Score, foley, and final mixing

We have been busy little lurker bees round the Intersect hive since the last update. We have such sights to show you!

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In October, we travelled to HUGE Studios in Salt Lake City to record the orchestral sections of our score. Peter McConnell, our composer, whose work includes the classic "Grim Fandango" as well as many of the Lucas Arts video game titles, has delivered a uniquely evocative and moving score. We were lucky to cross paths with and befriend Peter earlier in the year and luckier still to be able to listen to his work performed by a massively talented 40-piece orchestra.

Having watched loads of behind the scenes featurettes from my favorite films over the years, I'm quite familiar with the feeling of awe young filmmakers experience the first time they hear their score played back to them by a professional orchestra inside a large studio... I'm happy to report, I felt the very same awe. Living in a bubble of editing and working in dark rooms surrounded by empty root beer cans, mint chocolate wrappers, and my scruffy dog for months at a time just doesn't prepare you for being exposed to something like that. Suddenly, there's 40-50 new people working on your movie and you realize the fact that you can strum the guitar doesn't make you a musician. Humbling is the word.

Speaking of the guitar... through the end of October, between finishing off the edit and the color on the movie, Gus and I got together to record some tracks of incidental music and sound effects to make a few scenes a little extra moody. It was refreshing to dust off the old rig and scrape the plectrum a bit in anger.

November saw us at the comfy Saltmine Studio Oasis in Mesa, AZ. Our friends, the Tetra String Quartet, who also appear in the film, came out to record a few more pieces of Peter's score to complement the full orchestral sections. We even tracked a few pieces with Josh Bennett on bass clarinet to bring in a few of the Twilight Zone vibes.

Throughout a large portion on December, we were in Florida working with our longtime friend and co-conspirator, Thomas Amason. Thomas has worn number of hats on Intersect, including ADR recordist, foley recordist, re-recording mixer, sound designer, and sound supervisor. Everything sound related eventually ends up in Thomas' lap. For these few weeks, we mainly focused on the overall mix of dialogue, sound effects, foley, and music... but we did dabble in some new sound design and even worked on mixing the film in 5.1 space... something we plan to exploit in a very sci-fi way.

So it's January now. We're back home. The film is mixed, edited and colored... barring a few remaining fixes. The CG is in. The music is in. Abe Fucking Ruthless is in. We'll be busy the next couple weeks putting the finishing touches on credits, artwork, and a trailer. 

What's next?

-Luke (D.P.)

CG, reshoots, and mouse poop.

We're deep into post world and inching towards the finish line. We've been staring at and fussing over this movie for what seems like years now. Having shot and edited another movie in the meantime, we gained a lot of perspective on Intersect and decided to capitalize on that experience.

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Over the past few months, we organized a few key reshoots to jazz up existing scenes and to add a bit of value or visual interest in between others. One that was particularly rewarding was to finally bring Miskatonic University to the screen. The use of MU in Intersect is a reference to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, which was only a less than explicit nod up to this point, but we decided something more overt was called for. So we took over a portion of the ASU campus and brought it to life.

Having secured funding to complete the CG, we also needed to shoot a variety of items and animals on green screen to help illustrate some of the important scientific experiments that take place in the story.

Once the edit was locked with the new reshoots and green screen footage added in, we engaged the help of the amazing, Emmy award winning CG company, Tomahawk Visual Effects. (Or TMHK for short) These guys really took the ball and ran with it. Eventually we all realized that sports based idioms were way out of style, and instead, they just went to work.

TMHK blew us away with their hard work, their designs, and their ideas for this movie. Finding the right people to gel with your project is difficult thing, but these guys 'got' the movie right away and continuously impressed us with the art they delivered to us.

Tune in next time when we discuss music, foley, and the final mix!

-Luke (D.P.)

Intersect Portal Roadtrip

It's a good thing time is just a human construct, because you could be tricked into thinking we've been working on this movie for years and years... but actually, especially from the standpoint of the history of our planet (earth), we just barely got started.

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So, welcome back! Let's go on a little trip. We've packed up our time machine and hit the road so we could introduce it to a sampling of different environments. We even pointed a camera at it while we were out. Maybe it will end up helping us promote the movie in some way.

First step, crank up the jams. We stuck to tradition and went with Fit For Rivals, full f*cking blast. We dragged the portal out of retirement and gave it a wipe down... it was hidden under a tarp, constantly battered by the unforgiving Arizona weather, including what appeared to be a few lightning strikes. We found the 120º temperatures to be the perfect setting for a scene in the snow. And who's gonna know we WEREN'T in the actual snow, am I right?

We eventually threw the portal on a trailer and showed it what the woods and streams are like up in the Tonto National Forest of Northern Arizona. We clambered up the scorching sand dunes of Tatooine Yuma, lugging the portal behind us, before attempting to roll it back down and the end of an exhausting day. And finally, we all had a day out on dog beach in Del Mar, California, until the tide started pulling the portal out to sea.

We returned home, necks burnt and shoes full of sand, confident that we had shown the portal a rewarding couple of days.

Coming soon - What the hell else have we been doing on this movie!?

-Luke (D.P.) ((I'm the goober on the left))

ADR sessions

The last update for INTERSECT was December 13, 2011!

Over the past 3 years Black Chalk Productions has been busy with a number of projects, most notably the feature length documentary, THE UNBELIEVERS. Since then, we've made tons of new connections and additions to our team - all of which will help to make INTERSECT the best film it can be. This blog post chronicles the first few steps back into the world of sci-fi time-travel.

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SITREP: The film has been edited, pickup shooting has begun, and ADR is mostly complete. ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) or "looping" is the process of re-recording dialogue by the original actor after the filming process to improve audio quality or reflect script changes, according to Wikipedia. ADR is generally a luxury afforded by big budget films, as it can be costly and time consuming, but we chose to take this step to make this film the best it can be. It gave us the ability to slightly massage certain performances in addition to creating a more even sound to the film throughout.

The video below details the process of recording ADR:

Intersect - BTS 16 from Black Chalk on Vimeo.

The purpose of this video, while fairly esoteric, was to illustrate the benefits of ADR recording and give some insight into the process. A special thanks to Thomas Amason, of FIT FOR RIVALS, for his tireless work as our ADR maestro.

In the coming weeks and months, we will be updating the blog with more regular status reports. We do hope you'll stay interested in our film.

-Luke (D.P.)