Finally, another regular blog post, after 2 years of sparse activity…barring a few reviews (another coming). This was due to the fact that I was under NDA at the company I worked for. All I could say was that I was working on a certain show. Beyond that…I couldn’t say anything. On that note, for the past two years I’ve worked on two seasons of ANCIENT ALIENS, two seasons of AMERICA’S BOOK OF SECRETS, a short series called BIBLE SECRETS REVEALED and two seasons of THE CURSE OF OAK ISLAND. With a handful of specials and a few shows that I’ve onlined and color corrected. One of those series that I color corrected was for Werner Herzog…which is really cool! A cinematic hero of mine. But other than saying “I made Werner Herzog shows look pretty,” I didn’t have much to say about the shows…technically speaking.

OK, there was one great thing. He framed one interview to include a window, because there was a view of the freeway outside of it. It was blown out and he wanted me to do a power window and fix it as best I could, because he wanted to see the cars. He loved cars, ever since he was a young boy growing up in Bavaria, where he was so poor that he nor his friends could afford one. When one would drive by on the road, he and his friends would all run to see it drive by.  OK…there, got that out of the way.

Now, back to A HAUNTING.  I did cut 3 episode of season 5 this fun show 3 years ago…and I blogged about it starting with this post. And I have done the fine cut notes one episode, and recut another episode with another editor in the past year. Those fixes lured me back. That and being able to work from home…that’s a big bonus. No commute so those hours can be…well…used to work a little longer on the show.

Another bonus is being able to have my kids watch me work, which they like to do. And they like the show, too. And they really like seeing how the show is put together. My youngest (age 11) will come into my office and watch me watch dailies, and then assemble a scene. I’ll even be a bit sly and educate her on editing, by ask her advice about which take she thinks is the best. Most often it’s the one I thought as well. Other times, she’ll point out some part of a take that I might not notice. Some reaction that she likes…and it’s nice to have that perspective.  I’ll ask her when she thinks I should cut…and why. And what she thinks I should cut to. It’s pretty fun.

Today she sat behind me as I was beginning to score a scene and add SFX. She really likes to see a scene come together with sound effects and music. She marvels at how a small effect will impact things…and how many I layer really fills out a scene. “It makes the scene…you know…more rich. Less hollow.”  Good way to describe it.

So, in this scene the character begins to vacuum and hears a sound in the kitchen…but he’s alone in the house. He stops looks around, calls for his wife…then shrugs and goes back to vacuuming. A sound happens again, and again he stops to investigate. While he’s looking about he hears another sound, turns around and then the ghost appears.  Well, in the filming of the scene when the actor starts the vacuum, there is no vacuum sound. That is something I need to add. And in both cases where the actor needs to react to the sounds, the director can be heard saying “SOUND” in the background.  “How are you going to get rid of the director talking?” my daughter asked. “Why did the director even talk..that makes this difficult.”

“Well, let’s see. If I remove the sound of the director…what does that do?” And I do…and as expected, having audio cut out to complete silence was jarring. “Well, you can’t do that,” she replied. “Now it sounds empty…and it’s too abrupt.” I was able to explain to her about the use of “room tone” in situations just like this.  But this was tricky as the actor was performing an action….moving a vacuum on the floor.  The room tone worked for the third time the actor hears the sound, for the vacuum is off and the actor is still, looking about the house. But for the other two times. The first thing I did was add the sound of the vacuum…which helped a bit, but you could still hear the audio cut out as the sound of the vacuum moving on the floor can be heard, and then suddenly not heard.

“What do we do about that?” she asked.

“Well,” I replied, “we need a similar sound…of the vacuum moving on the floor, right? So I just need to grab some audio from a time he’s moving the vacuum and match the motion…so we cut out when he’s pushing it forward. Let’s find another place where he’s pushing it forward, and use that.” I did and it worked great.  So after adding the vacuum, and patching the hole where the director spoke, I then looked for a sound to occur.  I chose a loud floor creak, as that’s something that one might think a person could make…but could also be a sound a ghost makes.  And then I sweetened that with a low boom sound effect when the actor reacts to the sound.  And looked or a place where the music goes from a low tension drone to have a musical sting.  And then back timed that and mixed the track so the edit was smooth.

After a couple hours we had the scene edited and with layers of audio. And with that my daughter excused herself to go inside and have a snack, and then go for a bike ride. But during the time I had her with me, she was engaged and really enjoyed herself.  Thinking that I might have one of my kids following in my foot steps.