Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Final Mix


Tonight, I made my way down to Clatter and Din to do our final mix on Dry Rain. Usually in this session, you review the work, make some minor tweaks, ensure the mix is good (the balance of music and sound efx and the actor's voices) and your all done. Tonight, we had to bring in the music from the music we just recorded at the House of Sound (HOS) and tweak some sound FX. Most of Monday and Tuesday, Chris from HOS mixed the music tracks and engineered them into the final form. He posted the tracks on the Clatter and Din website. Now all of this sounds complicated, but it was super easy. The only thing I feared, with our tight deadline, was that a file might be corrupted or something was just plain wrong. Well, it all worked out really well.

The tight deadline was driven by two factors: 1) we have the opportunity to submit to SIFF by mid March and 2) I am leaving the country to shoot a TV show in Nepal and Bhutan...more on that later, but needless to say, we have to get stuff done!

I sat in with the good folks at Clatter and Din to do the final mix. Vince Werner was the lead designer and engineer with Thad Wharton doing the heavy lifting and final mix. These guys are totally on their game. I sat in with them multiple times over the course of the winter working through the details of the sound. The great thing is I didn't have to spend a lot of time with the guys. They got it dialed in fast, took great direction and we're super collaborative.

Tonight, Thad and I brought in the final mixed music from Chris White. We laid that in and then just attended to a few minor tweaks. Thad and Vince had done so much work up to this point, we hardly had to do anything. The mix went super smooth. I'm looking forward to hearing it and seeing it all on the big screen!

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Burns Like Hell Fire


This weekend, we did the final recording of the score for Dry Rain. Chris White, from House of Sound, brought together brought together a fantastic group of musicians to make it all happen. Burns Like Hell Fire is a Spokane based band that has been around for awhile now. They're western flavor and alt country sound merged with Chris' sensabilities was perfect for the score. We recorded over two days at the HOS studio in Downtown Spokane. It went super smooth and we managed to get it all done. Chris had already recorded some of the tracks, so we were just focusing on two or three tracks and touching up another.

It's funny how projects like this always feed on past experiences and relationships. Jamie Maker and Aaron Saye played on our tracks, but they are also members of the band The Makers. A couple of years ago, I directed a music video for the boys for their new album "Everybody Rise." The clip turned out super cool and of course, they were great to work with. Have a look at it here: http://www.loadedpictures.com/themakers Fast forward to 2008, Jamie works with Chris White regularily. When Dry Rain came up, Jamie was stoked to jump on board and help out. Aaron manages to crawl into the studio quite often too, and he was down. The rest of the Burns Like Hell Fire crew volunteered too, so we had a band to play out what Chris and I had in our minds.

It was a fun weekend of just working out riffs and sitting back and letting the band run with the ideas. I was fighting a cold that had gotten ugly. I was on a roller coaster of a fever than chills than back to a fever. I managed to pull out of the funk by Sunday afternoon, but I was hurtin for sure!

Special thanks go out to Chris White for putting it all together and making it sound so good! Also, the band. Thank you!

Aaron Saye - Drums
Jared Dunn - Guitar
Jamie Maker - Guitar and Pedal Steal Guitar
Bill Barrington - Bass
Cameron Norton - Drums
Brian Young - Guitar