Audio post for TV series: ever-tighter schedules and budgets challenge top TV pros

Post, April, 2004 by David John Farinella

Meyer's point is that dialogue is king. "Everything else is a bonus in the show because what you want to hear are the jokes," he says, "and you're stuck with a lot of stuff the way you're not in drama, because there's no ADR in the show, or very little. Something has to be pretty bad to bring somebody in to redo a line."

All of the dialogue and music for Whoopi comes off of an AMS Neve AudioFile while the rest of the show comes off Pro Tools tracks. Meyer mixes on an SSL 4000. "So, I'm not inside a computer for the mix part of it and it's so nice to edit that way. I finish the show digital 24 multitrack, because I've got to release that anyway and it's just a nice place to be." There's talk in the HSR hallways of upgrading Meyer's room, but he's not so sure it will help. "We're mixing as fast as we can, nothing like a new console or a big Pro Tools system is going to speed up the operation," he says. "I've been thinking about a new console, but quite honestly if I get a new console I'd probably want another analog console. I'm not really fond of how fully digital consoles sound."

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Money, or talking about it, is a new trend that Meyer is seeing. "Obviously everyone is worried about price," he says. "That's the one thing in the last few years that I've had to deal with more than anything else. I'm always talking money with my clients and I never did before. Over the past three years it's always an issue. That's the biggest trend, trying to deliver a really good product under a terrible budget constraint."

From Meyer's seat he urges his audio post brethren to take full advantage of technology. "The thing that I use for a lot of dialogue is a Dolby 43A field processor. That thing is as old as the hills, but it's beautiful for getting out that studio rumble you get when you're doing a sitcom. It does it seamlessly and you never hear it working. I'm sure that most of the people who do this wouldn't be surprised, because I think we're all using it," he says. Just last year he picked up another helpful tool, Cedar Audio's DNS1000. "It is unbelievable. The things it can remove, it's almost scary. Digital gear can be a little daunting to use, because of all it can do, but they've got that thing laid out so well and it's so easy to use. If you've got a problem area it's gone in literally a minute. Hell, I got crickets out of an outdoor track once."

MIXING A DRAMA LIKE A FEATURE

The New York City-based Soundtrack Film and Television team recently completed full audio post production services for the final season of Sex and the City while they continued to record ADR sessions for all three Law & Order shows. The biggest challenge on Sex in the City, states COO Chris Rich, was that the show was posted more like a feature than a traditional television show. "There was a crew of five editors that worked on each show; they each got a week to spend on the show," he says. "Every show had two days of Foley, so it was a very robust sort of thing. We delivered the last two or three shows the Thursday before they were aired, so it wasn't like it was in the can for weeks just sitting there. Of course, when you have that kind of situation you're working under all kinds of deadlines and you have to mix until midnight just to get back on track. That was a common occurrence."