55th and 8th

Watch MSG, "Lost and Found" on Sunday April 14th, DuArt Restoration Featured!

2013-04-12T16:27:00.000-04:00

This Sunday, April 14^th , airing on the MSG Network: The “Lost Tape” of the New York Knicks historic '73 Championship game -- which was restored at DuArt! -- will air.

An entire special, “Lost and Found: the ’73 Knicks Championship Tape” was built around the reclamation of this “missing broadcast” from 40 years ago! Visit the MSG Network page for complete viewing details MSG Network.

And don’t miss the NY Times article by Richard Sandomir on this special archiving assignment 55thand8th DuArt Blog.

DuArt and our talented Chief Engineer Maurice Schechter are featured in the New York Times!

2013-04-05T12:59:00.001-04:00

Don’t miss “Reclaiming Videotapes and a Knicks Title” by the esteemed NYTimes sports broadcast writer, Richard Sandomir, published on April 5, 2013.

Read the article here:

"Reclaiming Videotapes and a Knicks Title", to see how Maurice’s expertise restored two priceless videotapes for MSG Network – the only known recordings of the New York Knicks’ Game 5 victory of the 1973 NBA Finals.

You can see more about DuArt's media conservation capabilities in this article

DuArt 55th and 8th Blog, about our collaborations with the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim to preserve video art.

DUART EXPANDS VIDEO EDIT SUITES, ADDS AUDIO PRODUCTION CAPACITY

2013-04-04T14:27:00.000-04:00

DuArt, New York City’s comprehensive video, digital media, and film post facility, continues to expand its post production offerings. In addition to the existing 55 production suites and edit bays currently available, DuArt is building out an additional 21 edit rooms for short- and long-term hire, with availability beginning in June.

The expanded video edit capacity complements the growth of DuArt’s audio production capabilities. A recent addition of three new audio production rooms increases the midtown facility’s offerings, for a total of seven rooms. All of the suites are suitable for a wide range of VO uses, with an emphasis on audio books.

DuArt’s newest additions add to the comprehensive range of offerings for post production at their 12-story, midtown building on 55^thStreet and Broadway. The wide range of unscripted TV series, factual programming, documentaries, and digital media -- from network clients to independent producers -- at the facility recently includes projects for True Entertainment, Park Slope Productions, American Documentary, Betterdays Media, Coneflower Productions, Middle March Films, MSG Networks, The Pokemon Company International.

Critically praised indie film work recently posted at DuArt includes Jehane Noujaim’s The Square (Al Midan) (Winner: 2013 Sundance Festival Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary); Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Winner: SilverBaton at the Alfred I. du-Pont Columbia University Awards; and the Sundance-screened Running from Crazy, from two-time Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple.

“DuArt’s full-service post capabilities continue to grow,” says Joe Monge, Vice President of Video Operations for DuArt. “Our edit bays are routinely booked to capacity, leading to the addition of more rooms that will help us to meet demand from content creators based in the NYC area, as well as out of state.”

In addition to its complete list of post services, DuArt provides short-, medium-, and long-term space and four-wall support to content production companies.

Sundance Award-Winning, Critically Acclaimed Indie Documentaries Post at DuArt

2013-03-28T12:53:00.000-04:00

Audio & Video Post Services Provided to Highly Praised Docs ‘The Square (Al Midan)’, ‘Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry’, and ‘Running From Crazy’

The yearhas gotten off to a fast start for a numberof independent documentaries posted at DuArt, New York City’s full service video and audio post facility.

The Square (Al Midan), the new documentary from director Jehane Noujaim, provides an engrossing view into the lives of day-to-day people working to build Egypt’s new democracy. A 90-minute film, the 2013 Sundance Festival awarded The Square with the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary. Online conform, titling, and color grading were all performed at DuArt’s comprehensive facilities in NYC.

A second award-winner posted at DuArt was Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, which won a Silver Baton at the Alfred I. du-Pont ColumbiaUniversity Awards, a showcase designed to highlight projects that reflect the highest standards of journalism. Directed by Alison Klayman, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, is the inside story of a dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics. The film was described by the awards team as “an intimate and compelling documentary about an extraordinary man on the cusp of history in China.” DuArt’s highly experienced team mixed, color graded, titled, mastered, and mixed the score in 5.1 for this intensely engaging documentary.

Another DuArt-posted documentary that drew crowds at Sundance was Running from Crazy, from two-time Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple. In Running from Crazy, the personal journey of Mariel Hemmingway is examined as she strives for a greater understanding of her complex family history – it sheds new light on the life of legendary author Ernest Hemingway, and on the overall perception of mental illness. Kopple selected DuArt to mix, color-grade, title, master, and screen the film.

DuArt’s extensive audio and video post capabilities are rooted in decades of experience, with thousands of films and television shows finished at the facility since its founding. In addition to its complete list of post services, DuArt provides short-, medium-, and long-term space and four-wall support to content production companies.

VO for Video Games – The Inside Story

2013-03-21T10:59:00.000-04:00

Producing VO for film, TV and animation is an art and science in itself. Meanwhile, casting, directing and recording VO for another medium – video games – stands out as a separate but equal dimension.

DuArt has decades of experience in producing world-class VO, an expertise that has also included video games for several years now. Video game titles to their credit include Pokemon, while their mobile gaming portfolio is represented by the likes of The Dark Knight Rises and Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour.

Here Lisa Ortiz, a Producer for DuArt, breaks down the subtle – and not-so-subtle – distinctions that make producing top-quality VO for video games its own beast.

Why is recording VO for video games a particularly challenging assignment?

Some of these games are huge. You’re talking about casting and recording what amounts to multiple episodes in a limited amount of time, and each cue has to be tracked separately.

You occasionally will have cinematics -- any of the strictly video sequences in the game, things like cut scenes -- but a lot of that work is done afterwards unlike dubbing. So you aren’t necessarily dealing with a locked picture.

I mean, figure that if a half hour episode has a couple hundred dialogue cues -- , let’s say max 400 -- , a game can have easily 3,000-5,000 cues.

What changes about the advance preparation that you do at DuArt when the project is VO for video games, as opposed to VO for an animation project such as Pokemon?

It really depends on the project, but a lot of times there isn’t as much lead in time. You’re biggest job besides the record is the organization and the casting.

We’ll have rewrites going on during the production sometimes, or level changes according to game fixes, etc... I see it as really being interactive with the client not just creatively, but also making their lives easier.

Who do you call in for the project? Is a VO performer that works for an animated TV show necessarily going to be the right choice for a video game?

Not always, no. Sometimes you get a more character-cartoony kind of game, but a lot of times what we’re looking for is much more subtle, more realistic. So it really depends on the performer. It’s part of the reason we do full castings for each game.

Its one of the neat things we offer here: in-house casting. I’ve cast projects that have six characters, and projects that have 100 characters. You want the best, most versatile performers for the job and you want to give as much variety as you can, whether it’s union or non-union.

We’ve got an amazing pool of actors, and if we need to, we go outside. We’re constantly on the lookout for new talent.

From a creative perspective, what is unique about the way VO talent must be directed, and deliver their performances, for a video game project?

Like I said, a lot of the big games, we’re looking for more realistic natural characters and acting. It’s a lot more like film for the microphone.

It resembles dubbing a film or looping more than animation energy -- depending on the project. But you still have to make sure it reads without the visual i.e. facial cues so it is bigger. I like to say that you need film realism and stage energy for the performances.

You also have to think that some of these characters are going to be generated randomly in the game, so you may hear the same cues over and over in gameplay. You want to make sure that what you’re recording can hold up to multiple listens without being distracting to the gamer.

We also may not be sure about what certain reactions -- or as they are often called in games, “barks,” -- will look like. That’s all your short lines, or hits, punches, spawning, attacks, all the sounds a character makes that are not necessarily dialogue. in gameplay. So you have to be creative as to how you’re approaching things.

A lot of us are gamers anyway, so we’re all familiar with the mediums, but you never know exactly how it’s going to be animated.

From a technical perspective, what changes in terms of how the talent is recorded for video games? Are there different audio requirements/considerations?

That’s a little bit of a trick question. A game can have so many different elements in it, depending on what the location and storyline is. A lot of times the effects are added afterwards, if it’s on the phone or the radio, or wherever.

But what we do have to worry about is location and what the sound effects in the scene are going to be. It’s more important to know if there’s a large battle going on, are the characters talking over fire, attacks, monsters, helicopters, are they in stealth mode?

It will effect the placement of the actor in proximity to the microphone and that setup, much like it would when you’re overdubbing a film. But unless it’s a specific request we’re still miking with our-ever dependable Neumann 103.

Is the timeline faster, slower, or the same as another type of VO project? How do the deadlines differ, and why?

Deadlines are different depending on the project, but a lot of times we’re up against the Gold Date, where the game goes live. And remember, we’re not the last stop on the trolley. They still have to plug in everything we did, and then make sure that it works in gameplay and they have time to debug, and in some cases finish, cinematics. We may be recording scenes to mocap i.e. motion capture videos or other unfinished work.

It’s definitely fun, and challenging, but it all depends on the client and the budget. We can do a lot of really amazing work in a very limited time if need be. We’ve a built a great machine here that can support the fast pace that a lot of game houses need, and still deliver excellent quality work.

What is unique about the way the finished elements must be organized and provided to the client?

Unlike something like an animation where its all recorded into one Pro Tools session and then mixed in that session, once we record the work, we have to edit, and export each cue as a separate file with a unique naming convention.

So you really pay attention to not just the recording, but the organization and the minutia of the file names. Organization is a bear unto itself, especially when you’re talking about 5,000 files.

Finally, what do you think is uniquely rewarding about working on VO for video games?

Well, nothing beats actually playing the game afterwards! Like I said, a lot of us are gamers ourselves, so getting to have input in that process and make gameplay more fun and engaging is amazing.

But from a business standpoint, video games have really exploded. It’s one of the largest-grossing entertainment industries and has overtaken film for revenue. There are so many platforms -- mobile especially has been booming -- and people are listening to sound and voice work more than they ever have before. It’s just going to keep growing.

DUART NAMES STINA HAMLIN SENIOR PRODUCER

2013-02-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

Experienced Non-Fiction Content Professional Provides Expanded Support for TV Post and Digital Media Projects

NEW YORK – February 25, 2013: DuArt (www.duart.com), New York City’s comprehensive video, digital media, and film post facility, has named Stina Thomas Hamlin as Senior Producer.

Hamlin has joined DuArt with 14-plus years of experience managing production and post-production for successful non-fiction projects. Before DuArt, she was Post Production Supervisor for Los Angeles-based Pie Town Productions, where she directed all post activities for clients including HGTV, TLC, Discovery, Travel Channel, NBC, and FOOD Network. Preceding that, Hamlin was Production Executive at Pie Town, managing staff, production crews, and budgets for such high-profile projects as TLC’s “A Baby Story”, multiple HGTV design and makeover shows, Food Network’s “$40 A Day” with Rachael Ray, and the NBC daily strip show “Life Moments.”

She launched her career as Assistant Operations Manager at Empire Burbank Studios in LA, the facility known for such productions as MTV’s “Singled Out”, “The Jenny McCarthy Show”, and many more non-fiction, live audience series.

At DuArt, Hamlin’s expertise has proven to be an essential asset for the facility’s growing client base of non-fiction television series. As Senior Producer, she facilitates the workflow through DuArt’s extensive post services offerings, including offline rentals, online, color grading and sound department, managing deliverables and deadlines while working directly with Post Supervisors and Producers. In addition, Hamlin is available for a thorough workflow consultation with DuArt’s clients, in advance of each project.

“DuArt’s TV post production portfolio is consistently growing,” Stina Hamlin says. “This is a facility with a rich history in film, one that’s laid a strong foundation for us to excel in every aspect of post for unscripted TV series, factual programming, documentaries, and digital media, from network clients to independent producers. The highly experienced staff and deep resources here enable us to provide an uncommonly high level of support – it’s the ideal team to work with.”

###

About DuArt:

DuArt is a full service post facility in NYC, servicing the broadcast and film industries. Operating out of their12-story building in midtown Manhattan, DuArt provides video editing, colorcorrect, voice recording, casting, 3D editing, direction for animation, music scoring, sound design, film and audio restoration, production space, and more. Since being established in 1922, DuArt has finished thousands of the world’s most loved feature films, documentaries, festival releases and television shows.

For more information, please visit www.duart.com.

NEWS: DUART PROVIDES FULL SERVICE VIDEO & AUDIO POST TO NBC, VIACOM, TRUE ENTERTAINMENT, THE LEONARD BERNSTEIN OFFICE

2012-11-14T10:05:00.001-05:00

NYC’S Comprehensive Post Facility Brings Expansive Range of Services to Reality TV,

Film Restoration, Animation, Documentaries & More

DuArt, New York City’s comprehensive video and audio post facility, applied its full range of services to a diverse number of projects in October.

Broadcast networks, production companies, and celebrity foundations selected DuArt’s 12-floor facility in midtown Manhattan for video editing, color grading, four-walling, SAP in Spanish, restoration, audio mixing and more. Highlight fall projects at DuArt include:

The NBC Film Library selected DuArt’s film transfer, color grading, and encoding services for the archived projects “Battle for Asia” and “LBJ with Troops.”

The busy documentary and alternative programming production company, True Entertainment, took up residence in DuArt with production offices and six Avid bays. The company has been prepping for online editing and audio mixing at DuArt for the second season of the Oprah Winfrey Network’s (OWN) series “Unfaithful: Stories of Betrayal.”

Original Media & Viacom teamed up with DuArt to complete SAP in Spanish, for 13 episodes of the popular MTV series “Ink Masters.”

The Leonard Bernstein Office came to DuArt to collaborate on film restoration.

Shorts International (SI), a top producer and distributor of short movie entertainment, finalized their project Stars in Shorts at DuArt. In addition, DuArt managed SI’s deliverables for InDemand, DirectTV, and AT&T.

The long-running animation series “Pokemon” continued to make DuArt its HQ for voice casting, recording and mixing plus all video work and deliverables.

Turquoise Films, are onsite for video editing and audio mixing multiple projects.

CT-based Coneflower Productions worked with DuArt on color grading and audio mix for their upcoming documentary, Ducks.

Jump Start Productions kicked off its television series in online edit, color grading, and mastering delivery of 26 episodes of the PBS series “America ReFramed” for WGBH, and World Channel with American Documentary. America ReFramed brings nonfiction indie films, 60 or 90 minutes in length, to the air.

Park Slope Productions returned for online, color grading, audio mix, and deliverables for the series, “Alaska Project” for OWN, Oprah Winfrey’s Network.

Color grading was on the agenda for the Producciones Arte Nuevo film, Orphans.

The feature Kids Across the Hill also received the full color grading treatment from DuArt, for award-winning documentarians The Epidavros Project Inc.

And Westchester Films was at DuArt, completing restoration and dubbing for distribution of their latest project.

About DuArt:

DuArt is a full service post facility in NYC, servicing the broadcast and film industries. Operating out of their 12-story building in midtown Manhattan, DuArt provides video editing, color correct, voice recording, casting, 3D editing, direction for animation, music scoring, sound design, film and audio restoration, production space, and more. Since being established in 1922, DuArt has finished thousands of the world’s most loved feature films, documentaries, festival releases and television shows.

For more information, please visit www.duart.com.

Andrew Young's Beavercam

2012-09-18T11:07:00.000-04:00

Andrew Young

In the urban jungle that is NYC, it can take determination to connect with nature. Fortunately for us all, DuArt’s VP of Special Projects, Andrew Young, has proven that he’s willing to go the extra mile – even if his subject matter is right in his backyard.

A co-founder of the production company Archipelago Films, a two-time Emmy Award-winner, and a Grand Jury Prize-winner at Sundance Film Festival, Young’s work has been exhibited theatrically and on HBO, Cinemax, National Geographic, the BBC and PBS.

Although he’s spanned the globe to make his films, it was a group of ambitious beavers on his property that inspired his latest effort, the Beavercam. An educational and often humorous piece of REAL reality TV that looks directly in on his nocturnal neighbors, the story of Beavercam exemplifies Young’s connection to filmmaking and the natural world.

Why are films your preferred form of communication?
I love films as a means of communication, because they interface with everything that I find fascinating. I studied anthropology in school, but I came back to filmmaking because I realized I was interested in the world -- and I was interested in communicating things about the world to other people. Whether it’s a documentary or fiction, we’re all fascinated by visual media, and I gravitated to that as the best means of communicating to people.

I should add that I come from a family of filmmakers -- my mother is a still photographer, and my father is a feature film director. I also have DuArt pulsing through my blood: My grandfather is a film editor, and he founded DuArt. So I’ve always had a strong feeling about the importance of film.

That sounds like a thorough grounding in the visual arts.
Yes, but my father also told me, “Don’t study filmmaking. Instead, study what you want to make films about.” I took his advice. Everything in my filmmaking comes out of my strong curiosity about the world, and my desire to share experiences with other people.

So in that sense, the Beavercam is directly related to the first film The Spirit of Kuna Yala that I did with my wife in Panama, which reflected both nature topics and human topics -- important ideas about the Earth that are worth sharing.

Can you tell us more about your approach to filmmaking? What are you trying to show with your films?
I consider myself a storyteller, but a visual storyteller. I’m always thinking like a cinematographer, and reaching for the camera when I want to tell something.

I think my approach is pretty obvious: try watching my 1998 film Madagascar, a World Apart, and then watch another film on Madagascar. The difference you’ll probably see is that, among other things, I always try to put the camera in the world of the characters, and let the audience experience things the way that those in the film do.

That film won an Emmy for “Best Documentary” that year, and a telling comment that the judges made was when they said, “We turned the sound off on everyone’s films, and yours was the one we still understood.” That’s the best compliment I ever got.

Filmmaking is about communicating through movement, and things that change in front of the camera. When you do that effectively, you’re using the medium to its fullest. Films in general rely on the spoken word so heavily, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I love it when you can communicate as much as possible without words.

What were some ways you managed to accomplish that in Madagascar, a World Apart?
In that film, I did a lot of shots with miniature cameras, remote control cameras flying through the air on cables and ropes -- things that made viewers feel like they were in the world of the animals. Not just being seen in long telephoto lenses, but going into burrows, racing up trees, and flying through the air with them.

That’s what set it apart, and distinguishes my filmmaking in general, is to put the viewer inside the story -- whether the subject is people or animals.

Back to the Beavercam, what was the technical approach you took to filming the beavers?
That was a project that came out of our personal lives. We live in a house in Westchester that’s wooded and on a pond – it’s a place where we’ve raised a family, we have a home office there, and we’re very much aware of the nature around us.

One day a year-and-a-half ago, we noticed a pile of sticks. Then it was a pile of sticks and mud next to our dock. And then we saw trees that were chewed, with that characteristic beaver chew, and we said, “Wow, this looks like something beavers did.” But beavers hadn’t been there, as far as I knew, in 100 years. They’re the official animal of New York state, but they were wiped out by the fur trade.

Then, before our eyes, this pile of sticks and mud grew into the large structure that was a beaver lodge. It was their home. We didn’t see a dam, but before long we started seeing the beavers themselves, and having encounters with them.

So over the past year, I became obsessed with getting inside the lodge with a camera. I wanted to know, “What do they do inside, with all those sticks and mud?” because I had done this kind of thing in another film. We shot a film in Glacier Bay, Alaska, and one of the main characters there was the salmon: We did a lot of work there with remote control camera as they spawned. I spent hundreds of hours watching the love lives of salmon, which you can do with a remote control camera – then go back 50 feet, and hide in the bushes.

So my wife said, “You’ve got to just do it, and get a camera in the lodge.” So over the last Christmas/New Year’s holiday, I bought a cheap security camera, and some pieces I needed from Home Depot, and we did it. We bored a hole through four feet of sticks and mud, and inserted the security camera there. The next thing we knew, we had a live picture in the house of what was going on in the beaver lodge.

Besides simple curiosity, what were some additional motivations you had for setting up the Beavercam?
Again, it goes back to this idea of, if we could just understand more of what was going on in the world around us, we could be richer for it. There’s this foreign species here that we know nothing about, yet they do these incredible things. They’ve cut down 100 trees on our property, they’re master builders, but they do most of this while I’m asleep. Our technology bridges these worlds together, and now I know so much more about them.

So what’s next for the Beavercam?
We published many episodes, but the series was cut short by the beavers themselves. They demanded privacy – and they enforced it by putting sticks and mud over the cameras!

I respect their privacy. But I think we can do it again so that they’re less aware of the cameras. I think they sensed the LED light, which has a slight glow and became visible because the inside of their lodge is completely dark.

I have an idea of how to approach this differently for the next time. We have a grant to try and turn the Beavercam into a live 24/7 Web channel and make it an educational tool, to help youngsters learn more about wildlife in New York. We’re planning on expanding that, and the objective is to help students become more aware of the world they live in.

This is one of the great things filmmaking can do. It’s a way of using technology to bring the outside world closer to us. Since kids are watching the screens all the time, maybe we can use those screens to bring them in touch with the world around us.

Follow this link to the official Archipelago Films FB page to see the
Beavercam videos. Mixed in with the installments from the beaver lodge,
you'll find plenty of other intriguing videos and images from Andy Young.
Enjoy it all!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Archipelago-Films/213128272087526

-- David Weiss

Color Me Obsessed at DuArt Part 4

2012-09-04T11:08:00.000-04:00

Geek out a la Gorman in this, the final edition of indie documentarian Gorman Bechard’s exclusive-to-DuArt blog. This highly articulate director is responsible for the instant classic, “Color Me Obsessed: The Potentially True Story of the Last Best Band, The Replacements”

Gorman chose DuArt to sound mix this fascinating film: a documentary on a band, which never actually shows them or plays their music.

Check out Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here. Do not miss this gripping conclusion, where Gorman and DuArt mixer Matt Gundy complete the mix of this 123 minute-film in four days. Get inside the fast film mix workflow he lays out here -- you just might come out inspired.

Part 27

It’s probably only an hour or so into the first day of mixing when some of my bad sound, in this case the AC units behind Husker Du bassist Greg Norton and Twin/Tone co-founder Paul Stark, both recorded upstairs at First Avenue, proves too much for the board and its collection of filters and knobs. Time (already) to roll in the big guns. Matt says he’ll be right back, returning with what honestly looks like an old fashioned computer from the early 80s, sitting on a metal cart with wheels.

He calls it the Cambridge something or other, and that its main use is to remove the pops and hiss from the optical soundtracks of old films which the folks at DuArt are restoring. I immediately know anything with such a name will be no match for a bunch of Mats fanatics, so I re-christen the machine the HissMaster3000 (herein HM3K). And we’re ready to rock and roll.

The HM3K is an awesome little contraption. As we move through all 123 minutes of the film, Matt uses it, and the aforementioned knobs and filters to level everything out beautifully, yet allow each location -- and there are about 125 different locations in the film -- to have its own unique sound.

It’s really not until we get to comedian Dave Foley that we really run into issues. The street sounds, in this case downtown Los Angeles, are ferocious. The struggle monumental. It’s like an ultimate fighting match. And as Matt so bluntly put it, “Dave Foley crashed the HM3K.”

Part 28

We have four days for the mix. Nothing by comparison to Hollywood comparisons. But then our entire film budget is probably the food budget for two weeks on your average Hollywood film.

And from what Matt and Carmen tell me, so many micro-budget films nowadays are bypassing the mix altogether, because they just can’t afford it. So, our four days are a luxury by what should be our standards. But I firmly believe bad sound can kill a film, just as easily as boring cinematography, amateuristic acting, bad writing, etc and so on. It’s an essential part.

We’ll break the four days down as such…30-to-35 minutes or so on the first day, as Matt gets the rhythm of the film, and begins to better understand the horrors of my sound recording. Also, as he gets a perfect setting for an interview, say Husker Du drummer Grant Hart in the basement of 7th Street Entry, he can reuse the setting every time Grant pops back up on the screen.

The rest of the film, we’ll split between days two and three. And yes, we hit the 80 minute mark by the end of Wednesday, leaving us 43 minutes for Thursday, which is a breeze. Except for Dave Foley. (I begin to think he’s just fucking with us.)

Day Four begins as it has every time we’ve mixed. We watch the film from start to finish, to see what needs work, or polish, or a slight tweak. It’s also the first time I get to see the film projected on a screen from start to finish. So, notebook in hand, I wander down to the front, take a seat, and watch…

Damn, I love this film even more with good sound.

Part 29

After watching the film through, Matt and I compare notes…

I should point out first that he began the day telling me he found three albums from The Replacements that I’d given him at the end of the FWB mix. “Let It Be, Tim, and Pleased To Meet Me?” I venture.

He replies in the affirmative. And that he began playing them non-stop since working on the film. I promise him that I’ll complete his collection once we’re done.

Back to mix notes: they’re pretty much the same. A few spots are driving us crazy. And honestly I won’t mention them because I think that Matt and the HM3K did such an amazing job of smoothing them out, that Matt and I (and the HM3K) are really the only two people (and machine) in the world who would ever know what they were.

Volumes are adjusted in a few spots…One word playing just a little too loud…A few a little too soft. The background feedback and noise (from Dean Falcone) likewise a little too loud in spots, too quiet in others, and let’s swap out a few of the non-tunings with better choices from the tracks I brought with me.

By around 2 PM the tweaking is over. There’s nothing more left to do, except output the film, which is done in real time. So, I get to watch it again. Proud at what we’ve done. Hell, what Matt and the HM3K have done. My sound no longer requires apologies.

The mix is transferred to the drives I brought with me. Two drives, so I have two separate copies. Yeah, I’m anal that way. (And yes, I hear people who know me quoting Woody Allen, “Anal is a nice word for what you are.”)

And we’re done. I thank Matt and Carmen and tell them about the next projects, PIZZA, A LOVE STORY, my doc on the history of Sally’s, Pepe’s, and Modern, the three greatest pizza (appiza!) joints in the galaxy, and parts two and three of my Alone Trilogy: the horror film ONE NIGHT STAND and the dark road drama BROKEN SIDE OF TIME.

Which one will see the darkness of DuArt’s mixing suite, and the genius of Matt Gundy next is anyone’s guess.

DuArt’s Randy Hudson Interviewed on Authoring for Blu-Ray on “Digital Production Buzz” Podcast

2012-05-23T11:34:00.000-04:00

Hear how deep Blu-Ray DVD authoring can go in this interview on Digital Production Buzz – “Talk Radio for Digital Production, Post Production, & Distribution Worldwide” -- featuring an insightful conversation with Randy Hudson, DuArt’s Director of Digital Media Post Production.

What do content producers need to know to prepare their movie for Blu-Ray release? And what’s the budgetary difference between authoring for standard DVD, Blu-Ray and 3-D Blu-Ray? Randy talks about all this, plus his experience preparing Joe Satriani’s live-concert film “Satchurated” for Blu-Ray release.

Andrew Young demos the Sony NEX-FS700 Camera

2012-05-11T11:15:00.001-04:00

When DuArt's VP of Special Projects, Andrew Young, got an early chance to test Sony’s soon-to-be-released Sony NEX-FS700 camera, he jumped on it. Young put the camera’s intensive features – including 480fps Super Slo Mo – through its paces.

See his evaluation footage, and get some great shooting tips, by checking out the video below.

Andrew Young, VP of Special Projects for DuArt, is an award winning filmmaker and co-founder of Archipelago Films, a New York based production company. Young’s work has received an Academy Award nomination, two Emmy Awards, seven Emmy nominations, five awards at the Sundance Film Festival including the “Grand Jury Prize,” and numerous prizes at international film festivals. His work has been exhibited theatrically and on HBO, Cinemax, National Geographic, the BBC and PBS.

Andrew Young reviews the Sony NEX-FS100 Camera

2012-05-11T11:14:00.003-04:00

DuArt's VP of Special Projects, Andrew Young, didn’t hesitate to test drive the Sony NEX-FS100 camera recently. What are the uncommon advantages of this Super 35MM camcorder? View below to find out.

Andrew Young, VP of Special Projects for DuArt, is an award winning filmmaker and co-founder of Archipelago Films, a New York based production company. Young’s work has received an Academy Award nomination, two Emmy Awards, seven Emmy nominations, five awards at the Sundance Film Festival including the “Grand Jury Prize,” and numerous prizes at international film festivals. His work has been exhibited theatrically and on HBO, Cinemax, National Geographic, the BBC and PBS.

Join DuArt’s Maurice Schechter at TechFocus II: “Caring for Film and Slide Art”

2012-04-24T14:48:00.002-04:00

Artists continue to create vital works on film and slides, even as the technology moves to obsolescence with unexpected speed. Still, film and slide works are being shown in museums with increasing frequency.

Join Maurice Schechter, DuArt’s chief engineer and head of Conservation, as he presents two talks at the conference, “TechFocus II: Caring for Film and Slide Art”, taking place at the Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, on April 27–28, 2012, at the Ring Auditorium.

At TechFocus II, Mr. Schechter will be speaking on Friday, April 27 at 11:00 AM on the topic of “The Filmmaking Process.”

Later that day at 4:00 PM, Mr. Schechter and Janice Allen of Cinema Arts/John E. Allen Archive will co-present on the topic, “Creation of Exhibition Copies: Motion Picture Films.”

Maurice Schechter recently collaborated with New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Guggenheim to develop long-term conservation plans and facilities for their video art collections. Please visit here, for more information.

Here are additional details about this vital event for museum professionals and filmmakers:

TechFocus II is designed to educate museum professionals about the technology of film and slide-based artworks and to recommend best practices for their acquisition, preservation, and display.

The workshop includes a unique “School of Seeing”: films and slides are projected as examples of different production processes, so that participants can learn how to look at them with a critical eye.

The TechFocus workshop series is being organized by the Electronic Media Group of The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) to provide detailed technical education in the preservation of media art. A systematic lecture program, delivered by international experts, introduces participants to the technology behind these artworks and offers real-world guidelines for their preservation.

To register for TechFocus II, please visit www.conservation-us.org/techfocus2.

JOE SATRIANI’S “SATCHURATED: LIVE IN MONTREAL”, 2D & 3D BLU-RAY RELEASE AUTHORED AT DUART FOR CINEMUSICA

2012-04-09T11:45:00.000-04:00

Home Release for 2D & 3D Live Concert Film by World-Renowned Guitarist Completed at Full-Service NYC TV & Film Post Facility

NEW YORK -- March 31, 2012: Joe Satriani, widely recognized as one of the world’s top guitarists, has added to his legacy with the release of the new live-concert film, Satchurated: Live in Montreal. The HD film was authored for both 2D and 3D Blu-Ray release by DuArt, NYC’s full-service video and audio post facility. Both formats will be released on April 10th by Sony Music.

Filmed by GRAMMY and EMMY award-winning concert cinematographers Pierre & François Lamoureux of Cinemusica, Satchurated was captured live on December 12, 2010 during Satriani’s “The Wormhole Tour”, supporting his studio album Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards at the Metropolis in Montreal, Canada. Satchurated: Live in Montreal was released to select theaters throughout the country on March 1, 2012 for a limited engagement.

Cinemusica captured the sold-out concert with a total of ten camera positions, recording Satriani’s musical best in both 2D and 3D HD formats, in 7.1 Surround Sound.

Randy Hudson, Director of Digital Media Post Production for DuArt, oversaw a meticulous 3D Blu-Ray authoring process at DuArt’s advanced facilities in midtown Manhattan. “This was an amazing project, and well deserving of the level of production necessary for making it available on 3D and Blu-Ray,” says Hudson. “You have a front row seat to every chord change, played by one of the world’s undisputed guitar masters.”

Working with his team in DuArt’s dedicated 2D/3D BluRay authoring suite, Hudson used the Sony Creative Software's DoStudio encoding module, Panasonic multiscan displays, and his deep media production experience to help Cinemusica prepare Satchurated for 3D Blu-Ray release.

“Over 5,000 retail DVD and Blu-Ray titles have been collectively authored by the Disc Production team here at DuArt,” Hudson explains. “That helps us to fully understand the workflow and the final product that we’re working toward: knowing the intricacies of 3D subtitling and menuing, advising the client on how to simultaneously set up to playback in 2D for checking text or credits, and myriad other details are all factors in delivering the best possible product to the consumer.”

The complete post offerings available in DuArt’s 12 floor building on 55th Street and 8th Avenue provided FogoLabs with additional important benefits. “Along with the video assets, we can also handle full QC of the audio in a surround environment,” notes Hudson. “All the services at DuArt are available to the client for a fast, complete turnaround, no matter what the format is.”

Satchurated: Live in Montreal will be released on April 10th in 2D &3D Blu-Ray.

About DuArt:
DuArt is a full service post facility in NYC, servicing the broadcast and film industries. Operating out of their 12-story building in midtown Manhattan, DuArt provides video editing, color correct, voice recording, casting, 3D editing, direction for animation, music scoring, sound design, film and audio restoration, production space, complete DVD, Blu-Ray, and 3D Blu-Ray disc media production services, and more. Since being established in 1922, DuArt has finished thousands of the world’s most loved feature films, documentaries, festival releases and television shows.

For more information, please visit www.duart.com.

About CINEMUSICA:
Cinemusica was formed by brothers, Pierre & Francois Lamoureux. Their films have won a Grammy, two Emmy, two Juno, two Gemini, a multitude of industry and technical awards, sold millions of copies on BluRay and DVD and aired all around the world. Pierre & Francois Lamoureux have directed and/or produced concert films and music documentaries for Rush, The Who, Harry Connick, Jr., Slipknot, Rihanna, The Pretenders, Zappa Plays Zappa, Branford Marsalis, Pat Metheny, deadmau5, Cowboy Junkies, Collective Soul, Ben Harper, Willie Nelson, Deep Purple, The Stray Cats and others. For more information, please visit www.cinemusica.tv

About Joe Satriani:
Visit www.satriani.com to discover everything Satriani.

DUART COLLABORATES WITH NEW YORK MUSEUMS TO PRESERVE VIDEO ART

2012-03-12T14:59:00.001-04:00

For media conservators at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, the preservation and exhibition of video works is central to a mission of fully exploring the vitality of contemporary art. As the continued growth of both museums’ time-based media collections presented various sets of archival challenges, both institutions collaborated with New York City’s DuArt to develop a long-term conservation plan.

Conservation in the art world requires a specialized thought process to handle different types of unique material. Every artwork has a look defined by the artist, bound to the technology that it was exhibited on. With analog media in particular, the image or “content” and the physical carrier itself play equal parts in handling.

A new methodology on capturing these essences of analog media in the digital world is therefore needed. When transferring analog media to digital elements there are many technical decisions that have to be made with the greatest of care. To take just one example, the color palette of values in the analog world is much higher than that in the digital realm. Therefore, these values must be carefully documented before they are constrained in the digital world so that the integrity of the work does not get compromised in any way.

After several months of research, DuArt developed a graphics-based reference pattern that tracks changes that take place when going from analog to digital formats. This form of visual “metadata” or data about data will allow future conservators to understand how the essence of the work was changed over time, a visual breadcrumb trail leading back to the original essence of the artwork itself.

In addition to the graphics pattern, DuArt was commissioned to build a media conservation lab at MoMA’s facility in Queens, to be used to screen and evaluate the analog works in conjunction with its digital surrogate. The conservation lab features a combination of both new and vintage equipment and was built and tested in DuArt’s engineering shop by engineers James Seepersad and Tom Pafitzko.

Maurice Schechter, DuArt’s chief engineer and head of Conservation, says, “Whether it’s an analog format or HD, the other design goal of the facility is to be able to fully simulate the exhibition environment before the public sees it. This way the exhibit is proper and can be fully approved by the artist.”

A classical technician and lecturer of obsolescence of media, Schechter and his conservationists, in conjunction with the Head Media Conservator at the Guggenheim, had previously worked on the restoration of media installations by artists Nam June Paik and Marina Abramovic.

Nam June Paik's "Random Access"

Marina Abramovic, five channel installation, "Cleaning The Mirror #1"

Schechter also oversaw DuArt’s creation of a similarly-purposed conservation lab at the Guggenheim Museum. In both museum cases, the facility’s top priority is to ensure that the media’s video and audio components are being one hundred percent accurately preserved, in translation from its legacy format to the modern file-based/digital format.

Together these tools allow for unprecedented collaboration between each museum and DuArt during the preservation process. Erik Piil, a graduate of New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program and DuArt’s main conservationist, digitizes the materials and generates metadata in conjunction with museum conservators. “With this collaborative group of talent and resources,” Schechter explains, “we have the mindset to understand what the challenging needs are of the conservators, curators and artists.”

For DuArt, projects like that of MoMA and the Guggenheim are welcome opportunities to collaborate with curators and conservators whose outlook and mission perfectly complements the company’s unique resources. “Because of this effort, these artist’s works will survive the march of time.” concludes Schechter, “Enabling the public to see these key works of art, the way they were intended, is extremely satisfying.”

To see these restored video pieces, visit the MoMA Media Lounge. Details can be found on the MoMA web site.

Color Me Obsessed at DuArt Part 3

2012-01-23T09:22:00.000-05:00

Herein lies the third transmission from indie documentarian Gormon Bechard. The director of “Color Me Obsessed: The Potentially True Story of the Last Best Band, The Replacements” chose DuArt to sound mix this fascinating film: a documentary on a band that never shows them or plays their music.

Check out Part 1 here, and Part 2 here. In this gripping penultimate installment of his exclusive blog to DuArt, Bechard confesses to a) taking chances with the recorded audio, and b) bribing DuArt mixer Matt Gundy with coffee -- repeatedly.

Gorman and Matt in a contemplative moment.

Part 25

COLOR ME OBSESSED was a completely different beast from my last two films. A set of talking heads -- over 120 -- appear in the film, all with their own specific set of sound issues: An air conditioning unit we couldn’t shut off, LA street sounds, NYC street sounds, MPLS street sounds (I fucking hate street sounds), refrigerators, hums, buzzing, other bands playing loudly in the arena upstairs, dog tags jingling, interns turning log pages loudly, and one part-time uncredited B-camera person who moved so clunkily, Matt asked if someone was “bouncing golf balls off the window.”

We began, as always, at the first frame and worked forward tweaking, not so much those many voices, but those many distracting sounds behind them. Matt would, as he had for both You Are Alone and Friends (With Benefits) make everything sound perfect, all the levels even, and so forth.

The sound we originally recorded was halfway decent at best. And I’m not sharing the blame here -- I take full responsibility for the sound in the film. And I even apologize in the end credits. But I didn’t want to shoot everyone in a sterile studio setting. That might work for Errol Morris, but it wouldn’t work for me. I wanted backgrounds organic (fuck, I hate that word) to the people being interviewed.

If they owned a record shop, they’d be interviewed in their shop. To hell with the trucks zooming past outside on Lyndale. Or Grant Hart from Husker Du being interviewed in the basement dressing room at the 7th Street Entry. I mean, could any setting be more perfect? Plus, we didn’t have a sound man. Our trusty mic stand stood in nicely. And many of the musicians we filmed seemed impressed by the quality of our shotgun mic. And honestly, I might be overstating this a bit. When you see the film you’ll be thinking there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the sound.

And you’re right.

It sounds great!

NOW!

Thanks to Matt Gundy.

Part 26

The mix works like this: big dark room, the film projected on what I’d imagine to be a 12-foot screen. There are a few chairs right down in front of the screen, but I never use them, unless I’m pacing, wandering, restless.

Matt sits one step up, behind the mixing console. He’s surrounded by levers and knobs, and of course a computer keyboard, and I haven’t much of a clue as to what any of them does. I watch the monitor at times. It looks a little like a Final Cut timeline, but different. Because I trust in Matt, I believe in his abilities, I know it’s nothing I need to know. He’s in control.

I sit behind a large desk of sorts one step up from and behind Matt. I have my laptop open to keep track of and check other film business while Matt does his thing. I’ll read emails, look up film festivals, things like that.

And we begin. I arrive on the 9th floor of DuArt at 9 AM on that Tuesday morning. Hot coffee in hand for me. I give Matt a present. A gift from the last film, Friends (With Benefits). It’s a Willoughby’s “Serious Coffee Drinker” t-shirt like Alex Brown and Rooney Mara wore in the film.

When he realizes what it is, he smiles and tells me that since I sent him some Willoughby’s beans after the last mix he’s been addicted to the coffee, and orders it via their mail order site. Not only is the guy a brilliant mixer…he knows his coffee!

NEWS: DUART EXPANDS VIDEO DESCRIPTION SERVICES (VDS) CAPACITY

2012-01-18T11:07:00.000-05:00

USA Networks/NBC Universal Entrusts “Law & Order” With Experienced Accessible Media Team at Full Service NYC Video and Film Post Facility

DuArt, New York City’s full service video and audio post facility, has expanded its Video Description Services (VDS) capabilities. Led by a highly experienced group of VDS providers, DuArt’s Benefit Media division has added capacity, as demand for accurate VDS services increases across broadcast and film.

Recent VDS clients at Benefit Media include USA Networks/NBC Universal for numerous episodes of the long-running series “Law & Order.” The FCC has reinstated VDS requirements for networks and cable channels in the months to come, to insure that audio narrations of key visual elements in programming are inserted into programming with increased frequency. With the complete video, audio, writing, and voiceover resources at DuArt, the facility has proven ideal for efficiently completing VDS that meets guidelines, on deadline.

Located within DuArt, Benefit Media is overseen by Executive Producer/Director Lou Gutierrez. Previously at the American Foundation for the Blind, Gutierrez was Director of Operations for Talking Books and Accessible Media Productions there, and participated in efforts that contributed to current standards for video description.

“When done correctly, VDS provides vision-impaired audiences with a similar experience to what a sighted person might receive from TV, film, or online content,” Gutierrez says. “Our deep experience producing VDS, and the full range of support services here in-house at DuArt, make this an uncommonly efficient facility for staying on schedule with DVS, and getting it right the first time. As new FCC-mandated milestones for distributors to provide VDS programming approach, DuArt and Benefit Media are ready to reliably meet their increased needs.”

Sound for Animation, Part III: Delivery

2011-12-06T09:24:00.000-05:00

Time to bring it all together. DuArt VP of Audio Production Carmen Borgia and Producer Lisa Ortiz provide insight on the creation of musical score, theme, and sound design for animation, followed by the mix process. When everything converges, the result is an efficient approval process that gets the show’s sound green-lit and ready to go for final delivery to the client. Find out how it all combines in this Q&A, the third and final part in our “Sound for Animation” series (visit Part I: Conception, and Part II: Creation).

Lisa Ortiz and Carmen Borgia

We’ve discussed sound-for-animation pre production with DuArt’s Tim Werenko, and then the casting/directing/recording process with Tom Wayland. How does everything come together after that to make a sonic production that’s ready to deliver?
Lisa: From the pre-production moving forward, I guide the show’s production all the way across. I feel as if I’m the client as it moves forward – I know how I want the whole show to come together.

The music is a huge part, it can completely change the mood of a piece – many people think you have the voices recorded and it’s done, but there’s more to it than that. The music and sound design are crucial elements as well -- I think of those elements as characters in and of themselves. The right kind of music can alter the gravity of the piece, while the sound design can be a major factor in helping to tell the story.

While the others handle the recording and mixing, I ensure continuity for the style and the mood. You want to link one scene to the other, and get a feel for what the show will be. In the case of shows we’ve done here at Duart like “Raju the Rickshaw,” and “Indian Fables,” you want to make sure that it feels right for little kids, and the music is essential for giving the right direction and feel.

Carmen: When creating original music and sound design for an animation show, we ask questions like, “What’s going on in the story right now? Is the character afraid, happy, courageous? And is the audience identifying with that character or reacting in some other way?”

The challenge is settling in the right style of music and the right style of sound design. The types of input I get from Lisa in an episode’s pre-production focus on deciding what kind of music we want to write for it. “The character here is hopeful and going off on an adventure, while another is sad that the first one is leaving” – those characters and situations call for different, specific musical themes.

And in terms of the sound design, we ask, “Does this want to sound cartoony, naturalistic, exaggerated?” The sound effects go hand-in-hand with music.

Do you take the same thematic approach to each episode of a show, or is each one different?
Lisa: It varies. For each different show, the client knows the feel that they want, so we translate that with the voices, the music and sound design. With those last two components, it’s all about finding the right mood, and supporting the story that you’re trying to tell at any given moment.

Carmen: In developing the music and sound design, we explore the show with the client. They know more about it than we do, but it doesn’t screen in their head -- it screens in reality. So we narrow down what they want in the pilot, and then once we get involved with the series, we delve farther into the creative process.

These shows have a life of their own, so we’re learning along with the client the about the development of the show, and what they need. The first episode may be a story of two kids racing up the hill, and how fun that is. Then, five episodes later it could be underwater, or a horror episode, and if we aren’t careful, those may feel like they don’t have anything to do with the first two. So it’s finding the cues to work with in that show -- we don’t know what that world is completely, because we’re all making it as we go.

Lisa: I feel the most collaborative part of the process is when we get to the effects and music. Once those cues are built into tracks, we’ve got all the colors on our palette. Then we mix them together with the voices to get the right feel for every moment. There are a lot of happy surprises, but you also find things that don’t work. It’s a real balancing act.

Carmen: Yeah, it all comes together with the mix. Sometimes a sound effect plays wrong at one level, but when we turn it down and in relationship to the music, it works perfectly. As Lisa said, it’s a balancing act.

How do you finally know you’ve got it right?
Lisa: It requires listening with my inner five-year-old. “How am I hearing this if I’m five, if I’m six? Is it scaring me? Making me happy?” I have a strong sense of what engages the audience, and what they need. When I get the right balance, it hits me: “If I were six years old, I’d watch this constantly!”

Once the mix is complete, how does the approval process unfold?
Lisa: During this stage I’m working with the client. Early in the process as we’re devolping musical ideas we’ll say, “Here is a motif for the hero or the bad guy.” They listen to that, and give us feedback. Once we get the final mix together, we all need to hear it all over again: The sound effects and music become different characters together than they were as separate elements, so mix reviews are crucial.

The show’s team will listen, either here or remotely, and by now we’re closing in on the final creation. I always try to serve the piece – if someone has fallen in love with a certain sound cue, I might say, “That’s a great sound, but it’s not serving the story.”

From there, how do you get a final OK for delivery on the sound mix?
Lisa: We try very hard to do what we think will serve the piece. If we’re dealing with a whole series it’s obviously very important to get the balances right as early as possible.

At the end of the day, it’s about what the client wants, and above that, what does the piece want? The show is like the child of the client, and we’re there working with their children. We want to make sure the kids have a nice place to play.

This blog was penned by David Weiss, an avid follower of all things production and music oriented. He is a founder and editor of sonicscoop.com.

Sound for Animation, Part II: Creation

2011-10-07T15:26:00.000-04:00

Life is good if you’re Tom Wayland, Voice Director for DuArt. Tasked with casting the actors for animation, directing them in the studio, and recording it all with maximum efficiency is the core of the work week for this VO pro. As a man who happily consumes cartoons in his down-time, Wayland fits the profile of a man committed to the art and science of sound for animation. Get inside his head and workflow with this interview, Part II in a series (visit Sound for Animation, Part I: Conception here).

Tom Wayland

Why do you like doing your thing – casting and directing -- for animation, specifically?
For one thing, animation can be more fun because it can generally bring you back to your childhood. I have kids of my own -- ages 8, 6, and 3 -- and I watch a lot of cartoons with them. I have stuff that I watch on my own, though. With the success of things like Adult Swim (on Cartoon Network), “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy,” there are so many more cartoons geared for adults.

Also, there are things you can do in animation that you can’t do in real life. I’m an actor, too, part of the talent pool, and I’m in a bunch of shows that DuArt puts on and that are produced all over the city, such as Saturday morning cartoons. In this genre, you have the chance to play characters you could never play in a live action sense. I’m 38, but I play children all the time, or big bruiser monster creatures, or I play animals, aliens, or a ninja. So that’s fun as talent, and also as a director – being able to explore the places that you couldn’t go with live action.

That sounds like a great job to come in to every day. How do you approach casting?
Casting is a creative process, and an organizational one. “Pokemon,” for example, is one of the main things we work on here. It’s a longstanding series with a large number of characters, people and places to keep track of. Whenever we get a project in, the first thing I want to do is see the script. That’s how you’re really going to understand what the characters are like. From a directing standpoint, it flows from there.

When you do a prelay, you’re laying down the audio pre-animation, so you’re really starting with that script from the ground up. You’re saying, “Who are these characters, what will they be like?” and you begin casting. We have a very deep talent pool, and I’ve worked with almost everyone in NYC who does voice for animation. But you just don’t think about who will sound good for a particular part, but who will sound good together. I’ll say, “These characters have a lot of interaction. Which two actors will be comfortable in that banter?”

Getting the actors is the most fun, creative part. A lot of the people I’m working with are friends I’ve know for years. I work with them often on other shows. Then we get into the studio, create and have fun.

Are you also overseeing the recording process?
Yes. Generally, we record one actor at a time. Especially when matching to picture, you have to be as specific about the mouth movement/lip flap synch as you can. If you’re recording a number of people at once, you’ll never get the lip flaps all in synch. It becomes an editing nightmare.

I do the dialog editing as well, which helps to insure that I’m getting the perfect take for precise placement to picture during the recording process. I don’t move on to the next cue until I know the cue I’m working on fits properly. Then I continue. With most of the actors we work with, however, it generally doesn’t require more than one or two takes. They’ve got it in the pocket.

As you’re recording, how would you describe your directorial approach?
In my directing style, I’ll set up the actors: “This is what’s going on in this scene. This is who said this. Go.” I do as much setup as possible, so when they’re doing the take they’re supported. Then right off the bat I get what I’m looking for.

When you’re working on a project in the prelay stage, there’s more room for improvisation and exploring different ideas. If you’re in Episode 20 of a series, a lot of concepts are pretty well established, but if you’re just doing Episode 1, you can get creative and try a lot of ideas. If we’re at that early stage, we might record a scene five different ways, then look at if after the fact and say to the producers, “We had some different ideas with this sequence. What do you think?”

Then, when we’re ready to compose the music, our VP of sound, Carmen Borgia, will often come to me and ask me for information about the characters, so the songs are specifically tailored to suit them.

How do you describe the result when all these aspects of the voice production go right?
It’s about the whole being more than the sum of its parts. You end up with a cohesive flow. It’s important to make sure that these actors are interacting, not just up there saying their lines. It all blends together, what I do will feed into the sound design, the mix and the music, and then its one harmonious project.

This blog was penned by David Weiss, and avid follower of all things production and music oriented. He is a founder and editor of sonicscoop.com.

Color Me Obsessed at DuArt Part 2

2011-09-12T11:51:00.000-04:00

Herein lies the next transmission from indie documentarian Gormon Bechard. The director of “Color Me Obsessed: The Potentially True Story of the Last Best Band, The Replacements” chose DuArt to sound mix this fascinating film: a documentary on a band that never shows them or plays their music.

Check out Part 1 here. In this gripping second installment of his exclusive blog to DuArt, Bechard moves forward on the mix.

Matt Gundy & Gorman Bechard

Part 23

So the film was locked on February 6th, 2011. Final running time: 123 minutes, 7 second.

I outputted the audio to OMFs, and created an uncompressed Quicktime file of the film without sound. I copied these, along with any extra sound effects or music I felt we might need, onto a portable hard drive. And the next morning, Monday, Feb. 7th, I took a train to NYC, and hand-delivered them to Matt Gundy at DuArt Film and Video. He wanted everything a day before the mix to make sure the files worked properly.

DuArt is the famous old film lab where every New York filmmaker, from Woody Allen on down, has had their films developed. I’ve gone there since my making my first 16mm short as a part time film student at the New School for Social Research in 1982.

I also mixed the sound of my old horror comedy PSYCHOS IN LOVE there in 1986. So in 2005 when looking for a studio where we could mix YOU ARE ALONE, I once again turned to DuArt. One meeting with Carmen Borgia, who runs the sound dept. and sound mixer Matt Gundy, and I knew we found a home. Carmen understood we were indie and on a budget. And Matt took the time to watch the film and actually seemed to get what we going for.

The mix took four days (four days was all we could afford), yet somehow Matt cleaned up some truly awful background noise. I loved our main location on that film, the Hotel Duncan on Chapel Street in new Haven. But I didn’t love the constant barrage of sirens and hip-hop beats that seemed to find their way onto our soundtrack every time our mics were aimed towards the front of the building. Matt made them all disappear. Magically? Perhaps. It didn’t matter, Whether he knew it or not, he had formed a partnership for life.

Part 24

In 2009, different film, FRIENDS (WITH BENEFITS), much better sound, but a new set of problems (music, music, more music, creating crowds sounds out of nothing, and leveling out the rapid fire dialog of six characters talking over each other in a bar). But still, the outcome was the same. Four days of mixing. Brilliant results.

I went home on that Monday after dropping off the drive. Took many deep breaths. Tried to relax. This was it. There were no more changes. No more interviews. No graphics, title cards. This was the final version of the film I would present to the world.

I felt sad, in a way. The people in the film become your friends, your playmates, during the editing process. And they are just like friends, they can make us laugh, cry. They can annoy the piss out of you. Or give you goosebumps when they hand you exactly what you need, oftentimes when you didn’t even know you needed it. That’s a great friend.

But that was over. On Tuesday very early morning, I’d make another trek to NYC, this time staying through to the end of the week. Four days. And now we’d get all technical. The editing was over. The mix for COLOR ME OBSESSED was about to begin.

Part 3 coming soon...

Sound for Animation, Part I: Conception

2011-08-26T11:23:00.000-04:00

No two days are alike for Tim Werenko, VP of Production at DuArt. Coordinating the schedules for non-stop shows like the popular “Pokemon” series means keeping track of scriptwriting, casting, recording voices, scoring, sound effects and more. In this first article in a series, Werenko explains the conception stage of animation, and how a production starts to come together at DuArt.

Why do you think that animation has proven to be such a powerful way to tell stories?
Animation, when it’s done really well, takes the subject matter and puts it into a more abstract form that allows the viewer to distance themselves a little, and re-imagine something they may have already known.

My favorite animated film is “The Incredibles,” for instance. I can’t imagine that being a live action film! It’s the abstraction of the characters that allows you to have the infinitely flexible mom, the super-strong Dad, the wallflower kid who literally disappears into a wall. That doesn’t feel weird in an animation – it becomes part of the story and allows you to grow a particular appreciation for what you see.

For example, if someone scratches their nose in an animation, you appreciate that gesture more because of the extra effort it took to draw that. You’d take that for granted in live action, but in an animation there’s something a little more extraordinary about it.

Tell us about the pre-production phase of an animation TV show or film – how does it get off to a good start?
The most important thing is to find a fit with a creative party, and figure out the path to making it the production that they want it to be. For example, if you’re looking to make a kid’s show that’s one thing, and if it’s a horror film, then that’s something else.

So every project is different: I used to have a colleague that said, “We don’t make shoes.” In other words, every single project is unique, and there’s no one-size-fits-all. That’s the trick: Getting into the heads of each individual client and making it all come together.

That sounds like that’s an important philosophy with any type of production – what changes about that when you’re in the realm of animation?
I don’t think it is all that different with animation. You’re trying to tell a story with pictures and words, and there are a lot of common aspects to doing that whether you’re talking about animation, live action, or a play in a theater. They’re different mediums, and you have to bring different tools to bear for the project, but the underlying principles of collaboration are the same.

For instance, we were working with a really creative and talented animation company on a pilot recently. Unfortunately the script they had really wasn't as good as the animation they are capable of. Luckily, these were a really open and creative group of people. They were open to changes and feedback. So I rewrote the script. They loved the new version and so we're now creative partners with this amazing animation house. It's been a really positive experience.

You work on several international animation projects at DuArt, like the long-running “Pokemon” series. What adjustments do you have to be able to handle to bring a Japanese series like that over to the English-speaking market?
When a show like “Pokemon” already exists in another language, that brings its own special set of challenges to translate it. The “lip flap” when they open their mouths has to match in English from the Japanese that it was originally written in and drawn for.

That’s a little tricky, because Japanese has a different structure than English – they might have a phrase that’s one or two lip flaps in Japanese, but after the literal translation into English, it would be several more. So we have a scriptwriter who translates the original Japanese show that’s delivered, and then ends up adapting a lot of the script in English, while still retaining the original meaning. Along the way, the writer watches the video and tracks every line of dialogue to make sure the dialogue will match up seamlessly.

Sometimes the workflow is reversed, however. Right now at DuArt we’re working on a show from India where they haven’t animated any of it yet. We get a script in English, and then we have actors perform and record those shows like an old-fashioned radio play. We send that recording to the client, and then they send back an animatic, which are basically storyboards strung together to make a video file.

Then we’ll add score and sound effects, so it sounds like what the final piece will be, but still visualized with black and white pencil sketches. That animatic stage is useful for the networks, so they can get a sense of what the show will be like, and they can ask for changes and revisions before the animation is done. It’s done this way because the animation is hands down the most expensive part of the project, so we want to get it all in place as much as possible.

It’s worth noting again that at DuArt we can partner creatively with our clients when it’s beneficial, beyond just providing them with our audio services, as we did with the animation company whose script needed some changes. Meeting with a show’s producers, and being able to offer them creative services beyond just executing the post, is extremely satisfying. We love it when we can help them to make the show exactly right, and get it out there into the world.

This blog was penned by David Weiss, and avid follower of all things production and music oriented. He is a founder and editor of sonicscoop.com.

The Language of Color Talking with Tim Bond, Colorist & Digital Film Supervisor

2011-07-26T09:40:00.000-04:00

Finding the perfect words to talk about color isn’t easy, but if anyone can do it, it’s DuArt’s Tim Bond. A talent for color grading was passed down in his DNA, complemented perfectly by a flair for writing and a love of language. Listen up: This is a man who can really talk visuals.

How did color correction enter the picture for you?
My father was a very successful commercial colorist. I came into the business as his assistant, and worked by his side for several years before striking out on my own. When I started working in commercials, I learned about working with creatives, of course, but I learned much more about being in a high-energy, high-stress environment. So in addition to color grading, it was also important to know how to work a room full of high-energy, creative personalities. I’d determine who the decision-makers were and focus on taking direction from them.

There are many aspects of color grading -- including color design and color continuity –that have application in commercials or long-form work. At DuArt I was introduced to the indie market and the craft of storytelling in long form moviemaking.

How do you compare what you do in short form vs. long-form format?
Even though you kind of tell a story in a commercial, long form work is different: You’re much closer to the writer and director, and I found that color grading offered an additional tool that a director could use to express the motivations in a story. A director is faced with questions like, “How do I use lighting? How do I use blocking? How do I direct the actor?” Color is just one more of these tools. And sometimes color is transparent -- it shouldn’t be used just because it's available.

A simple example of using color as a storytelling tool in a commercial is an ad for a heating company: You might be inclined to change a basic balance in a room by warming it up while retaining the cool character of the stark grey light entering from the windows – creating depth with contrasting color. In another example, envision a scene that was shot in an old building for an edgy tale set in a prison: the fundamental shot may not serve the purpose, but with color grading you can create a dank environment using a look such as skip bleach – with its' inky shadows, bloomy highlights and strong yet desaturated color.

One essential guideline to effecting color design is to employ it to the point where it doesn't distract. Walt Disney once pointed out that in practicing the craft that it is done well enough that it is not observed: If the craft is revealed, then you lose the effect.

What tips do you have for indie film makers on maximizing their color correct results?
I recommend a pre-production meeting with your colorist. Find a colorist who is proactive, one who wants to get involved with your project; that’s a great asset. Discuss what is possible in the suite.

The other piece of advice is in regard to filtering, and the importance of first exposing a known quantity such as the black & white of a slate or a chip chart at the head of each new setup without the filter in place. First expose the image without the filter, and then put the filter in place – otherwise, without clear communication later on with the colorist, the desired look may be lost.

When you’re not coloring away, what’s your favorite place to get a break?
Well, I live in the distant land of Point Pleasant, NJ (a Jersey shore slice of paradise.) It's a lengthy trip, but well worth it – the boardwalk is a great place for families and the beaches are clean. A favorite local haunt is Frankie's Bar & Grill and for a lovely dining experience on the water try Jack Bakers.

The easiest way to get there is the train. Just jump on a Jersey Coast Line train at Penn Station, and two hours later you’re in Point Pleasant. From there it's a short walk to the beach.

Sold! We’ll see you there!

This blog was penned by David Weiss, and avid follower of all things production and music oriented. He is a founder and editor of sonicscoop.com.

Color Me Obsessed at DuArt Part 1

2011-07-07T09:47:00.001-04:00

This transmission from indie documentarian Gormon Bechard is going public. The director of “Color Me Obsessed: The Potentially True Story of the Last Best Band, The Replacements” chose DuArt to sound mix this fascinating film.

Read further for a look inside the mind of Bechard, a man who chose to do a documentary on a band without ever showing them or playing their music. Part 1 of 3.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Color Me Obsessed, a film about The Replacements
Date: Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 1:56 PM
Subject: finally...the blog
To: DuArt

Hey guys,

Sorry this took so long...seems the only place I can blog is on planes...

Thanks again!,

Gorman

PART 22

I’m on a plane to Chicago, for the third festival screening of CMO, but I want to take everyone back a few months.

We had been holding bi-weekly screening of the film at my house. Usually just me, my wife Kristine, Sarah Hajtol (who has more credits on this film than I do, but in this case was certainly acting as my assistant editor), and production manager/researcher Katie Dickey in attendance. And of course my dogs, Phoebe and Springsteen. (Springsteen finally stopped asking why there was no music in the film, which I thought was a good sign.)

Jan Radder, my supervising producer would also watch, but from a DVD at his home in Minneapolis. The last of these was on Monday, January 31, 2010. It would be the last chance to have a number of eyes on the film before locking it down, and doing the sound mix.

Notes were blessedly few and far between. A missing period at the end of one title, a B-camera close-up a little out of focus, a missing name in the end titles, a photo that needed to move from right to left, instead of visa-versa, things like that. I would then spend the next week tweaking. We received a handful of last minute graphics/images, which Sarah would insert into the film, while I double checked everything, and added only two things.

Two things no one knew about.

The first: the pause. (Infamous in my small circle of participants on this film.) Bil MacLeslie was the band’s soundman for a few tours. He was the person who confiscated the tape which would go on to become When The Shit Hits The Fans. His stories are eloquent and plentiful in the film. But one of my favorite things he says is nothing at all.

I asked everyone we interviewed what their favorite Mats song was. Most people listed off many, or gave an answer, then quickly changed their mind. Bill was different. He gave his one word answer, then paused. It was as if it were the thing in his life of which he was most sure.

When doing the first cut of the film, I left that pause in, in all its six second glory. I loved it. It was a breath, a break, it was certainty and passion, it was exactly what the film needed at that point. But everyone on my crew hated it. That it stopped the flow. That it was almost uncomfortable. So I chopped away at it, until it barely existed, mainly because I was tired of hearing about it after screening every cut.

Well, when Sarah was through with the graphics, and when I knew the next person who’d me seeing the film was my mixer, Matt Gundy, at DuArt, I popped that pause back in, as I knew I would, as I had planned to, all along. And watching it with festival audiences, counting off the second in my head, I know it belongs in the film. I love that damn pause.

The second: a dedication. It comes right at the end of the end credits, as Matthew Ryan speaks. It’s heartfelt, and deserved, as I would have never made this film without her. You can read it when you see the film. I mean every word.

P.S. These past few posts, and the next few that follow were all written on that plane ride. Needed a break from new script.

Part 2 coming soon...

NEWS: DuArt Expands Video Editing and Production Support Space Offerings

2011-06-30T10:31:00.000-04:00

Full-Service NYC TV and Film Post Facility Hosts Park Slope Productions in Fully Networked Loft-Style Spaces

Five new edit rooms are now running at DuArt.

DuArt, New York City’s comprehensive video and film post facility, has significantly expanded its editorial and production support capabilities. The new offerings are the result of a complete renovation of 1,000 sq. ft. on the company’s 8th floor, creating multiple loft-style suites ideal for Avid/Final Cut video editing, production offices, and other functions.

The flexible, fully-networked suites can be reconfigured from project to project, and are designed to accommodate the needs of reality show TV, long-form TV, indie film and feature film producers. Each room features exposed brick, 13’ ceilings, and large 7’ windows with downtown views. For productions needing additional space, a large glass-enclosed bullpen office is also available on DuArt’s 8th floor.

DuArt’s comprehensive range of TV and film post services in their 12-story, midtown building on 55th Street and Broadway provide four-wall clients with any additional resources they may need to finish their production, all under one roof. DuArt’s experienced staff and complete facilities are available for HD video and digital editing, color correction, 3D post, audio editing and mixing, original music composition, high-end QC, and DVD/Blu-ray/3D authoring.

The company’s new four-wall suites have already hosted Park Slope Productions for their work on the recent Discovery Fit & Health series “Facing Trauma”.

“Our latest expansion builds on DuArt’s evolution into a TV and film production hub, for projects of all sizes and durations,” says Ron Harris, Vice President of Production and Sales for DuArt. “Since we own the entire building, we can make this new space available at extremely cost-effective rates, and also develop custom solutions for our clients as their needs evolve. For media producers already in the city, or who are out of town and need to establish an NYC home base, this opens up flexible new options.”

A Colorful Conversation with Jane Tolmachyov, Senior Colorist

2011-06-08T17:30:00.001-04:00

This movie buff has color corrected scores of projects – from feature films to reality TV – in her 25 years at DuArt. We cover everything from the magic of motion to the power of being prepared in this most enlightening convo.

You’ve had a few roles at DuArt when it comes to video imaging, right? What led you to being a colorist?
When I first came to DuArt and began working in the telecine department, there was a wonderful person there named Larry McGowan. He really showed me the ropes, not even really from a technical perspective as much as from the DP’s point of view. Larry made me realize what to look for in a picture of moving images – I began to appreciate what light does.

Eventually Larry left the company and I was in charge of the telecine for some time. Today, as a colorist, I feel like I’m still learning certain things, because images are beautiful and every new image pushes you to look for something else. Every new project is a challenge for me, because I’m forced to think about what I see, what light I’m looking at, and what mood I want to translate. And with all the new tools available for color correction today, being a colorist is even more wonderful. I have no limits now.

When you’re color correcting a show or a film, what’s your role? What do you feel you are there to do?
First and foremost, I listen to the DPs, and I listen to the directors, because I need to understand what it is they’re looking for. I listen, and I try to see in my mind’s eye the same picture they see. Sometimes it’s a matter of different interpretations, but you have to listen and listen carefully, because some people can describe images in very specific terms -- they can say how saturated or contrasted the picture should be. Other people can’t do that, and instead they speak in terms of the mood, or color temperature, or the time period.

And, of course some people don’t know what they’re looking for. They’ll come to the color timing sessions to find out what’s there. Ultimately, all clients come to DuArt to put their vision on the screen. My job is to understand it, see it, and deliver it.

What are the tools of your trade at DuArt that you really enjoy using?
For non-linear color correction, our most recent major acquisition was a Nucoda, or Film Master as it’s also known. Because it’s software based, as opposed to the older linear hardware systems, it gives you pretty much unlimited capabilities on what it can do – how you can manipulate images, how many changes you can make on one frame. It’s a wonderful tool. It gives me all these chances to do more and do it better.

What do you think are the unique aspects that you bring to the color correct phase of a project?
When I look at an image, my first instinct is to find the captured light in that image. To me, light is what picture is about: I still like images that capture the light.

It’s harder to do it now because we’ve moved to digital capture on film. We capture something organic like light, with a completely non-organic tool like 0’s and 1’s. I miss the feel we get from film, and my instinct is to find something like that in these images.

Do you have advice for indie film makers or video producers on a budget who want to make sure their film looks the best it can? What do you want them to know about how they can make the most out of color correct, from a time and budget standpoint?
Well, it’s actually really rare nowadays to find somebody who doesn’t know a great deal about the medium that they’re working in – people are very well versed in the cameras and other tools that they use.

Whether they’re shooting in HD video or on film, what makes their life easier in the post work depends on how much they stick to their plan. If you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve in the end, and you have a roadmap, then you’re fine. If you’re shooting from the hip, then things can get a little trickier, because of the amount of FX work that is part of any project today. Compositing and other processes can cause trouble in the end if you don’t think about them ahead of time.

If you could have worked on any three films or shows in history, what would they be?
One would be a film that I did work on, Nadie Eschuchaba (Nobody Listens) directed by Nestor Almendros. I would love to work on some black and white, and that would be probably Greg Tolland, or another of my favorite black and white cinematographers, Gianni Di Venanzo, he did 8 ½ for Federico Fellini.

For color, some of my favorite images are from The Sacrifice by Andrei Tarkovsky (Sven Nykvist DP). Those are some of the most breathtaking images, as far as I’m concerned. It’s pretty much all about the light, and the mood.

Shifting gears for our last question…What’s your favorite NYC hangout?
(Laughs) I don’t hang in NYC, I hang on Cape Cod! In Truro , between P-Town and Wellfleet. The best beaches on the Eastern Seaboard are in Massachusetts. If you want to bypass the traffic on I-95, take Rt.15 as far as New Haven to I-95 or you can take the long way: Rt.15 to Rt.84 to Rt.90 to 495.

Wow, thanks for the travel tip! I was afraid to drive up to Cape Cod ever again.
(Laughs) You’re welcome -- I’ll bet you weren’t expecting to learn that!

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This blog was penned by David Weiss, and avid follower of all things production and music oriented. He is a founder and editor of sonicscoop.com.