Author

Michael Kunkes

A longtime contributor to Editors Guild Magazine (the predecessor to CineMontage) and the Guild's website, Michael Kunkes was a freelance writer and editor specializing in post-production, production and and animation. He passed away in March 2010.

Features

Advice When Cutting Overseas

by Michael Kunkes September 1, 2004

written by Michael Kunkes 8 minutes read

By Michael Kunkes

Shooting overseas is one of the most exciting experiences an American filmmaker can have. Often the needs of a particular show will, for whatever reasons, require that editorial be close to the production. We spoke to several world-class cutters who provide some specific tips on how to make the experience of editing abroad as headache-free as possible.

Bob Ducsay. Photo by Frank Masi/Universal Studios

Bob Ducsay, who has cut American films in the UK, Czech Republic and Vancouver, advocates  extensive research. “Many times, the  way that things are  presented to you is  not really the way  things are. When we  were cutting Van  Helsing in Prague,  I was extremely  concerned about choosing the lab at Barrandov Studios. I discovered that while the lab and telecine operations were archaic beyond our wildest dreams, the actual work and the customer service were first-rate. I don’t think I’ve ever used a better lab, anywhere. But that’s ’czechnology’ for you, as my local Czech assistants call it.”

Preparation is everything, Ducsay adds. “Don’t start trying to solve problems a week before you leave. Do advance work with the production office in the host country. If you can, do a previsit and get to know the infrastructure of the city and the exotic nature of the location.”

Paris-based editor Sylvie Landra, who cut her first big studio American feature Catwoman, in the U.S. and Canada, has this simple tip for American cutters. “Bring an NTSC Blackburst to provide the proper video reference for your Avid. As far as monitors go, it’s much easier to find an NTSC monitor in Europe than it is to find a PAL monitor in the U.S.”

Sylvie Landra. Photo by Jean-Phillipe Defaut

Ivan Ladizinsky, a feature veteran who has cut shows in Ireland and Canada, worked on the first two Survivors in Africa and the Australian outback. The production sent a crew of 30 editors and assistants, including TV and feature editors Jerry Frizell, Jonathan Braun and Mitch Danton among the over 300 production personnel. “Beyond the basics that post provided, everyone on the editorial crew was still responsible for doing their homework,” Ladizinsky says. “So, if you’re going to be in the middle of nowhere, bring all of your temp music and effects, so you can give the producers a sense of the show as it would air. Also, you have to be ready for any kind of weather. Wear the right clothes, figure out sleeping conditions, get your shots for everything and don’t forget the expresso machine.”

“Survivor” co-producer Chris Campbell adds, “The most critical  position for us on  location is our tech.  In addition to  trouble shooting  drive errors and Avid  problems, a great tech has to be able to fix anything. We don’t go over there expecting to find or utilize other departments’ equipment, so I go through a laundry list of everything I could possibly imagine needing. And if there’s a piece of equipment that could go out on you, bring a backup.”

“You don’t want to be shipping boatloads of stuff you don’t need, but you do need to shop,” Ducsay adds. “If you go to the UK, bring trim boxes; they are in every cutting room in the U.S. but don’t exist in the UK. That’s just one tiny example of the sort of problems you could run into without research. You need to know that you can send stuff over, get it somewhere else, or get someone to manufacture it.”

Ivan Ladizinsky.

Power concerns are always an issue. “When it comes to power, bring everything you need,” says Brian Berdan, who just cut the upcoming Cave in Bucharest for Lakeshore Entertainment and Screen Gems. “Lots of electronics will automatically switch between 220 and 110, but you have to make sure everything you have will do that, otherwise you will need more transformers. Avoid having some things running on 220 and others on 110. Bring plenty of plug adapters. No matter how many I bring, I always feel like I need one more.”

Duncan Napier-Bell is CEO of Trans Atlantic Post, a London and L.A.-based company that provides complete supply and support for editors in Europe and elsewhere. “The only thing U.S. producers want to make sure they bring enough of is step-down transformers.

My feeling is that you can find anything else you need in Europe. Smaller coun- tries may need to use the UK as a hub for more specific services.”

“The most significant thing to plan on bringing is your Avid,” says Ducsay. “The shipping is expensive, but there is no good way around it. I want to know that I am using the same equipment all the way thorough a show. I have always found someone who can deal with hardware problems, but I always bring my own Avid, no matter what.”

“On Cave, I used Avid Express Pro,” Berdan says. “We purchased the setup with a G5 and mojo box on a Wednesday, ran it for just 24 hours, and shipped it the next day, so we didn’t have a lot of test time. We also wanted to do HD dailies, and the lab in Bucharest didn’t have a HD setup, so LaserPacific sent out equipment that got held up at customs. We also had to pay a huge tariff to bring in a DVD recorder. The lesson here is to ship your equipment early, and leave enough time to test it on location.”

“Never be dissuaded from doing things you want to do technologically because you are in a foreign country,” Ducsay says. “On Van Helsing, we recorded dialogue on DVD audio, but the Czech studio had no DVD players in place on the stage to sync up to the projectors. So we brought in a couple, and their tech people put all the effort in the world into getting them up and running. You can’t do that everywhere, but you shouldn’t be afraid to try and make it happen.”

Brian Berdan. Photo by David Reale

Berdan advocates that editors either set up a local bank account until the close of shooting, or get your U.S. bank’s SWIFT number for reliable international money transfers. He also recommends the purchase of I-Chat firewire cameras for communication with producers and loved ones at home. “It can save hundreds of dollars in phone calls from hotels, which charge $5 or more per minute.”

“Always think in terms of the host country and understand the impact your visit has on the people you will be living and working among,” Landra adds.

“I bring my first assistant with me everywhere,” said Landra. “Everyone else I hire is local, because I think it is unfair not to employ people from your host country. They have the key to the city that strangers don’t have, and an American assistant won’t necessarily have the connections you need to make your life easier.”

“Buy a guidebook and learn some basic expressions,” says Berdan. “People in a host country really appreciate it when you try and learn their language. Go online and check on political turmoil and disease. Also, when you are in a cutting room six days a week, you don’t feel a part of the world. Don’t use that seventh day to sleep – go out and tour, make friends with the people you work with. It really enriches your time to get  a little more involved.”

Most editors emphasize the need to roll with the punches. “When you  are playing by someone else’s rules, you have to respect those rules,” says Ducsay.

“People in other countries view working hours differently, so know that things are going to take a little longer. You may not find a vendor who will get something done overnight. If you do, it won’t be because of money; it will be as a favor. The last thing you want to be doing today is running around playing the  ugly American.”

September 1, 2004 0 comments

Tail Pop

Peter Berkos

by Michael Kunkes September 1, 2004

written by Michael Kunkes 2 minutes read

By Michael Kunkes

When AMPAS announced a permanent Oscar for sound editing earlier this year no one cheered louder than Peter Berkos. It was Peter, who, as two-term President of the MPSE from 1963-1966, spearheaded the fight to achieve full membership for sound editors in both the Motion Picture and Television Academies; and to obtain full screen credit recognition for sound editors.

Sound effects have been Peter’s life. He started in live radio drama in the1940’s as a sound effects man at WVAH in Hines, IL, walking in a sandbox, knocking on miniature doors and shooting off blank pistols in the studio. As an apprentice at Universal Studios after moving to Hollywood in 1952, he was inspired by Dore Schary’s book “Portrait of a Movie,” in which sound editing was described as “the place where the creative process begins.” Already hooked on sound, this set Peter on a 35-year career path that included some 300 features and 1,000 television shows.

An Editors Guild Member since 1954, Peter won a “Special Achievement in Sound Editing” Academy Award in 1976 for The Hindenburg. His feature credits include The Sting, The Great Waldo Pepper, Slap Shot, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Gray Lady Down, Airport and Coogan’s Bluff. He earned seven Golden Reel Awards and an Emmy nomination for his supervising work on Short Walk to Daylight. His TV credits include 77 Sunset Strip and Battlestar Galactica.

Nothing gave Peter greater personal satisfaction in his career than passing on his knowledge to new editors and students. He is a recipient of the coveted USC Department of Cinema Medallion, awarded for his 16 years of presenting seminars. He once mentored a 19 year-old Steven Spielberg in sound editing for a month, calling him the “most eager learner I ever met.”

Sound effects have been Peter’s life.

A charter member of the MPSE, Peter originated the design for the Golden Reel Award, and wrote, produced and directed the organization’s awards program and dinner-dance for 27 years. He was honored with the MPSE’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.

Peter retired in 1987, but hasn’t slowed much. He has written and published Reflections and Memoirs of Sally Ann Berkos, a collection of his late wife’s (pictured) writings, and completed a 500-page novel, The Double Double Cross, a crime story that takes place in a post-production department. His play, Harmony, has been produced in the Southland, and he continues to facilitate a writers’ group near his San Diego-area home while he works on a new novel.

“I’ve had a wonderful career,” he says. “I made friendships that have lasted a lifetime and worked with the greatest people in the business.”

September 1, 2004 0 comments

Columns

Dede Allen

by Michael Kunkes July 1, 2004

written by Michael Kunkes 2 minutes read

By Michael Kunkes

To celebrate her 80th birthday in 2003, Dede Allen completed her 27^th feature film, “The Final Cut,” for 25-year-old director Omar Naim. She remains as passionate, fearless, outspoken and self-confident today as when she began as a messenger at Columbia Pictures 64 years ago. A charter member of local 776 (1943) and Guild vice president, she continues her decades-old advocacy of film editing as an art, not a craft. To that end, Allen was the first picture editor, male or female, to get front single screen credit, for Bonnie and Clyde in 1967.

Allen came up through the ranks as a script clerk, sound effects editor and assistant film editor, and moved to New York in 1945 with her husband, documentary and news producer Stephen Fleischman. She cut her first feature, Odds Against Tomorrow In 1959, and over the next three decades, her emotional and gutsy style on films such as Serpico, Alice’s Dog Day Afternoon, among others, established her reputation as a premier actor’s editor.

Her close working relationship with directors include six films with Arthur Penn, three with Sidney Lumet and two with George Roy Hill. In 1991, she dropped out of cutting for seven years and returned to Hollywood to become an executive at Warner Bros. Then, in a remarkable return to cutting, Allen learned the Avid and received her third Oscar nomination (to go along with Career Achievement Awards from ACE and the LA Film Critics) for Wonder Boys in 2000.

Allen is especially proud of her assistants – Claire Simpson, Jerry Greenberg, Richard Marks, Steve Rotter, William Kurzekowski – all of whom have gone on to stellar careers of their own. “Go to as much theater as you can and learn story and scene,” she counsels young editors today. “Acquire knowledge, taste, and a sense of social history. Follow your instincts and love what you do. Learn your tools and screen as much as you can. You can’t break the rules until you know the rules.”

July 1, 2004 0 comments

Features

Cutting Inflight Movies: Projecting Changes

by Michael Kunkes July 1, 2004

written by Michael Kunkes 8 minutes read

By Michael Kunkes

As regularly scheduled U.S. passenger jet service celebrates its 45^th anniversary, major changes are taking place in the way inflight movies are being edited, repurposed and exhibited to passengers.

For all of that time, the predominant form of movie viewing has been what the airlines refer to as “main cabin,” projection of a movie onto overhead screens for all to see, not only paying customers, but also “passive viewers,” Who don’t purchase headsets and can still see the screen.

Today, digital and satellite technologies have helped create a new category, known as “personal viewer consumption,” that is built around the idea of individual screens, either in seat backs or concealed in armrests. Whether delivered by satellite, on-board, on-demand servers tape “jukebox” systems, web-based application or personal DVD players, personal viewer is already offering airline passengers something they never had before – a choice.

Most international carriers, notably Virgin Atlantic and Emirates, are switching entirely to personal viewer and showing unedited movies. Virgin Atlantic has never used overhead video and was the first airline to fit seat back TV in all classes, beginning in June of 1991.

“Preserving the content and artistry of the director is paramount to us, which is why we never edit a movie,” says Lysette Gauna, Virgin Atlantic’s head of media. “We treat our passengers as media-savvy viewers able to make their own choices. In fact, the first movie we ever showed was Airplane, which some would consider risqué, but we just thought it was very funny. Thankfully, so did our passengers.”

Partially due to shorter hops and the cost of putting a plane on the ground to wire it up with new hardware, US domestic carriers are, at least for the moment, sticking with overhead projection, with exceptions in business, first class, and on flights that continue overseas.

Is the main cabin going the way of the inflight meal? Will the new personal viewer formats leave editors, who have made a career in the airline niche, without a parachute?

What that means is that the process of cutting movies for airlines remains subject to certain time-honored rules. An aircraft in peril is undesirable, as are images of explosions, knives, box cutters, etc. Also questionable are scenes involving intense sexual content, lewd gestures, extreme violence and the like.

“We want to sell as many movies as we can, but it’s a balancing act where everything is on a case-by-case basis. Remember, these edits are for main cabin consumption.” Explained Gray Ainsworth, senior vice president of Technical Services in MGM’s Worldwide Distribution Group.

Today, airlines and production companies are going to greater lengths than ever to preserve the artistic content of a film while working within their own internal editorial and ADR guidelines.

“In today’s age, there is no norm anymore,” says Linda Palmer, senior vice president of Non-Theatrical at BuenaVista, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. “Buyers at airlines are becoming much more astute at looking at a film’s suitability. In the past, it was normal to hear: ‘We want that film, but you have to take that out.’ As studios have become more and more reluctant to make wholesale cuts, they’ve had to become more adaptable, and perhaps pass on a film they ordinarily would have bought.

Jacquie Young, an American Airlines spokesperson, says the airline bases its decisions on “the broadest possible appeal to our passengers, and not by how much content is cut out.” It’s most likely that if a movie has to be edited to an enormous extent in order to be considered for airline use, it would not be the one that an airline would want to purchase, she surmised.

For the most part, airline versions are cut by a dedicated staff person at the production company or studio. “The original editors are rarely available to do the airline or TV version,” says Ainsworth. “We always use union editors, who are very experienced at understanding our needs. In fact, sometimes they understand what we need to do better than the original editors, who don’t always provide the required coverage.”

“The enjoyment in this job comes from solving these problems and still seeing the movie work” – Vinnie Laino

At MGM, Vinnie Laino has been cutting airline and non-theatrical for over 12 years. For him, the challenges presented in negotiating the minefield of picture and ADR guidelines are highly creative. “We really try and lessen the effect of actually going in and cutting the film,” he said. “ We try and stay as true as we can to the director’s vision. However, if something is totally inappropriate, we can’t find a way to make it work easily, and it is not germane to the story, we will usually take it out. Most directors tend to be pretty understanding, as long as we take good care of the film and show them what we are doing.”

Bill Elias, a Guild member and a picture editor at Paramount Studios on airline versions and other ancillary markets since 1986, emphasizes the director’s importance to the process.

“Our job is to work within the airline’s parameters to protect the integrity of the film and serve the director. The airline versions are generally the point of initial censoring that will stay with the show, so we want to get director approvals on everything,” explains Elias.

According to Laino, the James Bond movies always provide a huge challenge, because even with their huge diet of sex and violence, they get sold, no matter what. The closing sequence of last year’s Die Another Day features two concurrent violent fights on a slowly disintegrating cargo plane. “We couldn’t just remove the last 20 minutes of the film, so we employed a lot of digital technology,” he says. “For the sword fight between Halle Berry and Rosamond Pike, we changed the swords into Kembo sticks, removed the knife from a fatal stabbing, covered up the holes in the plane and removed most of the flames and the actual crash into the mountain after Bond and Berry escape. The sequence is much shorter, but its integrity is preserved and you still get the feeling of the crash. The enjoyment in this job comes from solving these problems and still seeing the movie work.”

MGM has a complete set of TV/Airline ADR guidelines, as do most studios, that leave little room for interpretation. Among the over 250 objectionable words and phrases are no fewer than 56 replacements for “balls,” among which are “buds,” “puppies,” “slugs,” “lumps,” “brothers” and “nasties.” There are 40 variations and over 200 replacements for variations on the “f” word, enough to keep Joe Pesci permanently employed. “God” can only be used in a religious context or in response to an injury. Jesus is largely off-limits, “son of a bitch” can become “slug in a ditch;” orgasm becomes “finale” and one of the replacements for “motherf____r” is “melon farmer.”

Rosamond Pike measures Halle Berry’s neck with a sword in the release version of Die Another Day and after digital alteration, the sword became a kembo stick. Copyright Eon Productions.

“Word replacements are often dictated by the replacement phrase’s ability to fit the same lip-movements as the original dialogue,” says Ainsworth.

“On airlines, we don’t use mutes and blurs the way we do on TV versions” he continued. “If a director is really on the ball, he will realize that the movie is likely to be edited for other consumption and will shoot a second version of a scene, but that rarely happens.”

Is the main cabin going the way of the inflight meal? Will the new personal viewer formats leave editors, who have made a career in the airline niche, without a parachute? It is highly improbable.

“We haven’t noticed a decline in work says Elias. “Markets are growing and diversifying, and as with any other business, as the market changes, you adapt.”

Buena Vista’s Palmer adds, “While most airlines will begin to show unedited titles, there are regions of the world that have extremely restrictive codes for movies, such as Middle Eastern countries. So, even with personalized systems, we will continue to provide edited content.”

Laino agrees and points out, “We just did Windtalkers for personal viewer consumption, and still had to cut it down quite a bit, due to the extreme violence.”

Editing restrictions may lessen in the future, Laino added, but editors on airline versions will still have plenty to do.

“This will be especially true as we mine and repurpose our own huge library to meet the increased need for passenger choice. It’s a growing trend, and other studios, with their own libraries, are doing the same,”

July 1, 2004 0 comments

Features

Location ADR: A Moveable Feast

by Michael Kunkes July 1, 2004

written by Michael Kunkes 11 minutes read

By Michael Kunkes

In today’s post production world, there is a time to shoot, and a time to loop. ADR dialogue looping is traditionally the realm of an ADR stage, usually located in a major production center, where actors re-record dialogue for scenes that were shot and edited weeks, sometimes even months after principal photography.

The “We’ll fix it in post” syndrome, of which ADR is a part, has few more ardent detractors than the production sound community. Today, there is a quiet, but growing movement to change the way things are being done. It’s not only the “when” of ADR that is being re-examined, but also the “how” and “where.”

Several factors are coming into play. Cooperation between production and sound has increased greatly over the past five or ten years. Producers, especially of blockbuster releases, are realizing that they can save tons of money by shooting at least some ADR during production, instead of sending crews our all over the world to catch up with actors, who have moved on to other projects.

Post supervisors, facing increasingly tight post schedules and budgets, are being asked to perform twice the work for half the cost. Also, the new generation of digital audio workstations, led by portable Pro-Tools rigs, is making ADR a moveable feast for actors and producers.

Breaking out of the confines of the ADR stage has historical precedent. In the days of the Hollywood studio system, contract players spent a portion of each workday looping dialogue; and in the 1950s, Cinemobile employed a moving van with 35mm projection and virgin loops. Then again, many lessons have come from television, where quick turnaround time made on-location ADR a necessity that continues to this day.

“The idea was to be able to ‘go to the talent’ for ADR, in their home, a hotel or just a convenient quiet place.” – Mark Gilbert

“In the 1970s, Gomillion Sound had a portable ADR truck that we used on CHiPs,” says Todd-AO sound editor Robert Deschaine, who helped pioneer on-set portable playback for looping on the two Babe features. “The actors and crew were out there on the freeway 12-14 hours a day, and you couldn’t get them back into the studio for looping. The trailer had a little insert booth to record the wild lines and motorcycle dialogue into 1/4 inch Nagra recorders. It was crude and noisy, and you had to make it very close, but it worked.”

Today’s mobile ADR trailer is designed to replicate all of the acoustical conditions of the best-equipped stage. At Cassady Studio Rentals, supervising sound editor Lee Dragu has designed a fully mobile ADR stage that has been used on TV series such as She Spies, C.S.I, The Handler and Las Vegas, and on features, including Basic and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton.

“The trailer is divided into two rooms: an engineer’s booth and a talent room.” Dragu says. “We engineered the trailer to keep external noise out, ensuring a clean recording, providing all of the controls you would have on stage.”

Dragu’s trailer is set up with a Do Re Mi V1 Hard Disk Video Recorder/Player, as well as ¾ inch video. “The picture is the master, and we use a TimeLine Microlynx keyboard system to sync. We can record directly to Pro Tools and/or DA-88 simultaneously, along with a DAT backup,” he explains, adding, “With TV, time is at premium, and it just makes sense to have post production on location.” Dragu says. “On She Spies, for example, there are three lead actresses who are in pretty much every shot. So, for one of them to disappear for half a day to do ADR can become a huge expense for the production.”

The Portable ADR system in its case, ready for use in the field.

A similar setup, not on wheels, is employed by Martin Church, of Church Audio Post in Play Vista (CA). Church, who supervises ADR (along with ADR supervisor William Kerr) for both Jag and NCIS on a pair of adjacent stages in Santa Clarita (CA), runs ProTools through a Mac G4. “It’s a foolproof system,” Church relates. “We do all our principals and guest stars right there on a separate stage. The sheer logistics of getting people twenty miles down the hill to record ADR in LA made it necessary, and we’ve been shooting here for nearly 10 years.”

The height of portability has been reached at Skywalker Sound, where supervising sound editor Matthew Wood teamed with Mark Gilbert at the UK’s Gallery Software (creator of ADRStudio) to create a truly portable system that emulates a complete looping stage. It’s small enough to fit into a couple of small road cases in the back seat of a London taxicab. “I put the system together when I was working on Star wars: Episode 1, right at the time when the Powerbook became powerful enough to support a ProTools system,” Woods says.

“Matthew decided he was going to build a completely portable system, which could travel from place to place,” Gilbert related. “The idea was to be able to ‘go to the talent’ for ADR, in their home, a hotel or just a convenient quiet place. Virtually all the ADR on Episode 1 was recorded with the ADRStudio software-based portable rig, which arrived with Matthew and the rest of the crew and was set up wherever they were needed.

“In most cases, we set up a professional studio,” he explained. “However, for the final looping sessions, Lucasfilm asked if they could come to my house for three days to record ADR,” Gilbert said. “So, we cleared out a bedroom and set up an impromptu recording booth. It was actually pretty sophisticated by the time we were done. We fixed up some camcorders and made a video link between the recording area in the bedroom and the living room, which acted as our control room. All the equipment was set up in a couple of hours, and over the next three days, a procession of actors passed through to perform their ADR, including Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Jack Lloyd and many of the other leading actors in the movie. We also recorded portable ADr sessions in Mexicoand the Bahamas.

No one is saying that mobile trailers and portable studios ever replace the ADR stage, at least not yet.

Later during blue screen reshoots on Episode II at Ealing Studios, Wood says he set up one of their sound stages and when the actors weren’t shooting, they’d be sent over to him for looping. “There were instances where we knew an actor was going to have to loop a scene due to noise from the effects. Because we were shooting on digital video, we could take a down-converted DV of the shoot, digitize that right into ProTools, look at it and then loop it almost as soon as we shot it.”

Wood Continued, “Not only did we save the production a ton of money, we were dealing with the scene right as it happened, So the actor still had it fresh in his mind. The sessions were an incredible success and really proved the point that you don’t need to rely on a million dollar fixed recording studio for ADR. Once it’s recorded into ProTools, the material can be sent over an encrypted FTP back to the studio, where it can be instantly edited, which saves all that studio looping time, something most directors and producers would love to hear.”

Rence Tondelli, ADR supervisor on The Passion of the Christ, employed a ProTools set up when she flew to the set in Rome during the feature’s final shoot days. “I had downloaded the movie into Quicktime on my laptop. Since almost no one in the principle cast spoke fluid Latin, they were ad-libbing these long scenes in Italian,” she related. “I sat down with them in the library of my hotel, along with Father Bill, the film’s Latin translator, and we phonetically recorded the voices to playback as scratch tracks right into ProTools. It was a valuable tool that I also used on the set of Austin Powers: Goldmember, where we had an incredibly short schedule and Mike (Myers) was constantly trying out new lines.”

But, most ADR veterans maintain that even advanced portable equipment cannot filter out background sound, and mobile ADR must still be done in a quiet location. “Two things are essential to creating good ADR,” says Dragu. “The actor must feel comfortable enough to deliver a good performance. This performance must be captured in such a way that it can be seamlessly blended with the production dialogue in the final mix, and free of the anomalies you might encounter by recording in a hotel room or someone’s home. As any re-recording mixer will tell you, you can always add EQ and various reverbs to a loop to make it sound natural, but you cannot remove reverb and EQ if they exist in the original recording”

“The bottom line is that it will never be possible to anticipate all your ADR needs in advance,” – Tom Feleischman

On Universal’s summer blockbuster, The Chronicles of Riddick, dialogue/ADR supervisor Hugh Waddell at Soundelux also had the unique experience of actually recording on the set during a series of massive reshoots, We did two location shoots, one in Vancouver and one in London, where Judi Dench was appearing in a play. David Twohy is a director who is very attuned to sound needs and doesn’t view ADR as a necessary evil. I told him that we were not going to be able to get some of these guys back for the temp mix and were running out of actor availability. As it is with many blockbusters, this was a production sound mixer’s nightmare,” explained Waddell.

“Because I was present to observe the situation, I was able to walk right out onto the set with the actors, who hadn’t even moved out of their positions, and actually run through entire scenes again, top to bottom. It was ADR in a wild line kind of situation. Perhaps even better, because they didn’t have to recreate a performance weeks or months later. They gave readings that had life and energy.”

Waddell continued, “The most difficult part of looping is that when a production ends. I have to spend the bulk of my time jetting off to different countries to get them into a studio. Sending lines over ISDN is great, but unless you are sitting next to an actor and telling him why he is doing this, it becomes a much tougher process. That’s why, if I have more than half a dozen lines to record with a major character, I’ll always fly to them. So, yes, if I could, I’d be on the set all of the time to do the looping. Frankly, I’d rather be home feeding my dogs.”

However, no one is saying that mobile trailers and portable studios ever replace the ADR stage, at least not yet. “The ADR stages and mixers in Los Angeles are top notch, and if I had my druthers, I would always go there first,” Tondelli states. “But, doing ADR on location seems to be happening more and more, especially if you are jammed and need to get something very quickly”

“Not only did we save the production a ton of money, we were dealing with the scene right as it happened, So the actor still had it fresh in his mind.” – Matthew Wood

New York based re-recording mixer Tom Feleischman notes that these are all valid points. “But, the bottom line is that it will never be possible to anticipate all your ADR needs in advance,” he said. “Things will always come up in post production that have nothing to do with the quality of the tracks. Anticipation and planning will always be key.”

“Location ADR is a growing trend,” says Waddell, “especially on movies produced out of country. In Hollywood, however, studios have a way of just going about business as usual. They just don’t look at sound as an integrated process. We must all press for more interaction between the post and the production world.”

July 1, 2004 0 comments

Columns

John A. Martinelli

by Michael Kunkes May 1, 2004

written by Michael Kunkes 1 minutes read

By Michael Kunkes

For John A. Martinelli, who retired in 2000 and was honored this year by the American Cinema Editors (ACE) with a Lifetime Career Achievement Award, timing has been everything.

Over a 43-year career, he cut everything from Flipper and Gentle Ben to epic mini-series, such as the 10-hour Marco Polo and the 12-hour A.D. John entered the business on a Moviola, became an early exponent of tape-based, non-linear systems and was among the first editors to employ the craft of subliminal cutting.

As a picture editor, associate producer and line producer, John helped usher in the age of Movie of the Weeks with 51 productions, including landmarks such as Footsteps, The Legend of Lizzie Borden, The Defection of Simas Kidurka, and Murder in Texas. His work earned him four Emmy Awards, and he served five terms as president of ACE.

An ardent union supporter, John fought for single card credit recognition of editors and better overall working conditions. He refused to work on nonunion productions, and formed his own corporation so that he and his assistants could work under union contracts on nonunion productions, keeping unionism alive through lean times.

“The MOW and mini-series were a golden age when TV and movies merged to create events,” John reflected. “In their heyday, they ruled the sweeps and represented a new form of filmed entertainment. More than anything, we showed everyone how to make pictures more economically without sacrificing quality. You could stick most of those films up on a theatrical screen and they would look gorgeous! It was a training ground of a kind we may never see again.”

May 1, 2004 0 comments

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