Erick Macek Wraps Up Third Full-Length Album

Erick Macek has just finished up his third full length album at Studio West with staff engineer Kellogg Boynton.  This is the second album that the artist and engineer have collaborated on together.  The album consists of 15 songs that were recorded mostly in Studio A and a few overdubs recorded in Studios B and C.  The foundation of the album was recorded in two days with drums, bass, guitars and scratch vocals all playing live together.  Erick wanted a very natural and organic feel and the best way to get this was to have all of the musicians in one room playing together.  The band would play a few takes until they were satisfied, play the minimal fixes needed to be done and move on to the next song.  Dennis Caplinger, who has played with many outstanding artists including Eric Clapton, made a guest appearance on the album playing banjo and fiddle.  After all the instruments were complete, Kellogg and Erick spent time perfecting the vocal performances in Studio A.  The album was also mixed by Kellogg and mastered by Caleb Keiter.

Military Cadences...With Music?

Documentary Recordings and Studio West collaborated recently to put together over 100 tracks that included real field recordings of soldiers calling out different cadences.  Peter Dyson, Jeff Pekarek and Hunter Levy did much of the music creation, and additional music was provided by our talented studio interns!  Since the music needed to be written to match the tempo of the march as well as the key used in the cadence, all agreed that this was a very challenging project that required them to use their imagination along with their music chops.  All tracks were engineered, mixed and mastered by Kellogg Boynton and Hunter Levy, and will be available on iTunes in the near future.

Thor: God of Thunder Video Game Trailer

Sega/Marvel Game Trailer
Produced by Pendulum Studios, San Diego
Thor: God of Thunder
Length: Two minutes and thirty seconds
Total tracks:  70
Thunder and lightning hits: 37
Sound Designer: Gary Miranda

Well, there certainly was no lack of thunder in this trailer! I used 37 thunderclaps in the spot and there's also a massive rumbling storm element that builds throughout. All the thunder added an interesting element when it came time to mix, given that this was supposed to be more of a music and dialog driven animatic. Overall we ended up with 70 tracks, most of which were sound effects. The workflow was pretty straightforward. I started with dialog, re-syncing the original studio voice recordings to the low-res dialog supplied in the first animatic, then it was on to sound design which took about two weeks of pretty intense work. The dialog was recorded at another studio, so we had to work with the files that were supplied. In general, they were in good shape. There were a few significant tweaks we had to make on a few of the lines. Loki's voice initially sounded really muddy (too much low mid) so I took a bit of time to make it sound normal. For reverbs I started with halls and tweaked them to make fit the scenery (which of course we didn't get to see till late in the project!).

About sound effects....This is always a tough area with fast-turn animation. Initially we are not seeing everything in the sequence. Early versions of the spot were not rendered when they were sent over - so we can only see the general idea of what's going to be happening, and what the basic environment is, but all the detailed visuals come much later in the process. Most of my information about the environments and characters were from emails and conference calls in regards to what it would look like, and from there I would have to imagine what it would sound like. 

For example, toward the end, Thor raises Mjolnir (his hammer) and shouts, "For Asgard!" In the early movies supplied, there was no lightning visible around his hands, no beam of lighting coming down from above, no real energy at all. I placed in pretty generic "power up" sounds and a bolt that would strike the hammer. Pendulum then gave us a more detailed verbal description of what it was going to be like. From that I was able enhance the placeholder sounds further, adding in more bolts and rumble, etc. It wasn't until we received the final render for that scene, I think the day before the project was due, that we could finally could see the detail of the intense power that was happening there. That was the first thing I worked on that final day spending a good 2-3 hours creating the vortex of lightning and looking back, I think this ended up being my favorite designed sound effect for the spot.

You can see from the wide shot of Thor and his father standing on the steps, above, that if you didn't know there was going to be a beam of lightning there it would be hard to know what sounds to apply. It's actually part of what makes working on animation projects so interesting. Watching the scenes come together at the very last minute is a pretty neat process that not a lot of folks get see. We worked with the team over at Pendulum Studios, and their work is amazing! It gives us an extra  shot in the arm, as the projects are nearing the due date, to deliver sound design as spectacular as their animation. For example, this is how we knew Thor for the first three weeks of the project:

 

Only towards the end did we get the rendered version - quite a difference!

 










Another effect that I liked a lot was the audio that we used on the line, "For Asgard!" Yeah, I know it's more on the dialog side, but hear me out. The client initially gave us 7 or 8 different "For Asgard!" lines. After hearing our preliminary mix they wanted it bigger - but not just bigger, more like ten times the amount of soldiers. Instead of just adding reverb or delays or doublers, we had some fun in Studio C. Mark, his buddy Rich Williams, and myself recorded about 30 takes of various shouts of "For Asgard!", complete with English and Scottish accents. I comp'd those takes and completed the new improved Legion throughout the surrounds. That surely thickened the original 8 soldiers up, and Pendulum got the battalion they requested.  

Music cues were taken from several clips supplied from the game, and these were pieced together to provide the orchestral music bed. There are 4 different pieces spliced together. Twenty points to whoever can tell me where the edits are, and bonus points if you can tell me where I used elastic audio to slow the music down to match the picture edit!

On mix-down, we delivered both a Surround 5.1 and Stereo mix. Down-mixing to stereo was probably the biggest challenge for this project. There was a lot of low end energy from the sound effects competing with the music. We delivered both sets of mixes as full mixes, and as stems (Dialog, Effects and Music). The final mixes were version 16 of our Pro Tools session, so we built and checked lots of reference mixes before delivering the finals. In the end we delivered a killer mix, the folks at Pendulum were happy and ultimately, I'm pleased with the final product!
Gary Miranda

Deepak Chopra in Studio C

Renowned doctor and author Deepak Chopra has been in the studio with us a number of times over the past month working on both a meditation CD project and an upcoming video game title to be released by Curious Pictures in conjunction with video game giant THQ.  It looks to be a wonderful way to link kids and technology with positive messaging from one of today's more prolific writers on self awareness, kindness and emotional well-being. 

Audio for the game was recorded using a Sennheiser 416 located about 6" from Mr. Chopra. Additional audio for the project was slated to be recorded in New York City at SkinnyMan Studios a couple of weeks later, so we needed a configuration that could be matched on both coasts. Studio West co-owner and engineer Mark Kirchner commented, "Mr. Chopra has an interesting voice to record; there's a bit of pronounced "s" that the de-esser doesn't catch - almost like a click.  In working with Mr. Chopra, specific mic placement has been the best solution. He is very nice, and easy to work with, however he likes to get to work right away, so you don't have much time to test setups. It's part of what makes the job exciting and nerve-racking at the same time." We're all excited to see how the game turns out!

Read more from gamespot.com.

Around The Studios...

Kellogg has been busy in Studio A recording Erick Macek, Anoushka Shankar's 6th full-length album, Traveller, the traditional Irish sounds of Kick Up the Dust, and Johnny Clegg for NPR.

Over in Studio B, Gary has been working on the video game trailers for Thor: God of Thunder and Captain America.

Meanwhile, in Studio C, Mark has been recording Deepak Chopra, Joshua Dinnerman, Richard Dreyfuss' narration of a National Geographic program about parallel universes, spots for Lucas Arts and 5 Gum, and the 100th episode of A Way With Words for NPR.

Open Hearts Foundation Inaugural Event

Four hundred people attended the event that was held at the private residence of award-winning actress, artist and philanthropist Jane Seymour and her husband, director, producer and writer, James Keach.  The Open Hearts Foundation, founded by Jane Seymour, is a nonprofit charity established to raise funds to enrich the lives of children in the areas of health, arts, sports and education. The Foundation’s goal is to bring the Open Heart movement into communities worldwide by providing funds to children’s charitable organizations.  The evening was hosted by CNN Anchor Christi Paul and included musical performances by William Joseph, Katharine McPhee and Jakob Dylan.

The 48 channel record was a last minute request to Studio West. We received the call for help two days before the event. Making things a little more interesting was the severe weather that was pounding the West Coast that weekend. Record low temperatures and thunderstorms didn't dampen the event turnout, but did knock out the main generator in the middle of the auction which was after dinner and held prior to the night's musical performances.


Fortunately, the power that went down temporarily was feeding lighting, so the sound-side of things was not affected. There were a few moments during Jakob Dylan's performance when we could hear the rain on the tent roof - it sounded like white noise and it threw us for a loop...momentarily. In the end, the event was a huge success raising money and awareness for children's charities. Our thanks and support go out to Jane, James and their foundation!


View a sample of the night's performances here:

Fallbrook Film Festival

Two film projects recorded at Studio West will be featured at the upcoming Fallbrook Film Festival, Well Done, a narrative short "modern fairytale involving a chef, a cake, a waitress and a steak"  and We Must Remember, a short documentary about sixteen American high school filmmakers and their life-altering experiences discovering the Holocaust.  Here's a little more info on each project:


Well Done trailer
Well Done blog (including pictures of the cast and crew at Studio West)
We Must Remember trailer


Even if you missed out on the Groupon, you can still get tickets to see these two great films and more here. Mark and Gary will be there, so make sure you say "hi" and let us know what you think!