An up-close and personal look at the places, experiences, and life on the road as a Worldwide Product Evangelist for Adobe’s Dynamic Media products…oh, and some tech tips too!
Greetings, my friends! So, this post will be slightly unlike any other, as I'm actually featuring some other stuff that I've been doing (largely, in lieu of sleeping) over the past few weeks.
From time to time, I still mix and master the odd record, single, album, and generally, I'll do this so that (a) it keeps the chops up; and (b) I get to use the materials as 'demo material' on the road. As such, I've recently completed mixing on a soon-to-be-released single for famed Star Trek band, Warp 11.
What was totally cool about this particular project is that the band had heard my Johnny Encore records (via "Short & Suite" on AdobeTV) and really wanted me to 'produce' them (ie, rich background vocals, lush, spatial instrument sounds, etc), giving them a new sound, a new approach, reaching, dare I say, a New Frontier; well, musically anyway. ;)
Now, seeing as they're a seasoned punk band, I really wanted to do something different. SO...here's a little vid that I cooked up (which will likely appear on their site) giving you a sneak of the chorus to one of their new tunes; I worked out a 'slightly' new arrangement for them. Take a listen.
What else can be said after that? Stay tuned, live long, prosper, you know...
Hello, my friends! Another quick update from the road, letting you know that I've just completed another 6 episodes of the 'Short & Suite' AdobeTV series with my pal and fellow evangelist-compadre, Karl Soule. Naturally, these new episodes features all new music (and music videos) by the infamous Johnny Encore. I'm hoping to post (re: sneak) some of the mixes (and perhaps a few bits of the vids) in the next week or two (including some additional goodies, non-johnny related!)
So in any event, Karl and I spent the last few days in Dallas. Sadly, the weather was rather rainy and gloomy; but upon arrival, I was graced with a pretty awesome rainbow out of my 18th floor window. Both of these pics were taken with the iPhone's camera (through a rather dirty window, no less!) but you can still see how cool it looked (especially as the sun began to set)
From the 18th floor, Hilton Dallas-Lincoln Center
A slightly better shot, still plagued by a dirty window! lol
And with that, my friends, (and in the spirit of my Adobe TV series) I'll keep this post 'Short & Suite'. Be sure to check out AdobeTV at the website and on Adobe Media Player for new episodes, coming soon!
Thanks, Dallas!
A pre-bed goodnight, with the iPhone 3G in hand ;)
Hello again, my friends. Well, the text of this post will be rather short, as I simply needed an excuse to post some additional photos from the extremely successful Masters Tour-Asia.
None of this would have been possible without the incredible efforts of our Adobe colleagues in all the regions. So this post serves (in part) as a tribute to them. I tried to find all of the 'team photos' that were taken. Sadly, I'm missing a few, and some (key) people are missing from the photos. But you know who you are, and again, my deepest thanks and appreciation for being such wonderful hosts to us.
And now...PHOTOS!!
The 'Soul' of Adobe Korea...MH, sorry we missed you!
Team Taipei. Thanks for the photo, Frances.
Some of Team Hong Kong...oh, what a night that was!
Team Singapore/Malasia...Raj, Titu, Audrey, Maryann: we'll get you in the next pic! And man, I truly look like a giant here! LOL. 'They call me Hagrid...'
And now for some random highlights from the tour (personal shots, links to full-res panoramas, etc)
The Great Rufus, on the Great Wall, Badaling
Jase on-stage, Korea. Professional Photographer took this one!!
Rufus & Greg share a moment in Taipei
Another professional shot, from the floor @ stage left: 3000 strong in Korea
Greg takes in the crowd - professional photo - gorgeous color & clarity
An outtake of me, taken just before presenting
Rufus takes a break during our VIP event, HK
And lastly, some of the Audience Panoramas (stitched from multiple photos, in PSCS3) in full 1280 width:
But of course, with every tour and each passing year, there are occasionally some casualties. Exhibit A--my suitcase after the last 7 months of the Masters Tour; held together with Asiana Air tape, the zippers broken, the logo missing, and stained to high-heaven! RIP, Kenneth Cole Reaction Suitcase (2007-2008)
And with that my friends, I think I'll end this post. Again, the memories created on this tour will truly resonate FOREVER. Thanks to everyone who attended the seminars, and thank you to all those who've commented on the blog and let me know what they thought about the show! We look forward to visiting all of you again. The pleasure was truly ours. ;)
So, until next time...
Jase @ the piano in Singapore, for an interview...photo by Rufus
ADR, Foley, SFX & Scoring - Old School Analog Sync
Hello, my friends! Well, as the title suggests, this post is all about an old-school analog video project that I did, back in college in 1994. And yes, this is in fact the missing video that I was unable to locate earlier in the week! Fortunately for me (and thanks to my occasional re-occurrences of OCD), I *did* in fact find a dub of the video (a dub-of-a-dub, to be precise) and as such, it took some careful transferring, audio restoration, color correction, and LOVE to bring it back to life! But before we get into the details, here's the clip in question...
Now, despite the fact that some of the ADR is really out-of-sync (the actor's fault, not a sync problem), the music and Foley/SFX were quite well done, and the story (and process) is a very cool one. Oh...in case you hadn't noticed, I played the part of Harry (and *my* ADR was rather spot-on..."Now *where's* the girl!") lol. You will also notice that I left some of the analog timecode visible for you...but during some of the darker scenes, there was a really wicked color-shift (and LOTS of noise; thanks VHS dub), so I faded out the TC, and actually re-created the letterboxing in Premiere (you'll see that suddenly the black bars get very black around :34 sec).
So, what was this all about? (and *why* am I using Dirty Harry, (c)1971 Warner Bros.) Basically, I was enrolled in a production course where we actively learned the process (and art) of classic audio/video synchronization techniques. And for this particular project, I was tasked with re-scoring a scene (from a favorite movie), re-doing the Foley (ie, footsteps, body motion sounds, etc), sound effects (ie, gunshots, background noises) and ADR (replacing all the dialog).
To achieve this, we had a transfer (widescreen, from Laser Disc, no less) of this classic film, burned with analog timecode onto 3/4" U-Matic tape, played back on a Sony VO-9600 (or something similar...as I don't believe the 9600 was around in '94).
The music/ADR/Foley was all cut to a Studer 1" 8-track analog tape machine, with analog timecode striped on track 8 for sync with the VTR. Those Studers were some of the greatest recorders EVER -- and if you wanted your music to *instantly* have that 1969/early 70s fat, Abbey-Road kinda sound, all you needed to do was hit 'record' ;)
Because of the limitations of tracks, the music had to be recorded first, cut live in the studio (whilst watching the video on a *small* monitor), and then pre-mixed/bounced down to a stereo pair of tracks on the 8-track tape. The cast of characters for my score were as follows:
Jason Levine: Rickenbacker Bass 4001 with wah-wah Pedal; 2nd Piano (overdubbed); Fred Fung: 1970 Ludwig 'Sparkle' Drums Hiroyuki Warabiminami: Fender 70s Strat, played thru 1970 Fender Bassman (with wah pedal) James Richardson: 1st Piano (Steinway)
Essentially, I had written out the score, but not note-for-note; it was merely bars of different melodies with markers. Each section had a particular melodic theme (which either myself or the piano would play), and all the bits in between were improvised. The markers indicated where each musical theme change would occur. This was all done in one take, and then I overdubbed a second piano during the bounce to stereo.
After the music was cut, it was time to do the Foley. Now, if you've ever watched a movie and wondered, "How did they get those footsteps to sound so crisp?", or "You can really hear the difference between walking on sand and walking on rocks...how do they do that?" Well, let me be the first to tell you...it's wickedly hard work. Hence, why there are highly-paid "Foley Artists" who do *just that*. We, (myself and the other character in the scene), did all the foley in the studio---setting up several microphones across the length of the room (about 20 metres long), and proceeded to setup broken boxes, crates, wood boards, and anything else we could find to simulate all the different 'surfaces' we'd be running on. And, because we also were running, we set-up microphones at mouth-level, so that we could capture not only the footsteps, but the heavy-breathing and grunts as we ran in and out of the scene. Again, crazy stuff, and it takes a lot of prep time and *many* takes to get it right...I don't remember how many we did---but it was several. Thank goodness for punch-in!
The foley was recorded onto 4 tracks, and then we once again 'bounced' all of that down to a stereo pair. During this process, we also used various signal processing to simulate the echoey environments and 'distances' between the running characters. This process is REALLY old school and wickedly cool. The guy who taught me how to do that stuff worked on many classic 70s/80s films (where this process was originated). I'll save you the details for another time --- but it was really cool. Sadly, because I've posted it to YouTube, it's flattened in Mono (and all the FX kinda cancelled out)...but that's ok. It's again, another part of the classic process.
So, now we've got timecode on track 8, stereo music on tracks 6&7, stereo Foley on tracks 4&5, leaving us 3 tracks for dialog and sound effects. Because we had planned to do the sound effects in Stereo, this meant having to record the dialog *first*, and then 'bouncing' it down to a mono track. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the other actor in the studio until the 'final mixing' day; so this meant having to do my dialog separately (on a mono track), and laying down some mono sound effects on another track (environment noises, doors). Then, during the final 'layback to video' process, we would 'fly-in' some stereo sound effects, LIVE, during playback. This part of the process is the most difficult, as there is no sync involved. You're literally sitting there, waiting for a cue, on the edge of your seat. For this, we implemented a few Studer Revox B77 1/4" tape machines; these were great because we could rock the reels back and forth to find the 'exact' moment where a sound occurred; we'd then back up a bit, turn the 'head motors' back on, and fly it in. (note: the light switches, creepy background loop in the field scene, and Harry's gun were *all* flown in live)
So...once all this was done, the final piece was to record the second actor and begin the dubbing. Remember, the video was housed on a 3/4" master; the audio was sync'ed via SMPTE timecode on an 8-track tape machine. This meant that the audio was fed thru the mixing board (an Amek Einstein, if I remember correctly), and the 'stereo' output of the console was fed directly into another 3/4" VTR. And naturally, the video output signal from VTR 1 was fed to VTR 2. So by the time my 'master' was created, we're already two generations down from the Laser Disc. Again, 3/4" was far better than VHS...BUT...it's still a dub. Another note: the copy that is displayed here was a copy of a VHS dub made from my 3/4" master, ie, 4th generation. In truth, it ain't half bad (and the audio really held up well)
And there you have it my friends. The story of my Dirty Harry re-make, old school and live-in-the-flesh. I think what was most interesting about re-visiting this video was the fact that the entire process really took a lot of pre-production time, something that we often take for granted today. I mean, if a Foley effect or soundeffect wasn't in sync, we couldn't just 'slip it in time' (a-la, Premiere or Audition/Soundbooth)...it *had* to be re-recorded or re-performed. And if I didn't get the audio mix properly balanced, well, once I started 'recording over' tracks 1-4, the master music was gone forever. So again, lots of pre-pro, and lots of decision making (and more importantly, committing to production decisions) throughout each part of the process.
But I will say this: it's that very 'classic' knowledge which I still reference today (to some degree), and it's value has been immeasurable. After all, it's history...and our industry (still evolving) continues to develop new ways (and new workflows) of doing things --- but just in case I ever have to go 'old school', well, I know that I always can. ;) Now, where's that 3/4" deck? Karl?
Until next time,
Blog on.
PS - This video was also posted for my pal and colleague John Schuman. John, I told you I'd upload it one of these days! ;)
