While that oxymoronic standby ‘less is more’ has proven sporadically true at best over its long life, in the post-production world the adage is gaining some respect. Born of the evolution of digital technology and the constant search for time and cost-saving means of completing a project, smaller gear and a streamlined process are being applied to more jobs at every level.

And as more is done with less, the universe of audio and video post is also contracting, with not only smaller gear and a ‘contracted equipment set’ but convergence of talent. With digital nonlinear post, the job descriptions of audio and video post people as well as engineering and post become blurred. At the same time, talent is now working on traditional as well as digital equipment and methods, both new talent schooled in both worlds and existing talent who have devoted considerable effort to making the leap.

The combination of that intermingling of talent and the expansion of high-level capabilities over a larger equipment base has been, once again, to distill the importance of the human equation; a more level equipment field emphasizes the importance of raw talent and quality from the beginning to the end of the production process.

In the following report, new stars and established players discuss shrinkage, digital dexterity and the evolution of the production and post process.

* * *

As the era of truly digital audio approaches it brings increased sonic capabilities at greater speeds and lower costs as well as a whole new set of questions about process, the talent running the new systems and the next steps in broadcast and Web applications.

At the outset, it’s going to be convenient for the early practitioners to have a handle on not only audio but nonlinear video editing; audio specialists who have been trained on digital workstations who know video and video editors who have their fingers into audio.

Trained in and with a background in audio, NetStar’s Michael Nunan currently works as a production editor in the online video suite at Discovery Channel cranking out network shows like @discovery.ca, Heaven and Earth and Discovery Connections, dealing with tight turnarounds and a multitude of producers.

Coming from an audio background and with an audio major at Sheridan College’s Media Arts program, Nunan subsequently spent several years on the audio production side, while also accumulating video expertise working in graphics and as a technical producer.

Nunan spent most of last year as senior audio post engineer on Discovery’s Go For It series, where he and video editor Matthew Sherman assembled reams of raw footage within tight time restrictions in the networked Avid/Pro Tools suites, creating a streamlined audio and video process as well as turning out sophisticated audio versioning for international broadcasters.

Nunan says brutal deadlines are an old story in the audio realm, but technological advances have created efficiencies in the process which have resulted in a better product in less time.

‘The trend is to be able to do more for less technically; the productivity level of the equipment is going up by orders of magnitude,’ he says. ‘It’s not unrealistic now to expect tight turnaround times and get more bang – not necessarily for the buck, it’s not directly financial – but for the amount you put into the process; the number of different things you can get out of it at the end are increasing.’

Nunan says with the current technological state of affairs the major challenges in the long-form realm will arise from the human equation, where technical capabilities may be outpacing the skills development.

He cites the expanding set of tools put into the hands of Avid editors to handle and process audio; where traditionally a video editor had two tracks of audio at his disposal and developed means of dealing with that limited amount of audio; these same editors now have access to 24 tracks of audio and the ability to do waveform editing.

‘We’re now in a situation where it’s not unrealistic to expect the video editor to do a lot of serious audio work,’ says Nunan. ‘And that involves a learning curve for guys who are ostensibly visual artists to begin thinking about audio in new ways.

‘The logic behind working with multitrack audio isn’t necessarily a giant leap, but the audio community has developed some crafty methodologies that have helped them take advantage of the available tools, tools to which video guys now have access but they don’t necessarily have access to the skills.’

The partial upshot of an increasingly integrated production and post process is that some of the everyday tasks that took up time in the audio post suite – like layups and reconforming from field tapes from an edl – are being done out of the hands of audio engineers, allowing them to focus on finesse work, on ‘making it pretty.’

Across the equipment range – from million-dollar rooms to Pro Tools facilities – a bare technical mean is allowing audio artists to achieve similar goals, although at this stage it’s more cost effective to be exclusively digital on a smaller scale.

With off-the-shelf pc-based audio packages, this capability is extended to basement setups, allowing home users to deal with four or eight or more channels of digital audio, although Nunan says there are technical issues regarding the efficacy of consumer grade tools and they require careful use to ensure a quality output.

‘Everyone has the same set of toys. The question is how well you integrate them into the post process and can you meet the deadlines. In short order, and in some cases now, the issue in the audio community as well as in video is not going to be the toys it’s going to be the skill and experience of the person using the toys.’

While that fact has long been acknowledged by those working within the craft, producers looking for the new toy to do the neat trick will have a different perspective.

‘All of a sudden when everyone can do that groovy thing – or more importantly, when the guy who spends $10,000 can do the same groovy thing as the guy who spends a million on an audio post room – the benchmark becomes the operator and their ability to get the job done and work as part of the process.’

In terms of the evolution of audio and the next level of challenge, Nunan says the emergence of advanced tv, dvd and the convergence of pc-based and tv content will determine the next steps.

‘When we see how these things happen, then we’ll begin to see where the work is and that will dictate to a large extent how the industry evolves technically. In five years everything that leaves this building could end up on desktops rather than tv sets.’

Nunan says he hasn’t had to confront full dual-purposing of programming for tv and the Web, and there are a plethora of strictly technical issues to resolve before this comes to the fore.

‘The Internet and cd-rom development are suffering from the same plague in that everything is up in the air,’ he says. ‘Every day a new application comes out or a new delivery method. The content people are trying to deal with the aesthetic challenge of making mixed media work, but it’s now a technical problem exclusively and technically we’re not there yet.’