Session Review: C24 Post Production Studio
12 Hours. Yesterday (15th March, 2017) my group for the Sound Replacement had a huge studio session in the Post Production Studio at SAEQ (For More Information on the project. Click Here). James, Lachy and Myself took to the Avid C24 mixing console and finalized our project. We spent most of the 12 Hours covering the missing Foley and Dialogue sounds, with the last third of the session tackling the mixing. I will go over a few brief topics we focused into while in the studio, these were; Arrangement, Sound Design, ADR and Mixing.
Arrangement:
The first task we tackled in the session was arranging all the various sound's we captured through sound design. Lachy was awesome enough to create spaceship swooping sounds and huge explosions. We grabbed those sounds, as well as the previously rendered laser gun sounds I created on the Moog Sub 37 and cut and pasted them all into place. This was not a good way to start the session. For the first three hours of the session Lachy and James took turns at cutting and placing all the different audio assets into place, which drastically took time away from our final mixing. I stood away from the computer for the first part of the session. I did so due to my previous hours I spent in my own time working on the project, I put all the vocals into place, cut the Lego sounds and layered them. I also took care of the session set up and organization Prior to the studio and during the session.
This way of tackling the tasks was not optimal but the results were fantastic. Due to leaving this session till the week of submission, we were unable to complete every nuance that the original had but by having all three members watch and help through the arrangement process it allowed our project the accuracy we were hoping for.
Sound Design:
Throughout the session both Lachy and myself were taking turns in creating little sound design snippets for the sound replacement. This was a fantastic way to go about the session as it avoided one of the biggest problems with group projects, the "Too Many Cooks" Dilemma. By having just one person at a time step away from the main project and just focus on creating a few sounds within Ableton, it gave space to those working on arrangement / ADSR / Mixing and allowed just one person to take control on said sound design task.
This form of multitasking is what pushed our project forward throughout the day. Allowing a constant progression throughout the session focused each member into the final outcome. I would like to take this tactic into more group projects in the future as I see its value, although getting a group to multitask is not something new, doing this within a studio session I hadn't heard of or done and I am incredibly pleased with the outcome.
ADR:
Though the session was not intended to do any more vocal takes, we figured it was necessary to put in as much detail as possible. Once we had completed all the sound design and arrangement of the piece, we realized that there was a lot of down time within the mix, going from such a chaotic scene to just Foley engine sounds, there needed audio. This was halted due to the ADR room not having functioning mic ties to the audio interface. This slowed down our project and brought unnecessary steps into our system flow, because we had to track the audio in front of the console, we would have to halt all work and mute the speakers before tracking without and fold back headphones.
Which brings me to the C24.. I LOVE IT. The desk is awesome, just having ease of access to all these components of Pro-Tools is amazing. The ability to just mute the speakers, press record, solo out the track after recording it, rewind, unmute and listen back to everything within a 30 second time frame is awesome. The hands on control is everything I have wanted, the scrub feature was such a handy feature to have. My major gripe of the desk came down to the display and the automation feature. How difficult it was to read the track names when looking at the desk itself was a pain. I found that it would remove the signal flow for our group having to go between the desk and Pro-Tools so often. As well as automating the C24, which was such a difficult task to what I had imagined. Having the mechanical faders in front of you while listening over and mixing was such a neat feature but the lack of being able to automate with ease (or just not knowing how to) slowed the mixing part of the session down a lot.
Mixing:
There isn't an awful lot I can say about the mixing aspect of the project as I was not present for the last potion of the mixing though the outcome has be very positive between our group. To start the mixing session we just went through the track making sure nothing was peaking or over powering the next sound. Making sure that the visual cues tied into the audio, as in the explosion was as loud as it looks, etc.
I found that most of my time in the later part of the session was spent on organization. Adding the Verb channels, grouping, altering effects and changing routing in Pro-Tools. I covered my thoughts on the C24 and automation above so there isn't much more to say.
Conclusion:
Did I think this session was successful? Yes.
Are you excited for the outcome? Yes.
Will you work with film / Animation again? Definitely.
I feel, coming out of this session, very positive. I believe our group has exceeded in creating an interesting sound replacement for The Lego Movie. I Think this session has been held back by our lack of time to polish the audio as well as match the score perfectly alike the Lego Movie. Communication and group moral has been amazing between James, Lachy and Myself, I would very much like to work with this group again!
I Will go into more detail or our group dynamic and overall feelings and reflect on the outcome in a later blog.
