Scripty!

John Bruno discusses the importance of the script supervisor.
Here in the Pandora Machine we gave up on script supervision awhile ago.
This is one of those movie making rules like "never mix drunk" -- we don't pay attention to it although it's not that it's a bad idea in and of itself.*.
For me the difficulty with script supervision is that most of the work they do goes unused. The picture editors don't really trust the script supervisors to give them everything they need to know so they tend to not even look in the script supervisor's book during post. The other thing is that I really don't care what anybody has to say on set if they're not an editor. Whether a DP or a fight director, if you haven't edited a feature then you really don't know what you're doing. You might know a whole bunch of rules, and it may tend to be that if you follow all the rules you know you'll tend to not get into trouble.
But we don't really have time for all that.**

We just have time to shoot all the action, all the dialog in closeup, details of anything anybody does in the scene (like light a cigarette), a clean of anything anyone refers to in the scene (like the dead body on the floor), and whatever amusing thing anybody in the room tells you to shoot (if there's time).
This is one reason we like having Maduka Steady with us on shoot days. And the end of a scene I can turn to him and say "Anything else we need to get?" And sure, there's a whole shtick made up about how he invariably says "Get feet, closeup, walking in and out." But I'll tell ya -- we use those shots more often than you'd think in the final picture edit.
Picture edit. It's where the movie is actually made. I mean, sure, you can argue it's the dialog edit where the picture is really made but... picture edit. It's where the movie is actually made.

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*Why on earth would I use that analogy? Oh. I see.
**The one think I do wish we'd do is write down the location of wild audio takes in the master script. Because knowing that is useful in post.

Like an angel who can operate a nail gun.

Our own Queen of Mars is interviewed in New York Innovative Theater Awards news.

Here she is with Greg Bodine, Nat Cassidy, and Rob Neill.

Planet Egg

This is a show which simply cannot be missed. Planet Egg has my three favorite things: puppets, robots, and eggs.
And they're performing at HERE.

Our own Ien Denio makes sounds! What's there not to like?

Scheduling a Prometheus

Whew, here is the calendar for The Prometheus Trap. The schedule itself is here. How do you know which scenes are scheduled for which day? Look at the tabs on the bottom of the page, each tab is for a day of shooting as referenced below:

Sunday April 15
Day 1 (A)
Venom Bridge
1 Finn

Saturday April 21
Day 2 (B)
Venom Cryo/locker
(MS must be back in NY by 3pm)
1 Finn
3 Haskin
4 Rhodes

Sunday April 22
Day 3 (E)
Airlock/Corridor
1 Finn
3 Haskin
4 Rhodes
5 Trent

Saturday April 28
Day 4 (D)
Cargo Bay
1 Finn
2 Artemis
3 Haskin
4 Rhodes
5 Trent
6 Cornell

Sunday April 29
Day 5 (H)
Prometheus Bridge
1 Finn
2 Artemis
3 Haskin
5 Trent
6 Cornell

Saturday May 5
Day 6 (F)
Observation Deck
1 Finn
2 Artemis
3 Haskin
4 Rhodes

Sunday May 6
Day 7 (G)
Prometheus Engineering and Cryo
1 Finn
2 Artemis (?)
3 Haskin
4 Rhodes
5 Trent
6 Cornell

Sunday May 13
Please hold for pickups! ;-)

Mars Hates Audiences

I really wish that people wanted to see more movies with the word Mars in the title. Honestly, Total Recall is actually the best of all these movies (almost as good as Interplanetary).
Why should you listen to me when it comes to "how to mix a film"? Why indeed, when I've had my movies kicked back in my face for remixes and you haven't?
Uh. That's a pretty good question, honestly. That would be like someone on the Board of Directors of a theater that had to close -- because they couldn't bring in money to cover expenses -- giving a seminar on asking people for money.
Of course, what I may have to say is admittedly a result of my failure and what I've learned from it.
Learning Number One:
The sound job has to sound like a big-budget full sound mix.
See the trick is here that ironically stuff that might fly on a huge-budget in-theaters feature film will not work on your low-budget picture. This is because the buyers are being very wary of the fact that they're buying a low-budget movie. So that idea you have about letting a scene just play with music and no Foley? Ha! Scrap that idea.
And really, I did know that. I can even prove it with our Wiki. That doesn't mean I've always successfully done it.
But here in the Pandora Machine we're cleaning up our post-production process in order to get movies out the door better.

Hey -- here's something I need to write down about setting up a PC for audio editing:
Power settings: high performance

A Colossus

I'm making notes on different characters in The Prometheus Trap. Hmm... I wonder what Steven Niles, the writer, would think? ;-)
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Looking at Rhodes. He's a great guy. You know that if you were in his platoon, Sgt. Rhodes would look after you. I think that's kind of his problem with Finn. He can't get that guy to feel at ease. And guys in Rhodes' unit always feel comfortable. There's always someone they can come to with their problems. There's always one guy who makes 'em feel like things are good no matter how deep in the hole they might be. And there's something clearly eating at Finn (he may be an android but that doesn't mean he doesn't have feelings.) It's your job to make sure your guys are all fit 'n pretty.

You have a lot of respect for your guys -- the enlisted. Not so much for officers, who are overpaid and mostly useless. Especially that idiot lieutenant you punched out in a bar off of Callisto. Which is why you're here, instead of being thrown in the brig they stuck you on the Venom with this rich girl -- Captain Haskin. She really ain't one of the guys -- she comes from some upper-class family where they send the middle kid into the Mobile Infantry. She has her own armor, not some Army hand-me-downs like everyone else. Worst of all is that she's actually competent. She's got a stick up her ass about a mile long but she can actually do the job of soldiering. So although it's amusing to razz on her because she did get her command on a silver spoon, she can actually do the job. There's no reason to tell her that though.

Stock Glasses, Hippos, and Lords

Seriously, what causes eyeglasses to get so smeary? I mean, if a dog were coming up and pushing his wet nose on them all the time I'd understand. But there is no dog here. Unless there's an invisible dog everywhere. Which, right now makes the most sense.

Sony Stock Footage has Battle: LA clips.

Traci Lords: "No, it'll be artistic, no it'll be creative. You'll look beautiful. We have a very limited budget but honest, you'll be proud."

Foley Day in the Pandora Machine

So we recorded Foley for Android Insurrection. DeLisa M. White came by and we made some footsteps and robots sounds (which will all be up under a Creative Commons 0 license on Freesound.org just as soon as they are moderated.)
I was surprised to find that our little voiceover booth was good for Foley work. And compared to hard-cut sound effects, Foley goes fast.

DeLisa M. White recording Foley with my shoe and a brick.

Now, is there any compelling reason not to deliver sound files for mixes in 24-bits?

Delta 9

So it's 0900 hours and you're hanging upside-down in a ratty steel capsule 35 miles in the sky over some moon you hadn't ever heard of until the day before. Slowly the dull panic starts to take your throat as the micro-gravity starts to turn into something resembling real gravity as the drop-container you're in got a sticky release from the carrier and now you're spinning end over end, faster and faster as the blood pushes up into your nostrils and sinuses making you want to scream but you can't because the racket the stabilizers are making slamming against the metal sides trying to keep up is louder than anything you've ever felt in your life.
And just as you think you can't take it anymore the HUD in front of you lights up and a little blue light blinks in the corner and you know it's coming and suddenly, maybe the whole thing lasted less than about ten seconds, you're feeling OK.
The onboard computer sensed your terror and injected you with some synthetic tetrahydrocannabinol derivative that smooths you out and keeps you alert and functioning. Now you're just spinning, head over heels and you focus on how you're going to get out of this mess.
Guys used to get addicted to the Delta 9 high and do stupid things just to get their onboard systems to give them the dose they needed to smooth out. So the docs changed up the formula and the high isn't worth the terror you gotta go through to get it.
Eventually the outer seals on the capsule blows apart sending you out -- momentarily and gloriously -- into the "air" above the moon. It's a barely breathable CO2 mix your suit would never let come near your lungs, but it inflates the 'chute just fine with a good 40 meters left before you'd splatter on the black rocks below.

By the time you've touched down the battle is completely over. The Skinnys sent up a surrender and locked off their weapons just as they detected your carrier had come out of hyperspace. So now you wait on the ground for a pickup for ten hours watching the dual suns spin in lazy 8's watching your heart rate spin up as the stuff in your veins reaches half-life.

Costumely

The awesome Ramsey Scott is designing our costumes for The Prometheus Trap. Here's a set of sketches for the six characters.

C'est Complete

Here they are. Three different kinds. Completed. Anthony Jones is a giant among men.
I feel like John McClane "Now I have space helmets."

The State of the State of Things

From an email conversation about microphones and preamps:

It seems that for most things other than single closeup voice I'm coming to the opinion that small diaphragm are better. This is more of a "philosophical" thing about mics than it is any sort of hard truth. Which is the way things tend to be in the way of sound. As far as I know the best cheap condenser are these Oktavas. http://oktava.com/inc/sdetail/99/474

This is important: you really can't get these mics from anywhere other than the Sound Room though as the quality control on those mics is terrible. The Sound Room seem to be the only people who send them back to Russia when they aren't any good. (And now, I've noticed, they've gone way up in price. So maybe they're not the best for the dollar anymore. I dunno.)

I'll confess I'm always surprised when I go and hang a plain old Shure 57 over the strap on the guitar cabinet at just how good those mics sound. They just sound great. Of course, I'm cheating because (and here's where I can go on all day) I don't think that the mics are nearly as important to the sound as the preamps.
And I have Neve 1272 Brent Averill mic preamps.
And boy do they sound good.

We live in a golden age of good cheap microphones. There are plenty of them out there. And they all sound great once you add a great preamp to 'em. I've never heard a bad Audio Technica.

Overall, the thing is that nowadays all audio gear sounds "good". It's like there are three levels of quality: crap, good, sublime. And all gear seems to fit squarely in each category. There really isn't any crap out there anymore. But you're not going to getanything sublime for less than a couple thousand dollars.

The question is: what's the difference between "good" and "sublime"? In music I think it's a matter of what my friend Alan Douches calls "a culmination of subtleties."

If you use great mic preamps (and great mics) on an album, the record will have that big "expensive" sound we're used to hearing on, well, big and expensive albums. Individual tracks aren't necessarily that important (with the possible exception of voice, where it seems that you can hear the difference in mics and preamps right away.) The big expensive sound is an accumulation of great sounds. If you made an album and used expensive mic preamps and microphones on everything except(for instance) the toms -- well you probably wouldn't notice. But overall you're hearing an accumulation of all the subtleties on all the mics and preamps and good instruments you have on the record.
The difference between good and sublime is very slight.
Now here's a trick: for movie sound nobody cares about "sublime". They might claim they do but they don't. They need the sounds without background noise and clear of other noises and that's about it. Which, of course, is not easy at all. But if you record a movie using nothing but Neve preamps, Apogee converters, and the finest microphones in the world, but there's a lot of noise and traffic and airplanes all thorough the thing -- it's gonna suck. Believe me, I know from experience.
If you recorded a movie using a Zoom but you got it right over the heads of all the actors and were in a quiet environment then you'd be good to go.

I think the main issue with Chinese - made stuff like microphones is that US-based manufacturers who are trying to go cheap use Chinese plants. And if they're trying to just go cheap, and don't care about quality, the Chinese plants will give 'em that. Hmm... now that I think about it that's my overall opinion of the Guitar Center. Ha!

That being said there are some very good Chinese-made microphones. It mostly depends on who the "manufacturer" is.

I know that Rode and Audio Technica consistently make microphones which are better than their prices would indicate.

Personally I wouldn't try to go up a little ways in regards to quality mic preamps. I'd go all the way or nothing. I think most of the "good" preamps are pretty much the same, whether they're made by Mackie or Focusrite. I think the cheapest one can bump up to the level of "sublime" is with the John Hardy M1 (which do sound very very beautiful, they're much like my Neve 1272's.) So if you're going to want to improve your preamps I think you should make a BIG jump rather than a little one. And again, for film sound it isn't as much an issue although almost every film post house has some decent mic preamps. Which is ironic because the mic preamps used for dialog recording are "good" but not "great". 

I'm always surprised at how durable those SM57's are.

And Yet Helmets

This is, apparently, a blog about space helmets. Which is good, because there aren't enough space helmet blogs in the world.
Anthony Jones totally rocked these out. Thanks to Brian Schiavo with hooking us up.

The color palette. Most people think of the one on the right as the "old" one. That's interesting. Like it's an older design? In the foreground is the original model Anthony built.

 All that needs to happen now is for the last of the vacu-formed plexi to be put in. The helmets fit rather well.

The very blue light is from the triple-LED inside the helmet. All the other light is from the outside.

 Anthony designed the helmets to be light-weight as well as good-fitting. They just sit nicely on the shoulder.

It's kind of awesome that you can rim-light the face because of the two large side ports. 

At one point we'd had a different color scheme where one of the helmets would be white. That idea disappeared with the much better notion of all the helmets being in the same palette but each one being unique.
The visors do scratch easily. So we'll have to take care of them. But the helmets themselves are pretty sturdy.

Today's Doings On

Today is a big re-mix day on Android Insurrection. We've promised to get the movie out the door on Wednesday so we're doing all our cleanup work now.
Our distributor had some notes on the picture which I've mostly done at this point. The rest of the work is a matter of doing a whole bunch of Foley and cut-sound-effects work. DeLisa White will be in the studio here on Sunday to do some Foley for us. That means I have to figure out picture monitoring in the VO booth. Or something...

From Steve Burg.

I hadn't originally planned on having a front-title sequence in the picture. But we tacked on a prologue and then our rep suggested putting the front-title credits on there so it doesn't seem as tacked-on as we know it is. So there was the issue of what credits to put in the front-title. The writers insisted on using silly names for their credits, so we stuck them back in the rear-title crawl where it wouldn't make the whole movie seem like a joke. And what that did was meant that we had to figure out, well who does go front title and who is "above" the title on the picture?
I think that's all worked out now.
I'm going to go visit some space helmets...