IT'S ALIVE!!!

Over the past few months, Jen and I have been ever more serious about getting in to post-production sound. Up until now, I've worked exclusively as a production sound mixer. In that role, it is my job to record good sound on set, as it occurs. Basically, that means getting clean dialogue.

A post-sound mixer is the person who would take my audio and go to town on it. First, they would repair any problems from the original audio, such as clicks, pops, spit, etc. Then they would EQ out any unwanted ambience like hum, echo, and reverb. If the dialogue is completely unusable, the actor would need to come back and record their lines again, in sync to picture. This is called ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement). This is to be avoided if at all possible, since it requires hiring an operator and paying the actor again.

After that, they do the fun part of making the sound sexy. Adding footsteps, punches, artificial ambeince, gunshots, explosions, gore, music cues, you name it. This is a painstaking process that can take months depending on the size of the film and the unique problems of the production. All of this is done digitally with a program called PRO TOOLS. It's very complicated, but the picture below shows you what a typical project looks like.

Notice that the image is on the top line. Underneath

are the various soundtracks. Other windows are

plug-ins that process the audio for a desired effect.

This is definitely Jen's dream more than mine. But I have found myself more and more interested in it lately. So much so, that I'm starting a studio with my tax return and some money I've been saving. This way, we can have both sides of the sound coin. I got a BIG head start when Columbia gave me a Digi 002 console. It's a digital mixer that interfaces with the program to make sound editing much easier. Very expensive piece of equipment that I won't have to pay for, so the studio will definitely be a contender when it's done.

The glorious Digi 002 mixing console.

List Price: $2,250. My Price: $0.00

To prepare for what will hopefully become a career, we have audited a class at Columbia for no charge (a perk for alumni). Our Litmus Test is a short film called "Dead Dog" that our friend Josh made but never finished due to bad audio. Significant improvements have already been made, but we have a long way to go.

Unfortunately, I'm forced to use an old version of the program on my laptop with the Digi 002 rack I got from Columbia. My computer simply can not handle what is necessary, and it will crash quite often. Still, Rome wasn't built in a day. And it's pretty freakin' incredible when you consider how sound used to be done: in a giant lab with lots of reels.