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!

: : : VIDEO BELOW : : :

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.)

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.

:::VIDEO BELOW:::

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.)