By Steve Little
The ability to work remotely during the sound editorial process is fundamentally dependant upon the stance of the production company with regards security, the level of which is often determined by the production’s budget.
Some companies simply would not allow picture files to be sent anywhere other than to facilities with a proven security trail, such as the studios or post-houses who all have security passes per corridor, cameras and safes to put drives in.
Production companies that do allow remote working will often want a site visit to assess security, insist on ‘air gaps’ for any down or uploads and for additional software to be installed to further limit the risk to their property.
Many of us who are freelance have worked from home for years, either in sound-treated rooms in our houses or in purpose built studios in the garden or garage. We’re accustomed to going through a production company’s security checks and using secure systems like Aspera to upload bounces to the other departments or to download turnovers from the picture department.
Over the past few months a large number of facility employees have had a system set up for them at home by their employers; a simple process as long as they’ve got the space. All things considered, fundamentally little has changed in recent months with regard to how most of us would normally do the sound editing portion of our work.
SO TO THE INDIVIDUAL DEPARTMENTS OF THE SOUND TEAM:
As long as FX editors are able to get turnovers from the picture department they can happily work away in isolation, until the point at which the mix starts.
Music editors are similarly positioned; they can work remotely and send temp music ideas to whoever needs to listen to them (until such time as they need to get an orchestra in to record of course).
The same applies to dialogue editors. As long as they have all the floor sound, any other AVID media they need from the cutting room and an ability to download turnovers, they can chug away remotely until they’re through their editing process.
Recording foley can be done whilst maintaining social distancing; most foley pits are a good few metres away from where the recordist sits.
The area where things start to get a little tricky is during the ADR and crowd recording process. During a recent AMPS webinar a few of us discussed the pros and cons of various methods of remote recording that we’d tried, and we concluded that there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Ben Nemes has written an article summarising the chat, which is published on the Resurface website. The article also has a link to a PDF of the text chat between the listeners during the webinar, which has handy tips and ideas in it too, alongside a link to the webinar itself. Suffice to say, now we’re a few weeks on, the ideas we discussed will already have been developed and changed as the industry refines the options available. Remotely recording ADR and crowd with the solutions outlined in Ben’s article will never be preferable to recording in a traditional manner, certainly where more involved ADR sessions or large crowds are concerned, but for now it’s the best we’ve got when a production needs to be delivered.
So, once the sound editorial stage is complete, the remaining parts of the soundtrack delivery process are the pre and final mixes. Depending on the scale of the project (smaller features or TV dramas for instance), these could easily be done remotely by a mixer in isolation and then sent off for review and notes.
However, a final mix on a larger scale production would usually have at least two re-recording mixers, possibly a mix tech, a sound supervisor, dialogue & ADR editor(s), FX editor(s), music editor, picture editor, director and any number of producers or execs in the room at any one time, which is obviously impossible when having to comply with social distancing rules and regulations.
A mix on this sort of scale could feasibly be done over various passes with fewer people in the room, but this would be time-consuming and more importantly would remove the collaborative immediacy that is key to the success of the end product. One solution would be for everyone to connect remotely via something like Source Connect, which can stream 5.1 or 7.1 mixes, but like remote ADR it’s a step backwards with regards the fluid, intuitive workflow that is so important to the creative process.
The technicians who work in the post-sound industry are an ingenious and inventive bunch and love nothing more than a problem to solve. So, although the only real solution for any of these challenges is the relaxing of the social distancing rules, whilst we are where we are if there’s audio that needs delivering they’ll find the best possible way to do so. That is until one of their peers builds on their idea to arrive at an even better solution.
Thanks to Rob Walker at AMPS, Ben Nemes at SpaceCrate, and all who took part in the original webinar.