meant nothing made any noise at all now. The video seemed dead.

Few things are more noticeably missing sound than someone firing a series of bullets at the man of steel with each flash accompanied only by music and silence, or Superman bursting through a brick wall that makes no sound.

I visited David, who has one of the largest libraries of sound effects in the known universe (or so it seems to me!) and asked him if I could, in a neighborly way, borrow a cup of audio clips. I explained the somewhat silly, amateur nature of what I was doing and he was very supportive of my efforts in spite of that.

He gave me some swooshes and swishes to use as Superman flew around, took off, landed, and so on, and also some gunshots and some breaking through brick wall sounds. I started cutting them in immediately. I'd done a lot of sound editing before, as part of picture editing, but never a strictly sound-effects-only edit. As I kept cutting in the sounds, I found the process quite addictive. Each time I added a sound I became aware of how the shot before it, or after it, was now very silent compared to it, even though they'd seemed fine by themselves before. Now I'd watch the video and think, “Shouldn't that train really make a sound too?” And “What about that helicopter?” And “I know it's just a beam of light but doesn't it need a sound too?” And what does a beam of light sound like as an animated man of steel swats it aside anyway? (Wet splats, I found, mixed with an electronic overtone worked well, as it turned out.)

Each item added prompted me to do more, and I found that not only a single effect was needed, but some things (like a beam of light) have no existing “real” sound, so you have to invent something, usually by distorting and combining other sounds, to make something new that feels right.

I do not pretend this is some great insight or even that the concept was totally new to me. I'd been involved in a lot of movies and this is all Sound Editing 101 to any professional sound editor or experienced postproduction person, but it was my first time creating sound effects of this level and complexity by myself, and I got much more intimate with the process.

Before I was done I had added literally hundreds of effects to the video on dozens of tracks with sounds overlaid on sounds to create something new and fill all that had been lost when turning off the audio of the original clips. And each time, David gave me guidance, support, and suggestions to try. It was another key step in my education. Even things I'd always known I gained a new appreciation for, by working through the process in such detail under David's guiding hand.

David Yewdall is not only an acknowledged industry expert in his field but also a wonderful communicator and an excellent teacher. His stories and firsthand experiences illustrate, illuminate, educate, and entertain. He guides and encourages exploration and discovery. I wish everyone with an interest in learning the sound craft could get a chance to hear what David has to say on the subject firsthand, as I have. Now, thanks to this book, everyone can.

So go screw around with picture all you want. Distort it, obscure it, degrade it, and destroy it. Scratch it, maul it, maim it, and scar it. The picture can take it; it just gets cooler.

But don't forget the vital, and largely invisible, role played by sound. I have learned over and over again that if the dialog is not clear, if the balance between the music, the sound effects, and what people are saying is not just right, if the synchronization is off, if the Foley isn't fully filled, rich, and detailed enough, or even if the sounds of “silence” that make up the ambience are wrong or missing, then chances are, your audience may soon go missing too.

What I'm saying here is not news to anyone who has ever worked in this business professionally. Almost everyone in the business knows the importance of a good mix. Speak to any filmmaker, be they one of the big boys like Spielberg and Lucas, or modest little filmmakers doing B-pictures you've probably never heard of; they all know that sound affects the emotional impact of a film in a way the average viewer will never be aware of. But after reading this book, you will be one of those industry insiders who knows the truth and recognizes the practical importance of the art of motion picture sound.

Richard Clabaugh
Director and DP