WWD script submission and the studio upheaval

I have finally finished my secondary pass through the screenplay and have sent it off to the rest of the members of the production team.  Given some of the limitations on what we could do, I am actually very happy with how the story turned out.  A few times I had to set the script down because I was absolutely stuck with a story point only to come scrambling for the text a day later because my mind had worked it all out.  While the story will change as the director and producer go through it and decide what they want to elaborate on, what they want to change, and what they want to cut, I am actually excited as well if we get to do a followup story to this.  I’ve got some great ideas and like the chance of evolution that is possible in the story.  Looks like there are even more investors interested in the story so hopefully by December, we’ll have all the budget and technical aspects worked out as well.

With this moving outside my hands now for awhile, I am back into the studio rework phase.  I have done more reading and research lately than I have done in a long time.  The one interesting issue I am seeing is that the film industry with regards to audio has not moved as fast as music industry.  Don’t get me wrong, it is moving, but I am finding out a lot of terms that make no sense to me are because they are from very old methods of audio production.  I am a digital post production house.  Films were being made long before digital was even a concept anyone really knew about.  A lot of places are stuck in the past with the way they produce materials.  Now, I don’t think this makes their work inferior.  In all honesty, these people have been doing it so long, they are masters and probably way more efficient than I will ever be.  That said, I am from new stock.  I am a part of the new face of post production work and with the people I work with; Micah, Blake and Andy from All Aces Media for starters. I see us as part of a revolution in challenging the status quo.  Mind you, there are others who are traversing this path as well.  There’s a lot of pain being on the bleeding edge of technology, but at the same time, it is absolutely fascinating.

My experience doing audio for the WWD movie will determine if I decide PT|HD is in the future.  From this point on, I don’t think it is absolutely necessary.  Given the major changes in PT8 and what I believe will be in PTs interest moving forward, that for a lot of work, PT|HD just doesn’t make sense.  We’ll see.  I’d like to see some better PTLE hardware options as well.  I know what I can do in Logic and DP and I’d like to see those capabilities in PTLE too!

In preparing my budget for the directory I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to companies that make the products I am considering and to people doing actual post right now for real productions, like stuff you are seeing now on film and television.  It’s an interesting world to say the least.

Right now I am evaluating through documentation and discussion the Dangerous Music ST/SR surround system and the Martinsound MultiMax surround system.  Both have their pluses and minuses, but I can certainly say that the MultiMax has some amazing calibration utilities built in.  There are some other issues with it I am getting answers for that are related to doing other mixing, so I hope to get the answers back I want.

I will be hobbling together part of the studio this weekend to finish a project that needs to be done first pass by December 20th.