Pro Techniques from Frida

Pro Techniques 05.01.2003

Pro Techniques from Lawrence Manchester and Frida

By Randy Alberts

"Elliot is very into letting musicians do what they do best. His approach for this movie makes use of guided experimentation while still capturing the style of traditional Mexican music," says recordist/mixer Lawrence Manchester. Having worked since 1996 with film score composer, producer, and musician Elliot Goldenthal on Titus, Final Fantasy, In Dreams, Sphere, A Time To Kill and Frida, Manchester considers himself lucky to be part of a movie/soundtrack team that includes the composer's wife and collaborative film partner, director Julie Taymor. "Their work ethic and commitment to artistry keeps all of us at the top of our game."

Frida is a biopic of influential Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) for which Goldenthal won this year's Golden Globe and Academy Award for best original soundtrack. It's unlikely that any previous Oscar-winning score was composed and largely recorded in an apartment studio.

Pro Tools in the Living Room

"Working on Frida at Elliot's NYC home studio gave us the luxury of time, the ability to work at our own pace, and the option of revisiting cues," says Manchester. "After the small ensemble elements were recorded at his place, we moved into the Manhattan Center to record the orchestra and big band. We were in their grand ballroom, where many of Elliot's orchestral scores have been recorded. With the exception of some time spent recording songs in Mexico, those were our only two days in an actual studio for this score."

Manchester is quick to point out that he's a relative newbie to the Goldenthal/Taymor team, having only been aboard for seven years. Engineer/mixer Joel Iwataki, a long-time part of the team, "tag teamed" on the Frida music tracks with Manchester and collaborated with music producer Teese Gohl, electronic music producer Richard Martinez, music editor Curtis Roush, and orchestrator Robert Elhai using Pro Tools and Digital Performer.

"Joel lives in Los Angeles and I live in New York, but for scoring and mixing we are often working side by side. I'll build Pro Tools sessions while he's mixing music stems for me. I'll edit the various takes together and compile the final versions of cues to hand off to the film's music editor, Curtis Roush — although for Frida, we recorded directly to disk, enabling me to edit the multitrack first, then mix."

Using a gearless, decommissioned studio at the Manhattan Center site as their shell, they brought in their Pro Tools workstation, set up a surround monitor system, and mixed the soundtrack on location. Manchester, a Peabody Recording Arts and Sciences grad with a masters degree who has recorded with Aerosmith, Diana Krall, Timbaland, and Bill Evans, and fills in occasionally as the music-and-voice-on-the-fly engineer for Saturday Night Live, is used to mixing on the go. He stresses the importance of advance preparation in a fast-paced, multi-collaborator project like Frida.

"I have an ongoing quest to integrate Pro Tools more and more into the film music recording process, and in doing so I try to stay organized. I always label my tracks before hitting record, and I try to make my composites as we go. Frida is a good example of how I like to stay organized with playlists. For me it's essential to maintain clarity and consistency within the sessions, especially when sharing projects with other people on the team as much as we do."

Pro Techniques 1 —
Using playlists to keep cue takes organized
Since time was big money and this was the team's first project recording direct to Pro Tools, Manchester had to work fast to avoid interrupting the session's flow.

"I never want to hold up a session like this one," says Manchester, who also worked on Taymor's Titus with Goldenthal. "Especially when there's a crowded control room and many people talking about which portions of takes to use for the composite. I try to be very respectful of the artists' and performers' time, and of all the preparation that goes into them delivering their best performance. In this setting, even taking two minutes for a test edit while an orchestra waits would be enough time to get another piece of music recorded, and on Frida our time with the orchestra was very limited."

Manchester explains that he likes to set up his Pro Tools template for orchestral recording much like an analog multitrack session, numbering and labeling individual tracks for room mics, violins, celli, oboes, and other instrument sections. Before recording a pass, he groups all the tracks and selects "New Playlist" in one of the track name pulldown menus in the edit window. This automatically attaches a ".01" suffix to the end of each individual track name, clearly indicating Take 1 of the recording process.

"When we record subsequent takes I just reach for one of the playlists in the group of tracks and choose "New Playlist." Pro Tools now advances all of the playlists in that group to .02, which now becomes Take 2, and so on. This way I always have a numerical stamp associated with the playlist and the sound files for each take, because the track names are transferred automatically to the sound files as we record. As six or seven people in the control room are all referring to performances by take numbers, I can very quickly tab through to the desired takes and assemble a composite in my original, and thus far blank, playlist group."

Create, label and group all tracks.
Immediately select "New Playlist" for grouped tracks to append a ".01" suffix to each of the tracks. When recording takes, all sequential take numbers will match the number of the playlist for each group.
For each additional take, select "New Playlist" to create incremental suffix numbers on the subsequent playlist/take audio files. With all takes complete, scroll through the playlists and select the best regions chosen by the production team.
Copy the desired regions from the various takes, return to the original blank playlist group, and paste them in. Keep building in this manner until a composite is created, then label that playlist group "Comp."

Pro Technique 2 —
Creating large orchestral overdub sessions on the fly
"Elliot is very inspired by the musicians with whom he works, so one has to be prepared to work quickly," continues Manchester. "He'll often ask for multiple layered tracks of a single instrument, which is not so unusual, but he might also ask for an entire orchestral or big band overdub, or perhaps several layers of multitracked drums. If you're recording 20 or more tracks to begin with, creating the new tracks for a quick overdub on the spot can be a challenge. He may be thinking ahead in terms of multiple layers of orchestra and big band overdubs, too, so then I'm quickly looking at 40 or 60 tracks."

Select all session tracks to be overdubbed. Go to the "File" menu and choose "Duplicate Selected Tracks" to immediately make an exact copy of each track. These duplicates will now be highlighted and interleaved with the original files.

Create a new group of the just-duplicated tracks while they're highlighted.
While still highlighted, drag any one track in the new group to the bottom of the "Edit" window; though interleaved, dragging one track down places all the highlighted tracks side-by-side below the previously recorded tracks.
Select all regions of audio in the new group of duplicated tracks and hit "Delete."

"Your new tracks now have the exact same input assigns and output assigns as the original orchestral pass," the helpful Lawrence concludes. "All fader levels are replicated as well, so if you're coming back to a large-format console you're not eating up another 20 channels on the board to monitor. Time permitting, the only other thing I do before hitting record is to remove the ".dupl" suffix that Pro Tools attaches to the end of each track name by replacing it with a continuation of my take numbers."