Theater becomes mixing facility

Graceful chamber music floats through the Old World elegance of the Regent Theatre, a Toronto landmark. The theater is empty of patrons, but aloft in the vaulted balcony (up the plush staircase, past the protective sign reading ‘Under Construction’), innovative sound engineer John Hazen mixes director Patricia Rozema’s latest feature, the $1.5 million When Night is Falling, in a unique virtual mixing theater, a private sanctuary that combines state-of-the-art digital technology with producer Barbara Tranter’s and Rozema’s vision of a perfect creative environment; state-of-the-art technology in your own private mixing facility. It’s the end result in a fully digital sound process designed by Hazen.

The idea came about while discussing the capabilities of a fully digital mix with Hazen. The choice to go digital, says Tranter, became obvious. ‘It’s the best technology. Why wouldn’t we want it?’

The question was, how?

The local film post houses were not yet on-line with their digital suites, and the digital suites that were available were prohibitively expensive to rent for the purposes of mixing a feature, and besides, lacked the benefit of a theatrical sound playback scenario.

Renting the Regent fell within budget constraints and provided an appropriate space that could, Hazen felt, be adapted into a mixing studio. The private, off-site location also appealed strongly to Tranter and Rozema as a haven where they could avoid the pressures of overtime and other overhead costs which can be crippling to a low-budget production.

Less appealing was the idea that as independents they would be working without a safety net. ‘It was a big decision,’ says Tranter. ‘It wasn’t the safest thing to do, but we knew it would be great if it worked.’ They decided to take a risk and go ahead.

From the beginning, Hazen and his crew used digital media. Sound recordist Alan Geldart recorded all the original location tracks on dat. At dailies, selects were made, and the sound for those was transferred to magnetic stock, with time code printed onto a hidden third track.

Once the picture had reached fine cut, the Avid Media Recorder Telecine system, with software modified by Avid engineer Bob Fleming for the purpose, read the cuts in the hidden time code track, and from this, produced an edl list. (The original software, in the Beta testing stages with Avid, is designed to be installed in transfer bays to allow print negative to be transferred directly to hard drive. A simple adaptation was made to allow it to read the gaps in printed time code on the work print).

The list was saved on omfi, which was fed into a Pro Tools workstation and used to auto-conform the digital sound to match the fine cut. The non-linear editing capabilities of Pro Tools provided sound editor Fred Brennan with access to the entire slates from which the conformed sound was taken, as well as a version of the exactly conformed sound.

Avid software was also used to record the adr and foley. A pro-database list of all loops needing rerecording was exported into the Avid AudioVision system, which allowed pull-down menus to be used to retrieve all individual looping needed for one character. Foley recordist Sid Lieberman and Hazen were able to play the same piece of tape over and over again, with an average two-second lag, taking advantage of the visual frequency reference offered by AudioVision to exactly match cuts.

The mixing system links the state-of-the-art Mackie 56-channel mixing board with 64 dubbers (eight Alesis a-dats) containing the 114-dat source tracks and Avid AudioVision system and Digidesign Pro Tools workstations, slaved to Beta sp time code by Micro-Lynx Time Line synchronizer. A state-of-the-art Sony projector projects a 24-foot Beta image of the screen, and jbl speakers provide surround-sound.

Hazen chose those components for their reliability and because they integrate with each other, avoiding problems inherent in translating software between incompatible formats, a feature common at the upper end of the industry. ‘At that level of the industry,’ says Hazen, ‘they’re interested in working on an integrated system.’

Brad Hohle from Dolby, New York flew to Toronto to tune the Regent as a mixing theater. The theater isn’t acoustically dampened, so the sound is unlike that in a protected environment, but it reflects the truer reference of a real, live theater. Hohle was confident the results in the calibrated theater would successfully translate to high-quality sound under general screening conditions.

Hazen chose the Mackie board because its large-scale integration meant he could economize on space and minimize the number of components required to support the system. ‘We needed a noiseless console with excellent separation.’

The board is a relatively new product for the maverick Mackie, which donated the board because, says Mackie’s David Sweet, the company likes to get involved with these kinds of innovative projects.

Hazen received high-level industry support from Avid and Alesis (both lent him unreleased software and full 24-hour technical support) for the same reason. ‘We’re prototyping,’ says Hazen. ‘Sponsors were attracted because they’re technologically-based companies. They like this kind of progress.’

It sounds risky, especially given that the sound on the feature is at stake. Hazen grins: ‘We had all kinds of expert technical help, and we were lucky, it worked.’

The remote location is only possible when working with digital technology, because digital components are comparatively small and quiet.

‘In a regular mixing theater, you’d have a 45-foot-long machine room for the dubbers, which would have to be islolated from the mixing theater because of the noise. Our 64 Alesis a-dat dubbers are under the desk.’

He points to an area about four feet square. ‘It takes 32 seconds to change reels.’

The 114 dat master tracks can be carried in a duffel bag; the elements in a conventional feature sound master on magnetic stock require a forklift to be transported. Technically, the system’s non-linear editing capacity means last-minute changes are possible and can be realized in seconds, without the clumsy mechanical processes required when working with mag tracks.

‘Fix it in the mix’ isn’t any longer the worst possible option. Computer coding means edits are sharp and accurate, and can be endlessly fine-tuned or changed quickly without sacrificing work already done.

As well, because of digital technology, Rozema estimates that she was able to use 97% location sound. Keeping the sound process entirely digital means the original recording can be used. Without multiple transfers, less noise is gathered as the sound progresses through the editing stages.

While materials costs saved were partly absorbed by equipment rentals, the entire process was no more expensive than a conventional film mix. ‘The difference,’ says Rozema, ‘translated into time and options.’

Once completed, the final mix was rendered into a dual-format print master; a standard six-track Dolby digital master, and a two-track Dolby sr master. Both fit on the same pocket-sized, $50 digital audio tape. The tape was sent to l.a. where Dolby shot an optical negative and at that point only the mix was also transferred to mag stock (to fulfill delivery requirements). Final release prints have an optical track and the digital track, read as encoded information between the sprockets on standard 35mm film.