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Broadcast TECH


‘The dialogue had to be loud and clear, the music had to be dynamic and bold, and the effects had


to provide impact’ Ben Baird


Number of mixers required to allow one editor to mix moveable elements and the other music and monsters


2


Sinbad: brief was to produce a soundtrack that ‘leaped out of the TV with sparkle’


SINBAD IMPOSSIBLE PICTURES IRELAND FOR SKY 1 HD


Dubbing mixers Ben Baird and Chips Paul Facility Egg Post Production via a partnership with Aquarium Studios Format 5.1/stereo Primary equipment Neve DFC Gemini II console, Pro Tools 9 HD4, JBL and Dynaudio monitors, SSL Pro Tools/MADI converter


How did Aquarium come to be involved, and what was the brief? Ben Baird In the early months of 2011, we heard about this huge show that was going to be a festival of fun and effects. It was going to be shot in Malta but finished in Ireland, to take advantage of the Section 481 tax breaks. We wondered what Ireland had to offer other than the tax breaks so set off to see what we could find. Very quickly we found Egg Post Prod- uction and set about building a partner- ship that would allow it to approach Impos- sible Pictures with regard to offering post on Sinbad.


www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacils We built a mixing stage, based around the


Neve DFC Gemini II mixing console and Pro Tools, along with two audio cutting rooms, each with Pro Tools. The specific brief for Sinbad was to pro- duce a soundtrack that leaped out of the TV with sparkle – delivering real action-adven- ture that would support the ambitious and outstanding special effects. Our golden rules were that the dialogue had to be loud and clear, the music had to be dynamic and bold, and the effects had to provide impact. Mixing for TV is tricky enough these


days with the myriad of obstacles laid out to trap the mixer – from production sound to the delivery format – but with these simple rules, it is even possible to deliver the odd jump moment in today’s tough broadcast landscape.


Describe a particularly demanding stage in the audio post work on this project BB The most demanding aspect of producing the soundtracks for these shows was that because the visual effects took a long time to do, the edit never really reached a locked position to work from, and we didn’t see the monster we were ‘noisifying’ until the very


end. The composer invariably had the same problems and, as a consequence, the music generally arrived later than normal, meaning that we needed to construct a workflow that could accommodate this situation without compromising any of the other elements. The nature of the show was such that edit


changes were taking place very late in the day. In one key example, where a monster developed from one kind of beast in animatic form to a different kind in reality, we were obliged to deliver a new design from scratch without impinging on the stringent dead- lines. The result was a monster sound of which we are particularly proud.


Sinbad: the brief was to produce a soundtrack that leaped out of the TV


How did you achieve the desired end result? BB A two-mixer approach was crucial to the process. One of us pre-mixed all the elements that were easy to move with the changing edit – namely dialogue and non-CGI effects. The other mixer added in the music and the monsters right at the end when everything else had been done. This was especially bene- ficial in that it meant the monster sound was devised in an environment of creative oppor- tunity, rather than under the stress of a fast- approaching deadline.


 May/June 2012 | Broadcast TECH | 29


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