American Dreams

By Randy Alberts

	Danny's first preference: his personal engineer Greg Townley (left), Danny Pelfrey (right), and a 610 mixing console from the 60's

"The powerful editing capabilities of Pro Tools, plus its universal acceptance in the industry, is invaluable for us in delivering final mixes for the underscore," says Pelfrey, whose other credits include projects with Alicia Keys, Kelly Rowland, and Jason Mraz, and has also composed the Emmy-nominated scores and themes for Felicity, Spin City, The Guiding Light, and the film Joseph: King of Dreams. "Pro Tools and DV Toolkit make it possible for us to record and produce songs quickly each week with in-demand artists — like Wyclef Jean — who don't have much time to spare. Speed and efficiency, the hallmarks of Pro Tools: that's what makes this possible."

A Revolutionary New Way of Editing Music for Television: MICDI and Mbox
To say American Dreams is a music-centric show would be an understatement of the show's mission. Each one-hour episode is a mini-feature within itself, featuring an average of 25 songs, two on-screen guest artist performances, and five score cues per episode — and it's all handled with just one G4 Powerbook, Mbox, and DV Toolkit at the live dub stage. Used in tandem with five Mac OS X Pro Tools TDM systems at MICDI's studios, Pelfrey and Balvanera agree that these mobile dub stage units are what allow them to deliver their time-sensitive, award-winning TV sound work to the dub stage ahead of schedule every week.

	Danny (left), Wyclef Jean, and Greg Townley

Pelfrey and his engineer, Greg Townley, usually mix the American Dreams score in Pro Tools right on the sound stage during recording before sending it to MICDI for post production and mastering. Besides being the platform for recording and editing every song on the show, Pro Tools is also used to assemble the final American Dreams master sessions, along with an extensive collection of plug-ins, including McDSP's Analog Channel, Digidesign's Reverb One, and many other vintage-centric Pro Tools plug-ins.

"MICDI Productions is practically the poster-child company for using Pro Tools LE systems with DV Toolkit on the live dub stage," says American Dreams music editor Balvanera. "This is one of the most music-intensive shows on television today. Getting into the rhythm of each episode really allows us to hone in on the creative aspects of the craft of music editing. The Mbox and DV Toolkit combination has helped us here at MICDI to develop this creative rhythm, right up to the live dub stage. This approach with Pro Tools and DV Toolkit has bridged a communication gap between the picture and music department, on a show where time is of the utmost importance."

Balvanera further explains the MICDI workflow for American Dreams. The show's creator, producer, associate producer, and music supervisor all receive a preview DVD of show reels that include rough mp3 mixes of Pelfrey's score, ready to be folded back into the episode. Balvanera does a mini-mix of the show in Pro Tools, and then bounces a Quicktime movie of the scored sections of the show to provide the team sufficient pre- and post-lap to work with.

"The Quicktime movie is placed into iDVD using a custom-made template, and then the edit notes are emailed to Danny, as well as to all the producers and myself," says Balvanera. MICDI Productions has used this same DV Toolkit/Quicktime/Mbox solution for shows like CSI: Miami, Scrubs, Boston Public, Crossing Jordan, and ER. "Working in this way with Pro Tools allows everyone to chime in on what may or may not need to be changed in the score before it goes back to Danny. We're all kept in the loop this way."

Pro Technique 1 —
Avoiding drift when synching lip-sync music to playback
Once dubbing begins on an episode of American Dreams, Mauricio Balvanera goes portable with his Mbox on the dub stage to do any last-minute changes. This includes synching Pelfrey's re-records to the on-set playback, doing replacement needle-drops when songs are changed at the last minute, and loading Danny's score. Since Pelfrey scores to locked picture, he can simply hand Balvanera a Pro Tools session on CD in order to import the current score on the day of the dub, using the Import Session Data option in Pro Tools to give himself more creative time to work with each scene.

"Using Pro Tools LE and the DV Toolkit option has enabled me to work in the same room as the picture editors and video archivers to solve any issues that may arise, way before they lock picture," says Balvanera. "For example, the first cue in the episode entitled 'Change A Coming' is of Dick Clark introducing The Supremes on the show. I received the original American Bandstand show footage of that event before playback was done on the set. Then Greg Sill, the show's music supervisor, supplied me with the master recording of The Supremes singing 'Back in My Arms Again' to sync to the footage. This task sometimes consists of simply doing a sample rate pull-down due to video's 29.97 rate, using the new Export File options in Mac OS X. But more often than not, I have to varispeed portions of a song using Serato's Pitch 'n Time plug-in to 'stretch' and manipulate a song into sync with the lip-sync video, without affecting quality or pitch. I'll then hand a session directly to a post production coordinator, so that they can layback to picture for use on the set. All of this happens without ever having to leave the picture editing room."

American Dreams is shot on 24mm film at 24 frames-per-second, and converted to 30 fps via telecine transfer. Balvanera says that when attempting to sync pre-recorded lip-sync material like this to playback, one can easily encounter frame drift in this transfer, due to what is called "3-2 pulldown." Since two video fields equals one video frame, each film frame is transferred in the telecine to alternate from covering two video fields to three. After four film frames of this pulldown process, editors thus end up with five video frames, or 24 frames converted into 30 frames.

"If you cannot set your entire Pro Tools session to Pull Down," explains Balvanera, "simply do a sample-rate pulldown of the specific song you're bringing in, using Export Selected As Files in the Audio Region list. Then, under Sample Rate, you'll want to go 1/10th of 1% higher than your session's sample rate. If your session is 44.1 kHz, then set it to 44.114; if it's 48 kHz, go to 48.048, and so on. Add this back to your session without reconverting sample rate — and be sure to use Add and not Convert in the import audio window — and you'll be right back in sync with your guide track."

Pro Technique 2 —
Instant sync and zoom shortcuts
Mauricio, like many other music composition and post production pros, strongly urges users to hone up on their keyboard shortcuts. Time is precious on a show's live dub stage, especially when the network client or the series producers are around. If one minute of time is lost while a music editor fumbles around within Pro Tools, that is one very, very inexcusable minute. Slick shortcut moves save time and make any Pro Tools user look just that much more professional, organized, and together when the network folks stop by to watch during a session.

"These shortcuts may be real basic to some users but, in a crunch on expensive stage time, shortcuts will keep you from freezing up at the wrong time," Balvanera continues. "One of my favorite keyboard shortcuts is to zoom in/out using the Command/Ctrl key and the left and right bracket keys. You can also preset zoom levels, but I like using the brackets because it literally zooms in each time you hit them, instead of jumping to a completely new perspective. Everyone should use one or the other, though, instead of using the physical magnifying tool with the mouse, a leading cause of carpal tunnel syndrome in our industry."

Balvanera also explains his "instant sync" shortcut, a regular move he uses each week while working on American Dreams. Music is integral to this show, and he says that often editors strive to make a specific moment in a song hit a specific picture cut, actor movement, or facial expression. He urges others to not "wing it" when it comes to nudging those precious cues around.

"There should be no guesswork when syncing a cue," he says. "If you want a specific bar to hit a picture point, mark your sync point in the song by placing your select tool over the waveform and hitting Command/Ctrl + comma. You'll see a marker appear on the region. Use the Selection tool to mark the picture point you want to sync to, and copy the timecode. Switch Pro Tools to Spot mode and click on the cue. The Spot Dialog window will appear with the cursor already conveniently placed in the sync point field. Simple. Just paste the timecode from the clipboard to the spotting field, click OK, and you've got instant sync without the guesswork."

www.nbc.com/American_Dreams
www.MICDI.com
www.dannypelfrey.com

Click here to read previous columns.