It’s been a really long time since I’ve posted here, so this will cover a few things.
First, posting images to iStockphoto has been going well. Now, I just need to start making more money from them. Here are a few recent uploads:
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So is the economy up or down? I don’t think anyone can decide. Even Wall Street was bipolar this past week — way up one day and way down the next. We are considering ways to drastically cut expenses for the company, like moving to a smaller office and using fewer computers, or even temporarily closing the post-production side of the business (entertainment industry has been hit hard). But, on the other hand, I added more job numbers to my jobs list this week than I have in recent memory, and completed several large projects as well. So I’m feeling cautiously hopeful, at least in the short term.
While we’re talking about the business, I found an elegant little program called TimeTagger for tracking my time spent on projects throughout the workday. It’s going to help me track profitability much better than I have been able to previously.
And, in the “covet” department, I’m really wanting a Canon 7D. Great photography and HD filmmaking at multiple frame rates, with lots of upsides. Expensive, but possibly worth it. We’re not ready financially to make a big purchase like this, but if the right project comes along, this is the one that I would purchase right now. If you want to buy it for me, the link is here
…thanks!
A piece of music that might go in the background of a new video I’m working on…
Check it out.
Okay, so HCS has a bunch of Sennheiser and Shure wireless mic systems, like the awesome G2 series from Sennheiser. But the problem is that the wire that these manufacturers use is shoddy, and usually the mics are destroyed after just one run of performances. (They work better for ENG-style work — which is what I do most of the time — because the cable doesn’t get jostled around as much.) So I’m trying to figure out how to purchase or build my own mics for stage uses.
And then I found this awesome company called CPC in the UK (courtesy of the Blue Room stage discussion board), and they have cheapie replacement microphones, both the lav kind and the headworn kind. But I am not sure if they can ship cheaply to the U.S.; so, I am looking for a U.S. company that can supply these mics, or something comparable. I’m even willing to solder my own connectors onto them, to save even more money.
The reason that this came up is that I was doing sound design for the Pasadena Summer Musical Theater production for a few weeks earlier this summer. The body mics got a real workout, going on and off multiple children each day for rehearsals and performances. Several mics didn’t make it through the two week run, and the culprit was always the juncture where the cable meets the connector. So I was thinking that it might be good to make my own, or find a new microphone/cable combination that will be able to withstand the rigors of stage performances.
I have an e-mail out to CPC in the U.K., but I am willing to entertain any options — either here or overseas — that can help me replace or build newer and better mics for the Sennheiser or Shure systems.
Honestly, unlike millions of you others I won’t be seeing Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen this weekend. But I enjoyed the technical achievements of the first movie, even if I didn’t care for the editing or storytelling. Pro Sound News has spent the whole last week detailing different aspects of the sound work on the new movie, with interviews from major players:
- Part One: Mixing and Sound Editing: “This new movie features twice the action, and many, many more robots than the series opener, he continued. “In normal movies, there are two, three, even four set pieces. Eight years ago, one or two of those set pieces would have made this a big sound movie. We have several in each reel. It’s challenging.”
- Part Two: Dialog Editing and Effects Processing: There was relatively little ADR in ROTF. “Michael doesn’t like using ADR; the majority of ADR will be for extra lines and line changes,” said Hopkins, adding, “I’ve got probably 30 or 40 ADR cues because of bad background noise.”
- Part Three: Music/Effects/Dialog Mixing: “The music is really driving and the effects track is very detailed. Because you have this animation and special effects that you need to sell, sound is so powerful for doing that. It brings a sense of reality to it all and engages the audience into the whole story. Michael sees that; he sees how powerful it can be and how it can bring these animated things to life, and give them a sense of weight and power and character.”
- Part Four: Connecting Sound to Picture: With so much mayhem onscreen, it was important for Van der Ryn and Aadahl to constantly strive for clarity and make some critical choices early on in the process regarding what remained in the mix. “If we were to not make choices until [the mix stage], it would be a wall of noise…Everything you hear connects to something on the screen, and if there’s anything that is muddying things up or washing things out, we do that in the editorial process.”
- Part Five: Getting Effects to Sound Good: “When you have multiple sounds happening in a sequence, we really broaden the scope of frequencies so that things aren’t living in the same range. That separation is necessary for clarity, as well as panning things and rhythmically having things syncopate so that they aren’t stepping on each other. Even if you offset ever so slightly, it creates separation.”
That’s it for today; I’m crazy-busy finishing off a few projects right now.
Well, I’ve done this over the years for friends, but I think I should stop underselling myself. This weekend I mixed sound at the Global Day of Prayer/Love Pasadena event on the steps of the Rose Bowl. 500 people, 5 bands, several hours, and lots of running around and soundchecking. And the event went off without a hitch. I’m really proud of Advantage Productions in Santa Clarita for finding me a sound system on short notice, and the pastors of the churches who helped put the event together.
Running live sound is a lot different than recording in the studio. In the studio, you can move mics around until you get it right, you can punch-in to fix a bad line, you can EQ and compress to your heart’s delight on your own time. But live sound needs to sound great — NOW. So I was really happy that, with no soundcheck for any of the bands, we were able to walk in and make everything sound awesome the first time. Having great equipment can make or break a show, and that’s why I’m s0 pleased with Brett and Ron from Advantage Productions, and how easy it was to work with them.
So, I’m hanging my shingle out for running live sound for events. And next time I’ll wear sunscreen.
So I’m doing a lot more music recording these days. And one of my favorite tools is a wonderful little program called Auto-Tune, which, if used correctly, does exactly what its name implies: automatically pull a note that is out-of-tune back to perfect pitch. Let’s say there’s one note out of a whole phrase that’s a bit off-pitch: why re-record the whole verse for that one note? I just punch-in the plug for that one note, and we’re back in business. [TIME did an article on Auto-Tune, and the company has its own
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so you can hear how the program works.]
I do the same thing with Photoshop a lot right now because I am now selling stock on iStockphoto. They need every photo submitted to be as close to perfect as possible, so I go in and “airbrush” all the little imperfections out, creating (hopefully) a more marketable/usable photo.
But I’m also conflicted. Overuse of Auto-Tune turns out lifeless vocals. And I love to “grunge” up my graphic design work, when the project calls for it. Imperfections are what make things human, and removing all of the human element isn’t always a good thing.
That said, I will never throw the tool out [like these people want to, or here’s Neko Case complaining about Auto-Tune towards the end of the interview, or these studio engineers who are as conflicted about using it as I am). If I can use it when needed but make it practically invisible, and then not use it when we have the time to get it right, then I think everything will be okay.
But taking the time to get things right is another concept that is dying right now — budgets are way too tight to actually try to do something right. So I work overtime even when the client isn’t paying for it, just so that I can be happy with the final result. Unfortunately, that cuts into the time that I’m supposed to be recording…
By virtue of being both a marketing expert and a technology expert, I watch everything that happens at the major tech trade shows. This week Las Vegas saw the NAB (Natl. Association of Broadcasters) show, which lets people in the broadcasting industry see what technology is coming up. Two things jumped out at me (from the news — I wasn’t there. My corporate travel account is at zero — LOL):
Avid is now publicly integrating all of their companies: Avid, Digidesign, Sibelius, M-Audio, etc. This means that there will be tighter integration between all of their products, making for faster “round-tripping” between apps. Does that mean that I will start using Avid instead of Final Cut Pro? Probably not immediately, but, as this blogger points out, cross-app integration has been very good for both Apple’s and Adobe’s post production suites (with Adobe doing a slightly better job at it than Apple). And it might also help intra-app round-tripping as well. But for us smaller, independent/freelance artists/producers, this announcement doesn’t bring as much punch as I would like: I don’t want Digi or Avid to relegate the freelancers to only using M-Audio products (although they are quite good); I would like a low-cost Digi system that can compete with HD systems, and a low-cost Avid system that can compete with FCP. I know they already make these (kindof), but I want to see them supported and upgraded. Just my two cents.
Also at NAB, AJA announced a new box called the Ki Pro, that takes any signal (even from an SD camera) and can upres it to full HD ProRes 422 video. List price is under $4k. This would be a boon to people (like me) who have lots of good, but old, SD cameras, that might be used as “B” or “C” cameras on an HD shoot if we could get fast and clean up-rezzed material. I’m going to watch this new product carefully to see if they come down in price and/or could be of use in my company.
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