Pro Techniques from Juniper Post
By Randy Alberts
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James Cameron |
James Cameron (Titanic, Terminator/Terminator 2, Aliens, The Abyss) relied on Juniper Post in Burbank, California, for everything audio in this emotional treatment on the legendary Bismarck, filmed last May on an expedition funded by Discovery Channel (the episode aired last December.) Having done audio post-production for Signs, The Count of Monte Cristo, Fargo, Boogie Nights, The Rookie, Dead Man Walking, Pleasantville, and other major releases, Juniper Post was comfortable in its role as a Pro Tools-only facility for the gifted storyteller/producer.
"James Cameron was cutting Bismarck on two Avids at his office and sending us rough location dialogue recordings via OMF so we could do all the Foley, sound effects, ambiences, and dialog editing," says David Kitchens, Juniper Post's president and co-owner. "When you hear a submarine plop down into the ocean, that's us."
"And when you hear the submersible's propeller noises and the waves hitting the sides of the ship and any sounds during the historical footage and computer graphics segments, that's us, too," chimes in Ben Zarai, Juniper's supervising sound editor, re-recording mixer, and co-owner. Except for on-camera dialogue, Bismarck was delivered to Juniper entirely sans audio. In fact, Cameron thought enough of the sound work done by the Juniper team that he plans to devote an entire track on the April release of James Cameron's Expedition: Bismarck DVD to their work, as well as feature their audio work in a new 15-minute documentary on the new DVD about the making of Bismarck.
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Recording underwater |
20,000 Feet under the Sea
That would be
the Mir submersibles, one of only four types of submarines in the world
able to dive as deep as the Bismarck sank 62 years ago.
Operated by the Russian Academy of Sciences from the bridge of the
Akademic Mistislav Keldysh, the largest oceanographic research vessel
in the world, the Mir subs plopped James Cameron and crew almost three
miles down in a front-and-center seat as he helped unfold naval and
human history. From there, James and his brother, Mike Cameron, who
built the ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles mounted with video cameras),
remote-piloted the bots for a one-of-a-kind underwater view. "Flying" through dozens of imploded and exploded shells, and round and torpedo
holes into the very heart of the Bismarck, the two brothers illuminated
questions of history long unanswered.
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The MIR submarine used to capture footage for James Cameron's Expedition: Bismarck |
One question was definitively answered for James Cameron during the making of Bismarck: Two Pro Tools workstations are better than one.
"One of the things he really liked about Pro Tools was having myself and another mixer working independently on the same mix stage," Zarai continues. "We would watch and listen to a segment of the program and then he'd give us a list of changes to make. I'd be working on Jim's dialog, music, and voiceover changes while the other mixer was working on his sound effects, sound design, and background ambience requests at the same time but for different points in the show. There was a cacophony in the room but somehow it worked out. We were able to get more than twice as much done in the same amount of time, so Jim wasn't just sitting there bored while we made fixes to one piece of sound at a time."
The 15-minute Bismarck: Behind the Sounds documentary, planned for inclusion on the new James Cameron's Expedition: Bismarck DVD, could well be a Digidesign how-to training video on sound design. Cut after cut shows Kitchens, Zarai, and crew practicing the art amid various shots of Apple Titanium laptops, Mbox interfaces, and multiple MIXplus systems being put to good work. Providing stellar V/O, ADR, sound effects, Foley, music, mixing, and audio post for film and television for 25 years can make some engineers jaded, but not those at Juniper.
"For every major James Cameron motion picture there are over 1,000 independent films," reminds David Kitchens. "There were 5,000 entries at Sundance this year! Juniper Post needs to help everyone — from film students to the Camerons and Paramounts of the world — achieve their goals, and Pro Tools is the reason we can do that. We can satisfy the big-budget producers and also give a low-budget film the best sound possible in a time frame and in a way we could have never accomplished before. There isn't a thing we do without Pro Tools."
Pro Techniques 1 —
Easier real-time surround panning
This technique
for HTDM and TDM users can apply to any kind of surround mixing project.
Ben Zarai came up with it while mixing an
action/adventure film with lots and lots of CG (computer-generated) giant
killer bees buzzing about the camera. He needed to "fly" each
effects track to follow the flight path of each speeding bee on and off
the screen
without having to take Dramamine in order to do so.
"I came up with the idea of simply playing Pro Tools at half speed while recording the panning automation moves," says Zarai. "This made it much easier to precisely match the movements of the bees, which were moving very fast. I've used this technique many times, and it can be used for real-time automation on volume, plug-in parameters, and sends and such for other projects."
Not unlike a guitarist down-transposing a song on a special player to more easily learn a great riff, Zarai's brilliantly simple idea applies to more than just surround panning. For killer precision flying melody lines around a stereo music mix, for instance, just cut at half-speed.
"Make sure panning automation is enabled using the Automation Enable window or Command/Ctrl + 4," he explains, "and that your track's output is set to a multi-channel output (5.1, 4.0, etc.). Now set your track's automation mode to Auto Touch, switch to the Mix window and click on the asterisk button just above the fader on your track to open the surround panning window. Now switch back to the Edit window and place your cursor a bit before the point where you want the panning to begin; your panning window should still be visible above the Edit window. Press Shift + Spacebar to start Pro Tools playing at half speed, grab the dot in the surround window, and pan away to your heart's content."
Pro Techniques 2 —
Creating "program changes" with plug-ins
Plug-in parameters
can be individually automated in Pro Tools, but the Juniper Post team
really enjoys applying a large number of parameter
changes all at once using the following plug-in automation Pro Technique.
Once you have a track's overall plug-in settings feeling good, click
the "Auto" button on the plug-in's interface to bring up the Plug-in
Automation window in Pro Tools. Select all parameters required, then
click the "Add" button and "OK" before moving on.
"Now press Command/Ctrl + 4 to bring up the Automation Enable window and deactivate all the automation types except 'Plug-in'," says Zarai. "Place your cursor on your plug-in's track before the beginning of all the audio in your Pro Tools session. Now, here's the magic keystroke: Press Command/Ctrl + Option/Alt + / (forward slash) to write automation to all the plug-in parameters you just selected. This locks the parameters to the settings you made in the previous step; skipping this step causes the next program change to write its new automation to the entire track, which could mess up your mix. You're now set up to quickly automate program changes throughout your track."
Zarai suggests creating these mass-parameter program changes by first going to where, on a given track, the plug-in changes are desired, then turning off track automation by changing "Auto Read" to "Auto Off" on the left-hand side of the edit window.
"Adjust your plug-in settings the way you want them," concludes the helpful Zarai. "Now highlight the track from where you want the new settings to start until the point at which you want them to revert to their previous settings, and then do the magic keystroke (Command/Ctrl + Option/Alt + /) and turn automation back on for the track. If you click before, during, and after the area you highlighted, you will see all the parameters jump to their different settings just like they would in a program change on an outboard effects unit. You can also morph between these parameter changes by editing the automation points to ramp from one program change into another."
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/bismarck/bismarck.html