Sitting at my room at the SKYWALKER RANCH Inn with a nice fire going in the fireplace, another IN N OUT burger in my fat but happy belly. Julio Iglesias just came on on my iPod. Life is damn good.

Very productive spotting session with Bob Shoup and the team today. We went through the whole film reel by reel (with a short break for lunch and some shopping at the SKYWALKER store) and talked about a ton of things. We’re working with four of the same guys that worked on ALTERED, so it’s a bit of a reunion for us. This time, Kent Sparling is both a mixer and one of the music composers but otherwise, we expect it to be as smooth as the ALTERED sessions went.

A lot of great discussions today about just about everything, from Amy’s screams to which birds are native to southern China, where the film takes place. Many problems worked out and a ton of work ahead for these guys, who seem genuinely jazzed about the sound for the film. They keep saying that there are a lot of unique sound moments in the film, that this is not your average film for sound. They think it’s going to take a lot of actual recording to fill the landscape of sound for this film, not as much building from the huge sound library here at SKYWALKER SOUND.

Like take the car, for instance, where the most intense scene in the film takes place. They don’t think they’re going to find the right sounds of the Pale Figures savagely beating their way into the car so they’re going to bring an old junker here to the studio and record a noises inside and outside of it. Mostly hitting the car a bunch of different ways with a bunch of different things to simulate the Pale Figures hands. They seem pretty excited about this little adventure.

Also, a huge amount of the dialogue is going to have to be replaced, which also adds a lot of work. A lot of the location sound is not loud enough or has other noises interfering with the dialogue. It was a challenging film to mic because we were always on location and shooting with three cameras a lot of the time, which made getting a clean boom mic into the scene very difficult for Tat, our sound recordist. He used mostly wireless mics and while they work pretty well, they don’t sound as good as a good boom mic. Whether it’s interference or distracting background noise or low levels, we’ve got them all in this film.

What was a pretty welcomed surprise was having Kent be in on the spotting session wearing both hats as a mixer and music composer. He brings so much to the table working both sides of the fence, making sure both equally important sound layers work seamlessly together. He knows where he has to make holes for sounds effects and can keep the sound team keyed-in on what the music is doing or going to do at any time during the process. It just seemed like many issues came up today where it was helpful that he knew both sides of the sound equation for the film. It’s going to work out really well.

All these guys are cool as shit, too. It’s going to be a fun mix for sure.

They’re going to start sending me stuff next week. Can’t wait to start hearing stuff. The biggest hole we need to fill is what noises the Pale Figures are going to make. I’ve always thought of them as being mostly silent, but we’re going to play around with giving them creepy little noises that we can use to heighten the tension throughout. It’s a difficult job since I want to make it cool but avoid cliches and build something original, which is alway hard for scary creatures. Everything you can imagine has been used and re-used so it’s definitely a challenge.

After the session Gregg and I rode bikes back to our rooms and then headed back to the SKYWALKER SOUND movie theater to watch a beautiful print of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. They’re showing each of the three films leading up to the release of the fourth one in May and we just happened to be lucky enough to be here for the first one. It’s such a great film and it looked and sounded marvelous.

Then we drove out to IN N OUT for another late night burger meal and now we’re back, ready for bed.

Tony comes in later tonight and we’re meeting at Kent’s house tomorrow to spot all the music in the film. They’ve got a lot of work to do, too, so tomorrow is also going to be about dividing up the work and building deadlines for keeping up with their progress. It’s the main thing that I have to work on now, helping these guys do their magic. I love what they’ve done so far.

Well, another Julio song just came on and the room is getting kind of smokey, so I better quit while I’m ahead. Time for sleep.

Checking out of here tomorrow but I look forward to our return in June. It’s going to be a real hoot for sure.

Peace.

-ed

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