Techy Stuff

Charles and Mike at Martini Towers ...

The music written by Mike Westbrook and performed by the Miscellany Choir was recorded using a Soundfield SPS422B surround sound microphone system feeding a B format signal into four tracks of a Sound Device 744T multitrack recorder, with a stereo feed also going into a Tascam DA-PI portable DAT recorder.

During the initial period of the FBSG films, we have been using stereo recordings of Mike Westbrook's 'preferred complete takes' of the seven pieces of music. However, the choir had also recorded numerous pick-ups and patches of several parts of each recording, and it was now time to edit these together to form a B-format surround master.

Mike Westbrook lives in Dawlish and I (Charles) live in Lincolnshire so we agreed to meet up in London at my colleague David Martin's edit suite (David is a feature film editor with titles such as Sid and Nancy, The Chamomile Lawn and School for Seduction under his belt).

Fortunately Mike had made and kept copious notes from his initial listening to the session tapes, so was well prepared for the edit. We played each recording element in the required order, Mike following the music on his score bar by bar and telling me precisely at which point we should cross over to the next recorded element. These joins were then played back, adjusted if necessary, and usually a quick mix was applied so that the reverberation sounded convincing. Some of the music pieces had half a dozen or more cuts, whilst just one was a complete take.

Now that we have a four track B-format master of the seven pieces of music, the next challenge is, using suitable software, to convert the music to 5.1 surround sound and then to edit it back into the completed films, replacing the initial preferred complete takes which we have been using as temporary markers. This may require some small adjustments to the picture if the durations are not exactly the same. Then we will have to do a final sound mix on each of the films.

(Ed) Tell me about it ... !