Jason Levine – Healing People Daily with the Power of Digital Video & Audio

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! ;)