Pro Tools M-Powered Trial and Error

I was testing out some relatively new equipment and programs so I could successfully implement these new aces-up-my-sleeves for the Elan Vital soundtrack. Anyhow, some of the equipment is (hopefully subtly) implemented in this new Mutiny Universe commercial:



In the process of creating the above video, I stumbled upon a new problem with Pro Tools M-Powered, as well as a possible workaround (through the process of trial and error). When using Pro Tools M-Powered with the Mobile Pre USB to score to a video file, make sure the video file is on the computer's hard drive and not on an external drive. If both the music files and the video are on the same external hard drive, the external M-Audio interface/sound card will make a hideous noise to prevent any and all productivity...or at least on my shoestring budget equipment. I'm guessing that my external hard disk drive isn't as fast as the computer's hard disk drive to access video.

To reiterate the above spiel: Save your music files on an external hard disk drive (as recommended by virtually everyone who uses Pro Tools), and have Pro Tool M-Powered access the video on the computer's main hard drive. The interface will be less noisy, less often, and you will be more productive. (I just did a quick search on Google, and apparently, intermittent noise is inherent to M-Audio's Mobile Pre USB...which means I really should save my rubles and pesos and Euros to get a better Pro Tools-ready interface.)

Also, on a related note: A few months ago, I discovered a catastrophic problem in Pro Tools M-Powered. Never, ever, ever add time to the beginning of the Pro Tools timeline, as it will give you an Access Error involving the Tempo Map.

See (Hear) the Forest AND the Trees!

To save my computer (and myself) from needless strain, I recorded each soundtrack song separately. While still a long way from saying each song is "complete," I've taken early drafts / recordings / demos of each song and mixed them down as separate WAV files (actually a left-mono and a right-mono file for each song).

I put the songs in order at each precise point of the film (think BITC). And now the director and I can see the soundtrack as a whole. I personally can tell which parts need tightening and how to craft a unifying score, rather than a loose collection of songs that fit the movie...kinda, sorta.

Here is a cryptic track list for the soundtrack, with links to cool people:

1. First
2. Drone
3. Samba
4. Alessandra
5. Isabelle
6. Boogie
7. Katrina
8. moxy
9. Waltz
10. Jazz
11. Stranger
12. Robert
13. Christine
14. Last

Many Baskets

The computer I'm using to record the Elan Vital score is decent when it comes to editing a music video, recording a rock band, and producing a half-hour podcast, but the size of this film - length and layers - pushes the system to its limits. Even if your computer has a fast CPU and lots of RAM, it's still wise to never, ever, ever, ever, put all your eggs in one basket. In our case, eggs mean songs. By baskets, I mean Pro Tools files.

Consider this checklist for the film scoring process:

1. Make sure either your reference video has BITC or your digital audio workstation can read accurate SMPTE timecode. Check.

2. Beatmap the entire film in broad strokes, with more accurate mapping for pre-existing songs. Check.

3. Using the above file as your template, copy this file to use for each song individually. You'll inevitably modify the tempo and timing for the new songs in the score. If you're working on the entire score on the same Pro Tools file, then things will move around, causing lots and lots of frustration. Even if you have a good amount of RAM, it'll still not be enough, and frustration will ensue. Now that we have these caveats established, create separate files for all your songs, and have an extra template file to bring all the songs together. Check, check, and check.

4. Work on each distinct song as separately or as together as is wise to do so. To save myself the trouble of all the pitfalls mentioned above, I have identified 10-14 individual songs for the Elan Vital soundtrack - some have been already recorded, some have been demoed, and the rest needs to be written. There will be layers and layers of tracks for the score, so to keep myself on my creative toes, I've resolved to work on a different song every day. (The holidays will inevitably stand in my way, but I'm currently optimistic about being productive.) By the end of this (presumably) two-week period, I'll have a skeleton of a score.

5. With the songs recorded in separate Pro Tools files, output each song as an lossless audio file, and put them all together onto the extra template file mentioned in Step 3. Since you've worked on these songs within days of each other, there's a good chance that the songs will flow together well. There's also a good chance they won't. Regardless, congratulate yourself with the completion of the score's skeleton. Get some feedback from the director, and move forward with more layers, organs, and skin, and clothes!

I realize I've been erratically shifting from the second person (you in the how-to sense) to the first person (I/me in the personal experience sense), and vice versa, but roll with it...please?

6. Wash (write), rinse (record), and repeat Steps 4, 5, and 6 as necessary. I anticipate this cycle to be as thorough as the film deserves...and Elan Vital truly deserves a transcendent form of thorough...or is that a Transcendental form of Thoreau (which is redundant)?

Beatmapping the Movie

Replacing the temp track on a previous Mutiny Universe production, Outcasts, involved accurate beatmapping of the temp track, which was used in the editing of the film and therefore essential to the film's timing. Using this click track of multiple tempos, the original song "Time (Lose Your Hold)" by The Society of Gloves (featuring moxy phinx) was recorded at the locked pace of that particular scene of the film, preventing any major restructuring on the video end of things.

The soundtrack of Elan Vital is essentially ten (possibly fourteen) times the amount of beatmapping, click tracking, and obsessing during the recording process of "Time (Lose Your Hold)." When you have an entire film right in front of you - with demo songs, songs by third-party artists, and blank space where music should be - it would be a good idea to beatmap the entire film in broad strokes (the more accurate, the better). Elan Vital currently has its share of demos I recorded earlier this year and three songs by artists that aren't me, and that music is part of the locked picture. The music itself isn't locked, as there are parts of the demos that need to be rearranged or rerecorded to perfectly fit with the video. This is why it would be a good idea to accurately identify the beats per minute, the time signature, and where each song/theme/cue/leitmotif should begin in the movie. If you're using virtual instruments in addition to flesh, blood, metal, and wood instruments, then creating an accurate click track is essential for effective film scoring.

Once you have the structure and accuracy of a beatmap / click track and BITC / timecode, then all that remains is the artistry...in theory, anyway.

Burnt-in Timecode is a BITC!!!

With SMPTE timecode pretty much standard in A/V editing programs, burning a timecode stamp (burnt-in timecode or BITC - pronounced bit-see) onto a digital video should be unnecessary for this day and age. Unfortunately, this is not the case if you are using Pro Tools M-Powered 7.3 to record a film score.

Pro Tools LE (the one bundled with the Mbox or Mbox2) can be upgraded to show SMPTE timecode, in addition to measuring time in bars-and-beats, samples, and minutes-seconds-and-decimals. Unfortunately, you have to spend extra dollars on something called the DV Toolkit.

If you've spent the retail value of a new car on Pro Tools HD, then any applicable DV options had better be there!

The bottom line is this: For the robustness of my music program of choice and necessity, it is missing SMPTE timecode, which is a universal language when it comes to film postproduction. The only way to remedy this is to go old school by using BITC.

And that, my friends, can be an odyssey in an of itself. It was for me!

With Final Cut Pro, you'll need to nest the entire movie's timeline and add BITC as a video filter on top of the video nest. This also means you'll have to render a new video, and if you're using prosumer or consumer hardware - you'll have time to catch up on a good book or two.

If you're using Adobe products, you'll probably need to call in the entire cavalry to do this simple act. Earlier versions of Premiere Pro lack this simple filter, so you'll need to turn to After Effects to add a timecode filter. Instead of creating glowing lightsabers for seconds at a time, you'll need to render an entire movie with BITC. Read a book; rendering will take a while.

You'll be able to add BITC with any frame rate - in our case, roughly 24 frames per second - however, the rendered movie from After Effects might end up as a 30 fps movie. This will cause all sorts of confusion if you're going to import the BITC movie in Pro Tools, so you'll need to import the video into Premiere Pro. With this program, you can output the entire movie in 24 fps, and you'll be able to either take a nap or read another book.

When you're done, open Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and Flash for good measure. You probably won't need these specific programs for BITC, but they need love, too.

Any way you slice it - OS, Windows, or Linux - you'll need to render a movie, and rendering sucks. Few exceptions include: Fast, professional hardware and/or exporting to tape with a deck/camcorder that creates BITC.

Locking

Since last I wrote here, we've changed our hardware set up. We are now working on a 24" iMac Core2 Duo Extreme. Believe me - it makes a difference over the Powerbook. We are working on locking the picture now for sound. Much of the effects work is done but we decided to stop working on that for now so we can lock a final edit for Ryan. He is doing the score and the dialog and I now understand cannot really dive into this until he has the final final edit. This process is not terribly difficult but does require meticulous attention to detail and two sets of eyes for quality control.

Once we are satisfied on the picture end with the way the thing is cut together, we'll pass it on to Ryan so that he can start digging in. At that point, I will go back to the picture, finish the special effects, and color correct scene by scene. I will then insert sound effects. Once all of this is finished, Ryan should have something for me to listen to. I'll probably put it in the edit temporarily and we will talk about any changes that need to be made. He'll keep honing and we will by that time know what ADR will be necessary so we can arrange for certain actors to re-record certain dialog. At the end of all of this - and a lot of credits - will be the marriage of sound to picture and the film will be complete...Complete - but still locked in the hard drive. Getting it out of there at the highest possible quality is a whole other blog entry.

So as you can see, there is a lot more work ahead of us - but - we are actually able to see the light at the end of the tunnel now. It is a good feeling. It's all about small victories adding up when you're making a film independently. And so we trudge on...

Post Production: Getting There

We are getting there with the movie. A film tends to take on a life of its own. It reminds me more and more every time I work on it of a painting. There just is not a formula. It is so much like life. Unexpected twists and turns and wonderful surprises wait around every corner. Besides crafting the "cut" of the scenes, I've been working with visual effects which is an ongoing learning experience, an experiment, and an exhilarating process all at once. It's also very technical. Final Cut 6 is a fantastic program that has evolved considerably from previous versions in a seeming effort to steal some thunder from Adobe After Effects. The Color program as part of the FCP suite is also fantastic and robust program, proving useful as I get into the color and effects process.

On another note, this is a phase that has me a bit on edge. In the past, I've had complete control of all aspects of the post process for my projects. I had the footage, sound effects, music, and any extraneous material right in front of me. This case is a little different. I have the footage and access to thousands of sound effects and visual effects but what I do not have readily available is the score and finished dialog. Mr. Ryan DeRamos has been working hard on these aspects of the film in a different studio with his own pro equipment. This causes two disparate things to happen at the same time: First, I get all anxious because I'm at a point in the process where I'd really like to see this picture a step closer to completion. Second, I get kind of a charge inside as I keep honing the picture and all its thousands of details into the one that I am looking for. This charge occurs because I realize that soon, when Ryan's work is added to mine, a HUGE jump will be made in the quality and impact of the work that I have been doing on Elan Vital. I look forward to this point and I am sure the film will evolve even more from that point on as sound and picture should be a marriage with a long engagement and not a blind date.

So - we're getting there. It is taking longer than I expected but the film may actually be longer than expected and (better) than expected - but you can be the judge of that when we are all through. In the mean time, I continue shaping away the story and fine tuning the details. Anyone interested in an inspiring story of a director's first film against all odds, take a look at these facts about the film, Eraserhead from 1977 (the year I was born) - and don't worry - Elan Vital will not take nearly as long to complete. Thank God for digital!