Got in yesterday and headed straight for the IN N OUT burger near LAX. Nothing like a burger for breakfast, even though it is really lunch for me, since I’m on east coast time. That’s what I like to tell myself. Caught this little scene in front of me. Dude, can you stop at the IN N OUT on the way to the airport?

Ate in the car and headed to SONIC MAGIC for an ADR session with the man of the hour Tim Chiou. It was really good to see Tim. Hadn’t seen him since China. That boy brings a smile to my face every time I see him. Such a great attitude.

Met up with Bob Shoup and Andrew, our ADR engineer, in the studio and we started our session with Tim. It turned out to be Tim’s first time doing ADR, so he was a bit rusty at first but then started really nailing things after a short while. None of us knew that Tim was an ADR virgin until the end but there was some confusion with the countdown beeps that was kind of funny.

The countdown beeps tell the actor when the line that he has to record is coming up to help with the timing. We noticed early on that Tim was either coming in too early or too late and Andrew kept telling him to listen for the beeps to help with that problem. Tim thought Andrew was saying “beat” and figured it had something to do with getting into a rhythm or something, he didn’t quite get what Andrew was referring to. Finally, about a third of the way into the day, something connected and Tim told Andrew that he wasn’t hearing any beeps at all. Andrew fixed the problem and we all noticed a major improvement in the timing after that.

Here’s Tim doing some great screams of death.

Matt showed up a few minutes late and I gave him a bit of a hard time for it, but it was good to see Compton again. I forget how much I miss that boy. He was very helpful, though, taking our lunch order and hanging out…doing whatever he was doing.

Him and Bob (who came down from SAN FRAN just for this) did Amy Smart’s ADR the day before. I was on the phone from Maryland for half the session. It was the only day Amy could do it (she started CRANK 2 the next day) and I couldn’t come in because of a family trip but it worked out all right. I wish I could’ve made it and seen Amy again but it wasn’t meant to be. I hope to hook up with her while I’m here.

It was a long day for each of the actors but we got everything done and it sounds great, so I’m happy. And it was great that Bob came down for it. He really helped things along. And Andrew was pretty great, too. Really great with directions for Tim.

So today I start the color correction at FOTOKEM. 4pm to midnight for the rest of this week and two days next week. Should be fun. Well, not really fun, but it’ll be good to see the film looking it’s best for the first time ever. We’re going to tweak the hell out of this thing.

I also have to do a little bit of ADR over the phone to China tonight. One of the actors is coming in to do some stuff we need from him. Should be really fun. I guess.

MUSIC SPOTTING

The music spotting session in San Fran went very well. Tony and Kent seemed to get along and were soon talking geeky, audio technical shit that Gregg and I didn’t have a prayer of comprehending. We met at Kent’s house studio in his basement and Kent started showing Tony the equipment and the his custom-made instruments and you could tell that these two were going to make some cool music together.

We went through the film, cue by cue, talking about what I wanted and what they were thinking about bringing to it. It was a good run-through and it seems like they have a clear picture of what I want. It helps that I wrote the screenplay with music by both of them playing so it’s pretty much as custom-made a score from beginning to end as you can get.

Ended the trip by going with Kent’s family to a great little Chinese place called House of Nanking and it was just about the best Chinese food I’ve ever had in my life. Highly recommend this place next time you’re in San Francisco. Tony found an interesting place next door, too.

Anyway, a great trip to Skywalker Ranch and a lot of good work done on the audio front, and we look forward to going back in June with the families.

More from LA later this week. A lot of action going on as we color correct, sitting in a room for 8-hours a day, adjusting the film shot-by-shot. If you think I’m sick of this film now, wait until later this week.

Peace.

-ed

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