Thanks for your kind words as well as going to the movie. Happily, not
much out of the ordinary happened in the course of recording this film.
Much of the interior work was done in the studio and the rest was in
fairly controlled locations. Even so, there was some wireless work due
to volume issues relating to performance choices and dental prosthetics.
And there was lots of double-booming, with Randy Johnson as primary boom
and Kelly Doran as second boom and everything else. Their work was
exemplary.
As I usually do, I recorded the film with Deva and Cameo, Lectrosonics
200 series radios mostly with COS-11s, and virtually all booming on
Schoeps CMC641s. Mag dailies with telecine from mag, sadly. Cut on FCP4
and then loaded and autoconformed into ProTools for post. That process
went very well. Mixed from ProTools at Sony by Skip Lievsay, Rick Kline
and Greg Orloff (and lots of work done by many people
http://imdb.com/title/tt0335245/combined
for the total list.
The hardest day was at the beginning of the schedule, the church
interior (in Venice). All the choir and band was recorded live with the
assistance of Mike Piersante and a mobile multitrack truck. With little
lead time in the space, there was lots of quick rigging (by Knox White
mostly).
And the hardest dialogue mixing was the last day, exterior at the church
in Natchez, Mississippi for a scene with tons of radios (I brought out
my 195s) and cable. This scene of course wasn't in the final film, but,
boy, it sounded great (by take 4).
The only other hard part was the weeks in the low-ceilinged basement
set, lit by one bare bulb. Very hard booming augmented by some words on
radio. Ultimately it sounded okay but some post work helped a lot.
According to the ADR notes, there was almost no technical looping. A few
lines added here and there. One day there'll have to be quite a few TV
lines recorded. All the edited profanity in 'Fargo' was replaced by
various inflections of 'freeze' and 'freezing'. In Ladykillers I think
they'll need to find an appropriate 4 syllable word.
Peter
I seem to be about to do another music-heavy production with T-Bone
Burnett and many of the same Ladykillers sound crew. This time we're
trying some new P/B and location recording technology. We're talking a
lot by phone and at various scattered meetings. With a few weeks of
leadtime I think it should go smoothly. It always seems the more I plan
with the post people upfront, the easier and better the final result.
In article <409a6c15$0$46512$39cecf19@news.twtelecom.net>,
"John B., Indianapolis" <johntakethisout@indytakethisout.net> wrote:
Are there any details of the process you could share with us? What mics
or techniques you used? Wireless much? Double boom much? Any
interesting set stories? I hope I'm not putting you on the spot here,
but being back in middle america, working more on indies, it'd be great
to hear some of the nitty-gritty little details of such a production
that are usually lost in broad strokes discussions.
Again, job well done.
John Blankenship, Indianapolis
