Monsters from the Id 怪獣大悪脳

It must be getting close to Christmas.

After bugging me for the last several weeks about playing Christmas music in our cutting room, Dana finally convinced me today to put some on. For the last few hours that we were in the office we worked away to the gentle melodies of the Glenn Miller Orchestra's "In The Christmas Mood" volumes one and two.

When I was growing up there were two Time-Life cassettes of Christmas music that my parents had and for me those songs really represent the spirit of the season. Unless my memory is playing tricks on me, I think the series was called "Home For The Holidays".

Time-Life doesn't sell it anymore but thankfully a few years ago I discovered that they had a new set of CDs with nearly the same track list, "The Time-Life Treasury Of Christmas". I gave those as a gift to my mom that year and now I insist that if she's going to put on some music when I visit her, those have to go into the rotation.

Christmas music is one of those festive holiday things, but I can't take a lot of it. I hoping that we don't have to listen to it everyday for the next three weeks.

Posted by Jon at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I find it's amazing how quickly the internet has become a integral part of my life. Today at work our internet connection was down most of the day and it was remarkable the number of times I was frustrated because I couldn't go online. I have two editors working out of their homes and the picture department is on the other side of town. So it is certainly easier to exchange certain files over the net than it is to drive there in a car. Recently we've had some ADR sessions in Toronto and Montreal. With an ISDN hookup to a local stage we were able to get immediate recordings of those lines but with the internet I was able to download the original files within an hour or so of finishing the session. Even faster than FedEx overnight.

Plus Dana and I tend to have many pop culture-related conversations while we are doing our work.

"'Dance Fever USA'? That sounds a lot like that movie with Sarah Jessica Parker and Helen Hunt."

"'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun'?"

"Exactly. What was the name of the dance TV show on that?"

"I don't know. But Shannon Doherty was the younger daughter."

"Yes, but who was the geeky little brother?"

"Little brother? I don't remember that one."

"'Tune-in Tokyo'? No? Jonathan Silverman."

"Oh yeah!"

Of course it's not always that easy to remember all the names or the movies so we're often going online to look at IMDB or All Music Guide or Google searches. So without the internet today, the conversations tended more towards the oblique.

"You know. The guy. That one who did that thing."

"The guy? What thing?"

"You know, in that movie with the woman with the hair."

"Most of them do have hair."

"No. But she married that other guy."

Much less fun.

I first got on the internet when I started college in 1992. Twelve years is certainly a long time to be online. However back then it was with my 2400 baud modem---not even comparable to a 512kbps DSL connection today. I don't think I had a dedicated broadband internet connection in the office I worked in until 2000. Obviously I used the internet a lot in those eight years but it was really only sometime in the last four that it has become so pervasive, so much a part of my life that I feel a sense of loss when I don't have access to it.

Posted by Jon at 8:58 PM | Permalink

Sometimes it's best just to leave well enough alone. Things might not be perfect but they're good enough. Sure, you're sitting there. Taking stock of things and you say to yourself, "Hey! I know I can make this better."

The problem is that intent does not always equal success. Good intentions are certainly good. We all like good intentions. However, when those good intentions lead to failing miserably, you have to ask yourself, "Was it really worth it? Are good intentions all they're really cracked up to be?"

I have a goatee. I'm one of those "trim around the edges" kind of goatee guys. It can get big after a while if I don't cut it back. Initially, years ago, I started growing it out because it didn't come in very full---kind of the comb-over equivalent to facial hair. Now it comes in much better.

This morning I had the brilliant idea that I might finally be able to set my trimmer to #2 and just buzz over everything. Much faster and probably cleaner looking in the long run. Easier than the trim around edges.

Unfortunately I now have a couple of bare patches on my upper lip thanks to some over-zealous clipper work. Thankfully it grows back. I'll just have to suffer through looking like an idiot for a couple of weeks until I can even it all out.

"Hello. I'm Jon. Big dummy."

Posted by Jon at 8:46 PM | Permalink

This is one of the funniest damn things I've read in a while. Funny because it's so true.

"MY MODEST PROPOSAL: THE U.S.A.R."
By C. B. Shapiro 

I feel bad for the Red States. 

Yes, they won the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and most of the state houses.  But they still can't have the country they really want because the last few Blue States won't roll over.  So I am making a simple proposal:

Secession.  Divorce.  Splitsville.

Personally, I think we made a huge mistake not letting them go when we had the chance back in 1862.  Well, no time like the present to correct an old mistake.

Then, they would finally be free to have the kind of society they've always wanted; church and state can be fused so they build the kind of theocracy they've dreamt of, with Jesus at the helm.  Then the new USAR (United States of America Red) can ban books, repeal civil rights, persecute gays and have all the wars they like. They want prayer in schools?   More power to them.  They can ban abortion and post the Ten Commandments in every federal building in their country.  Bring back slavery, if they want.  We'll be free to live with our like-minded countrymen who believe in science, modernism, tolerance, religion as a personal choice, and truly want limited government intrusion in our personal lives.  Why should each side be driven mad by the other any more, decade after decade?

Call the Culture War a tie and everyone go home.

Of course, we in the U.S.A.B. get the Gross Domestic Product, businesses and universities of California, New York, Massachussetts -- basically the whole Northeast and Northwest (plus Illinois and Michigan if they want to come along).  They get Wal-Mart and Duke and most of the Nascar tracks.  But they can feel free to import movies, TV shows, financial services, and defense technology.  We'll import country music, bibles and Confederate flags.

The two countries will by necessity have open immigration policy: anyone who feels they are living in the wrong country can just move across the border, no questions asked.

Ultimately, why should I have to convince my fellow countrymen that Darwin may have had a point and that the word “liberal” is not equivalent to “godless communist?”  And why should they be forced to live in a country with morally corrupt non-believers?  I'll stay in the messy, free-thinking U.S.A.B.  And to the U.S.A.R. I say…

God bless you all, and see you at the U.N

Posted by Jon at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

You know that part in horror movies where the hero is chased by some crazy murderer and attacked with a knife or an axe or some other implement of death and just before the killing blow lands, the hero wakes up screaming? And just as relief starts flooding through the hero's body the crazy murderer comes crashing through the door or the window or the wall and you realize that the nightmare isn't over? It's just beginning.

I woke up this morning and walked into my own horror movie when I saw the electoral votes on the TV.

Posted by Jon at 8:06 PM | Permalink

Pants? Check.

Wallet? Check.

iPod? Check.

Cellphone? Check.

Keys? Oh crap.

Every two or three years something happens and I manage to step outside my apartment, close the door and almost immediately discover that my keys are now on the otherside of 2 inches of wood and a Schlage lock.

I guess I was due because that was the situation I found myself in this morning just before 8am. My internal clock had me up early since we just had our time change. I was doing a little cleaning around me apartment. When I went to take the trash out, I immediately discovered that although I had managed to have nearly every other technological gadget about my person, the necessary keys were sitting on the counter.

Thankfully since I had my cellphone I was in touch with a locksmith within minutes and a half-hour later he was crouched at my door jiggling his tools in the handle.

This was obviously the first call of the day for him and he had that rumpled "I just got out of bed" look about him. But he was a friendly fellow and proceeded to wax rather philosphic while I stood around impatiently waiting for him to let me in.

"Wow! Look at that tree! It's beautiful! You know you have quite a view up here."

I guess he was working on the lock by touch and sound because he was looking past me down the hill and over the morning rooftops of Burbank.

"I bet you could just sit and stare out the window on the other side of your place looking at the mountains all day long."

"Actually that window just looks into an alley."

"Still, you know a tree like that takes a lot of work to get it to look that beautiful."

"Yeah. Probably."

"You know, you have to trim it once a year. You have to make sure all the branches are pointing up or they'll just end up breaking off."

"Ok."

"You know how much it costs to trim a tree that size."

"I have no idea."

"Five thousand bucks.'

"Wow."

"Yeah. Hey! Check out that hummingbird! You know a tree like that supports an incredible amount of life."

"Uh huh."

"All kinds of different things live in a tree like that. Imagine if all of us could live in a tree like that. The number of people it could support. That would be incredible. You know my neighbor this old guy doesn't trim his tree. The branches don't point up. They're all going 'zoom' like this and back like that. Ok, let's try this lock the other way."

"Actually it opens clockwise like how you were first going."

"I know. I'll reset it if I get it open."

"Ok."

He went on and on like that for the twenty minutes it took him to get the door open. After suggesting that I hang a shower curtain in front of my balcony to get more privacy and informing me that my neighbor's wooden shingle roof was a huge fire hazard, the lock finally popped and my cat Max who was really curious about all the racket that was going on at the door stuck his head out through the crack in the doorway.

I managed to get Max back inside before he escaped, thanked the locksmith for coming to my aid, and went on with my life with a whole new outlook.

Ok. Maybe not.

Posted by Jon at 6:36 PM | Permalink

From the AP:

Billboard to Rank Cell Phone Ringtones

... The music market tracker Billboard will begin ranking the customized mobile phone sound snippets beginning next week....

As it does with other music sales data, Billboard will publish the top 20 ringtones purchased for each week.

Is it just me or is this totally lame? I have never had much use for the Billboard charts. They certainly don't reflect the music that I'm interested in and that I buy. Of course I'm also not a 12-year-old girl. But it seems to me that this is the final nail in the coffin of Billboard's relevancy. Are the record labels so anxious to justify themselves that they have to bolster their self-esteem by keeping track of which 15 second music-bytes are the most popular on telephones? Does this mean that there is going to be a surge in the "Macarena" on the charts again? How about "Hava Nagila"?

I've got an idea. My current ringtone is the theme to "The A-Team". I think those crack commandos from the 80's deserve to be on the charts. If everyone called me my cellphone maybe we could make it to number one. The number is 818-555... oh nevermind.

Posted by Jon at 11:53 AM | Permalink

Not me.

Jon Stewart and "The Daily Show" has been very political since the 2000 election and seems to have gotten even more so with the current election. Recently though, Jon has started to take on news organizations for being puppets of the politicians, for not calling them out when they get caught in a lie.

If you've missed any of these confrontations, you really should set aside a few minutes to take a look. Jon went on CNN's "Crossfire" pleaded with them to "Stop... hurting... America." The following Monday he talked about the encounter on his own show. "Here's the thing about confronting someone on their show. They're there.... Uncomfortable!" He also spoke with a gathering a journalists for an hour about his thoughts on journalistic integrity on an episode of "American Perspectives" which aired on CSPAN. He expressed similar views on "60 Minutes".

Posted by Jon at 7:54 PM | Permalink

This just in from Reuters:

Veteran British disc jockey John Peel, who championed new music trends like punk on mainstream radio, has died of a heart attack on holiday in Peru.

Basically every band on the planet has played on John Peel's show at one time or another. Obviously anytime you see an album that is called "The Peel Sessions" it was recorded by him. Also many that just say "Live At The BBC".

I'm very saddened to hear of his passing.

Posted by Jon at 10:31 AM | Permalink

My cousin is in town from Norway and we are going to see some sites today and then tonight I'm off to a minor league hockey game for a friend's birthday. Tomorrow will probably be some more touristy things with my cousin. I'll try to post pictures when I can.

Posted by Jon at 9:25 AM | Permalink

This is one the scariest things I've read recently. I never liked our president but I didn't realize we had such a blind zealot in the office who pushes his own personal beliefs upon this country whether they have a basis in reality or not.

In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored "road map" for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman --- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress --- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.

"I don't know why you're talking about Sweden," Bush said. "They're the neutral one. They don't have an army."

Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: "Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army." Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.

Bush held to his view. "No, no, it's Sweden that has no army."

The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.

A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. "You were right," he said, with bonhomie. "Sweden does have an army."

You might need this if you're not registered with the NY Times website.

Posted by Jon at 10:47 AM | Permalink

This weekend was the first time it really felt like Autumn in Los Angeles. We had our first big rain starting late on Saturday and continuing off and on throughout Sunday. In fact we are supposed to have rain through Wednesday. I'm glad it's raining. We certainly can use it. It continually amazes me though how quickly an arid landscape like LA can flood with just a few tenths of an inch of rain. Today I drove over the Los Angeles River and it was a raging torrent. Of course not nearly as bad as when we had an El Niño several years ago, but still with what many areas of the country would consider a light rain, Los Angeles floods like crazy.

The temperature has dropped too. It is these low to mid-60s days are the Octobers I remember from my youth. Actually it's even a bit warmer than I remember. Of course those were Mid-West and New England Octobers. The kind of Octobers where you'd wake up and the orange and brown leaves that had fallen would be frozen to the ground with the first signs of frost. The kinds of Octobers where you could see your breath when you chatted with your friends while waiting at the bus stop for a ride to school. The kinds of October where if you didn't wear gloves when you picked up your pumpkin from the local patch, your hands would be ice cold in minutes and you'd spend the entire drive home blowing on them, trying to warm them up.

So it's not quite the same October that I remember as a child. But it's still Autumn.

Posted by Jon at 8:55 PM | Permalink

Yesterday morning I met my father for breakfast in Pasadena. He was in town most of last week teaching a seminar at the Hilton, just outside of Old Town. We were saying our "goodbyes" before his flight back home to Florida. After a buffet of scrambled eggs, hash browns and some assorted melons, I left at about 9:45am to drive back to my apartment in Burbank.

As I was heading north on the 5 freeway, I noticed that the two Holiday Inn towers that dominate the surrounding buildings were obscured by some kind of haze. We have had some thick fog the last several mornings but most of it had burned off by that time. All that was left was some low-hanging clouds around the Verdugo mountains. It seemed unlikely that there would still be fog around a couple of buildings and no where else. Then I noticed what appeared to be diagonal white lines coming from the haze.

Within a minute I was close enough to realize what I was looking at: A low building south of the Holiday Inn was on fire. The haze was the smoke and the white lines were the water spraying from hoses at the top of extended ladders on fire trucks. In another minute I was coming up on the exit for Olive and passing the burning building. I had a sudden shock when I thought I knew what building it was but I had to get closer to be sure.

I got off at the Olive exit and immediately started to encounter police road blocks. Three blocks around First Street and Santa Anita were cordoned off. By driving around the perimeter I saw that my initial thought was correct. International Recording was burning. I was filled with a strange sadness. Not the sharp pain of a personal loss but still a melancholy.

International has among other things a few dub stages. Four years ago I spent a lot of time there when they mixed several films I worked on: "Play It To The Bone", "My Dog Skip", "Urbania", and "The Contender". Bill Schlegel, the owner, was always a nice enough guy to me and it was sad to see all his hard work disappear. In fact International was an even larger accomplishment for Bill than one might expect. He and a few engineers hand-built most of the components and wiring used by the two main stages. It took an enormous amount of time and energy to put together his post-production facility but it was something he could truly call his own.

International Recording is probably best known to the rest of the world as the stage where "Dances With Wolves" was mixed. In 1991, Jeffrey Perkins and Gregory Watkins mixed the sound for Kevin Costner's film and the Academy acknowledged their excellence by awarding them the Oscar for Best Sound.

I had my camera with me so I took a few pictures. Being three blocks away, I couldn't see much more than the fireman at the tops of their ladders directing streams of water into billowing clouds of black and white smoke, the news vans scattered around the scene, the policemen directing traffic and the few gawkers like myself. It seemed that there should be something more to mark this solemn moment. Something more than curious bystanders and a police officer telling me, "I don't know what it is---some kind of post-production place." Something that said, "Bill put his life into this place and now it's gone." My writing certainly doesn't do it justice but I wanted you to know.

Posted by Jon at 7:29 AM | Permalink

Well it has been a long, crazy several days for me culminating in a 26-hour marathon day in the office. But now it is done. The movie has been screened for the studio. Every one is happy. And I was finally able to get some sleep.

Little did I know when I walked into my building at 7am on Wednesday, that I would not be leaving it until 9:30am the next day. Thankfully those kind of days tend to be few and far between, but they do occasionally happen. In fact somewhere around 2am when the picture assistant showed up with a big bag of chili cheeseburgers and fries for the six of us who were trying to get the mix done, someone (I don't remember who) said, "Ah! The glamour of Hollywood!" And it's so true. If you watch E! you see the beautiful stars attending their hip parties, but in reality a lot of the work that it takes to get their faces on the screen is not pretty. It's the kind of work that knocks on your door at midnight with new videotapes, a stack of change notes, and coffee and Pop-Tarts from the local 7-Eleven.

I don't get invited to parties to rub elbows with Jim Carrey, Bruce Willis, Julia Roberts and Naomi Watts. If I'm lucky, the studio will buy me a pizza when they tell me I need to work until the wee hours of the morning to get things done. Now, I'm not saying that I hate my job. The overtime when you put in those kind of hours is certainly nice. I just want everyone to realize that in some ways my job is not all the different from yours. And in many ways it's probably a lot more frustrating. And when I'm driving home after a 26-hour day, I definitely don't like the heart-wrenching surprise when I realize that I fell asleep for a split-second while stopped at the traffic light.

The positive side to an experience like that comes when you get that phone call from the post-production supervisor saying that the studio loved the film, that people were really impressed with the sound and felt that it helped reinforce the temporary visual effects shots, that everyone is happy and that you did a great job. That's what makes it worth it. That's what brings the smile to my face. That's when I say to myself, "I am good at what I do. I would like to see someone else accomplish what we did under the same conditions. Yay, me!" And then I pat myself on the back. Ok, maybe not. But you get the idea. The difficult task that is completed successfully is more rewarding than the easy one. Hopefully though it's not all difficult tasks.

One of my favorite quotes from that day:

Oh good! Coffee! I haven't been jacked up on caffeine in a couple hours.

After sleeping through the majority of Thursday, I got up refreshed and went back to the crew I was working with a few weeks ago. I still felt a little detached from the world that day, almost as if there was a piece of gause separating my brain from the rest of my body and another one keeping me just out of reach of reality. But that feeling soon passed and things are pretty much back to normal. Cross your fingers for me, this next show should keep me on a regular 9 to 7 up until Christmas.

Posted by Jon at 1:59 PM | Permalink

Subsisting off fast food, candy bars and coffee:

Thankfully, opening a Pro Tools session with 64 voices, 40 busses, 8 sub-master auxes, 10 reverbs, 4 EQs and so much automation that your screen looks like crawling ants in Volume Graph mode on Mix Plus hardware in OS X takes a little while, so there's time for some music:

Posted by Jon at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The good news is that I have been working a lot recently. The bad news is that it's been crazy busy and things like reading my favorite websites, writing for my own website and sleep has suffered for it. The show that I'm working on right now makes me wish I could give more details that I can about the movie. It is so goddamned funny I wish I could share with everyone. So I'll say this: there's a moving coming out next summer. It's very clever and quite funny. You should go see it.

Does that help you? ;)

We are actually cleaning up tracks from the Avid, smoothing out dialog and adding FX. This weekend and early next week we will mix everything down to stems. It's basically a mini-temp dub in the Pro Tools. This way the studio gets to see the director's cut of the movie with a decent soundtrack. It's a huge undertaking. When Cameron was given the task, it was just going to be him for 3 weeks. That's nearly impossible so the second week, he was able to bring in another editor and this final week, I came on too. Even on a small movie we might have a crew of 5 working for 3 weeks to do a temp dub. That's 15 weeks of editorial labor. On this show we're getting 6. Plus we have to do the mix ourselves. I suspect we will be seeing more and more shows like this in the future.

When I left last night I had been working for several hours on a large crowd scene. Crowds are probably one of the toughest things to cut well. Trying to keep them dynamic and interesting and have them react naturally to the events around them isn't easy. Of course there's really not time with this to spend anything like that on the crowds. I'm doing the poor man's crowd reactions. The editor already had a bed of babble and reactions in his tracks. To give the big swells when exciting things happen, I pulled a steady white-noise-like extremely large crowd cheer from the sound effect library and looped for the entire length of the scene. Then I changed the volume over time with big spiky movements to simulate large crowd cheers.

I was able to kill two birds with one stone: cut crowd reactions for a ten minute scene and mix it all in one step. Now I'm adding in small group cheers (5 to 10 people) on all the crowd close-ups to give it a little more definition and I'll call it done. It's certainly not the quality that you'd want to turn over for a final mix but for this early stage of the film, it give them a decent sounding crowd quickly.

And of course in the month that I've had my Tivo, I've managed to go a little Tivo-Crazy™. Four months ago, I could have missed an entire month of television and not cared. Now thanks to easy viewing and recording I have a hard drive full of crap I'm never going to watch and I'm already saying to myself, well maybe I should record these to DVD in case I want to watch them in the future. I'm actually up early making DVDs to free up space so that I can record the "Farscape" marathon that Sci Fi channel is running for the next couple of weeks. I could go to the store at lunch and pick up every episode of "Farscape" on DVD and not worry about this. But no. Has to be recorded on Tivo. I'm definitely going to have to sit myself down at some point and get a little more rational about the Tivo.

Well I have to jump in the shower and get off to work (after I put in one last DVD for recording). But I'll leave you with one of the funnier comics I've seen in the last week, about another fun thing that I haven't had the time to enjoy:

Posted by Jon at 7:39 AM | Permalink

Today I moved offices yet again. Boy, I sure am getting sick of playing pack-horse. My actual office just moved down the hall from the room I was in for the last two weeks. However, several editors were starting on a show today and we had to move a couple Pro Tools systems from the offices / storage rooms at Universal to Burbank. Four hours of manual labor plus several hours of assembling Pro Tools systems. Long day.

At one point we had to get a couch out of one of the rooms and move it into another. I flipped it up on it's side and started to slide it across the floor. Dana, the other assistant, got a surprised look on her face.

"Look at you."

"What?"

"Throwing couches around..."

"I used to be a mover. Didn't I tell you?"

It's true. When I was in college I had a job driving a big truck, picking up students stuff on the East Coast and driving it to Chicago. I have moved way too many boxes, trunks, microwaves, and couches in and out of houses and dorm rooms. Plus I drove pick-up trucks for several years which meant that I was always the friend to call when someone was moving.

Hi, I'm Jon and I'll be your mover today.

Posted by Jon at 10:27 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

[Researchers] at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have used spinach to harness a plant's ability to convert sunlight into energy for the first time, creating a device that may one day power laptops, mobile phones and more....

[They] discovered that protein building blocks called detergent peptides could be manipulated to keep the [photosynthesis] proteins alive up to three weeks while in contact with electronics.

Posted by Jon at 12:18 PM | Permalink

Dear Pixies,

Thank you for playing a concert in Los Angeles. You rock! \m/

I am now your best friend.

Jon

(Link to earlier post.)

Posted by Jon at 10:36 AM | Permalink

...perhaps "Hamlet" might have been a little different:

To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the carb; For in that sleep of death what Twinkies may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal Ho-Ho, must give us pause; there's the respect that makes creme-filled treats of so long life.

Oh yeah, and the maker of Twinkies has filed for bankruptcy. Thanks, Xeni, for the wonderful Twinkie death soliloquy.

Posted by Jon at 10:51 AM | Permalink

Today is the first day of our temp dub. For all you non-movie-industry-types, a temp dub is a kind of mini-mixdown of the movie's soundtrack at its current state.

The last thing that is done on a movie prior to sending it out to the lab to make lots and lots of copies for distribution to theaters is the final dub where all the various sound elements---dialog, adr, sound effects, backgrounds, foley and music---are mixed together in the presentation that you hear in the theater. The final dub on your typical Hollywood film usually takes 4 to 6 weeks to complete. (This includes a process called predubbing. I'll explain that in more detail at some point in the future.)

Before a movie goes to the final dub, there are usually 2 or 3 temp dubs during the 2 months or so of sound editorial that usually last 3 to 5 days each. Often these temp dubs are done to get a mixed track that can be played against the current picture cut for an audience test screening, also known as a "preview".

Obviously much less time is spent on a temp dub than on the final dub. Temps can definitely be described as "down and dirty". For sound editors a temp dub always represents a delicate balance between providing enough material to give a good indication of the direction the dialog editing and sound design is going, and providing too much, making it impossible to mix it all in the alloted time.

Plus there is often a time crunch just to get all the material prepared for the temp. Usually a sound crew will have two or three weeks to cut the sound for the first temp. That means two or three weeks between seeing the movie for the very first time and having a rough cut done and on a dub stage for a temp.

During the temp dub, the mixers will create stems---usually four of them: dialog, effects 1, effects 2, and music. These are typically 8 track mixdowns of the appropriate sounds, the dialog stem includes the ADR and Group ADR, the effects 1 stem includes all hard effects and sound design, the effects 2 stem is usually backgrounds and foley, etc. These stems are then mixed together to make the printmaster that is screened with the picture in a theater.

After the first temp, the time allotted to prepare for the next one decreases. Usually a week for the second and then a few days for the third. This is because most of the work is simply conforming the stems from the first temp to the new picture and then adding in the material to fill the holes.

Of course during this whole process the picture keeps changing as the director, the picture editor, the producers, and the studio all give opinions on what should be in or out of the film. "That entire scene is too long and isn't necessary for the story, let's cut it." Or "The actress is pretty good in take 4 but I think there is even more emotional impact in take 6." Or "Let's try putting the meeting between the characters in the restaurant before the party scene." And on and on and on. So of course the sound crew is continually trying to stay up to date. And those conforms take time away from straight up editing.

It can be quite an involved process.

Posted by Jon at 4:47 PM | Permalink

Yesterday was my friend's 30th birthday and in celebration her husband rented out the patio behind Warszawa, a Polish restaurant in Santa Monica. I've never had "fancy" pierogis before. I born outside of Detroit and lived there through my early childhood years, and I went to college in Chicago. I have had plenty of Polish influence and cuisine in my life over the years but this is the first time I have encountered the trendy, hipster Polish spot. It was very nice.

In fact they were nice enough to allow David to bring in CDs to play for the event and they even had a large screen and a projector so episodes of the Linda Carter "Wonder Woman" TV show played throughout much of the night.

I caught up with my friend Jim who I haven't seen in probably a year---we usually see each other at parties that David throws since he and Jim went to school together. I knew that Jim worked for several years with the writers on "Crossing Jordan". That show is shot on the Universal lot and I knew that they had their editing rooms on the second floor of the building I was in when our editorial was set up there. What I didn't realize was that all the offices for "Crossing Jordan" were up there. In the couple of months that I was in that building, walking in and out of the same front doors, I never once ran into Jim. Now I wish I had gone up to check out their offices.

The good news is that Jim has just this week started a new job as a full-fledged writer on "The Dead Zone". I was so glad about hear that. I know that he was working for years hoping that someone would eventually give him the chance and now he finally has it.

Posted by Jon at 11:31 AM | Permalink

Is there a legitimate reason why USB hubs can weigh a few ounces but their power supplies need to be made out of 5 pounds of lead? Can anyone answer me this? My cellphone power supply--charger is small and light. The little white square that Apple ships with its iPods is very portable. For some reason I cannot fathom this does not seem to be possible for USB hubs.

In this time of "every piece of audio software that I own needs a unique USB dongle to run", my USB ports are very valuable. I just picked up a new 7-port hub from Belkin that is quite slick. It has two ports on top which are perfect for dongles. Plus the hole in the middle allows easy stacking. But I swear to god, that power supply weighs as much as my PowerBook. It's not something I'd want to throw in my bag with will my other laptop goodies.

Several years ago I picked up a great little 3-port hub from Dr. Bott. It's perfect for laptops. But it is only 3-ports and even though it's pretty good about getting many USB devices to work off it, since it isn't self-powered it doesn't support everything.

There has to be something better out there.

Posted by Jon at 1:35 PM | Permalink

I couldn't get to my website for about 20 minutes this morning. Pair.com, my hosting company, now has this up on their status page:

Beginning around 8:30am today, a steadily increasing flooding attack began against a customer site. This attack temporarily affected approximately two-thirds of our hosted sites until a reconfiguration was made to separate that traffic from other customer traffic. At this time, only the targeted site is being affected. We will continue to work with our upstream providers and adjust our network filters in order to adapt to this attack, which is by far the largest we have ever seen.

My site is back up so I must not be the one hackers are so anxious to take down. The small blessings of not being very popular. ;)

Posted by Jon at 7:29 AM | Permalink

From the AP newswire:

Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band "The Ramones" that influenced a generation of rockers, has died. He was 55.

And then there was Tommy...

Posted by Jon at 6:45 AM | Permalink

We got moved in to our new office today without too much trouble. I'm sharing a very small room with the ADR editor but thankfully it's only for two weeks. Tomorrow I have to finish installing the necessary software on my computer. When I was at Universal I did most of my work on my own laptop. I would just have to jump on to the other assistant's computer to digitize picture. But it's certainly nice to have a full-blown Pro Tools sitting in front of me again.

This is my list of necessary software for Pro Tools assisting:

• Pro Tools (duh)
• DigiTranslator
• Titan
• Tape
• Change Note Assistant
• Final Cut Pro
• BBEdit
• Word
• Excel
• Filemaker Pro
• Toast
• Peak
• Soundminer
• A Better Finder Rename
• Quickeys
• Retrospect
• Lots of "home brew" AppleScripts

The only one of those programs I can't run in OS X is Tape. Damn effin' Tape. I need to find another way to print cuesheets. I'm going to try experimenting with converting sessions and printing cuesheets in Nuendo. It can't be that much more painful than Tape. Thankfully I can borrow I copy of Nuendo from the supervisor for my testing. If you're going to compare prices for printing, $1200 for Nuendo vs. $200 for Tape isn't much of a contest. Of course Nuendo is an entire sound editing program while Tape is just a piece of shit.

Posted by Jon at 10:34 PM | Permalink

Today I'm saying 'goodbye' to Universal Studios. The show that was giving us space (not the show I'm working on right now) had an audience test screening last week and now it's hunkering down for some additional shooting and lots of editing. They're putting the sound crew on hiatus for several months.

Friday afternoon we ran around packing up rooms, breaking down Pro Tools systems, and rolling everything into two rooms that are being kept on the show so that things can be expanded quickly once it starts up again. This morning we're moving a couple of systems over to a new location in Burbank. Actually we were going to be setting up shop there in two weeks anyway since there's a little Disney project starting up then. But we had to find space for two weeks so my show can get through a temp dub and a test screening. We're taking over some temporary rooms until the main ones are ready on Sept. 27.

The good news for me is that I'll have a 5 minute commute to work.

Posted by Jon at 9:24 AM | Permalink

Last night Cameron, Dana, Jesse and I experienced something extraordinary. We learned the true meaning of fear. We learned that "Danger Can Happen". We went to the Avalon in Hollywood for the Los Angeles premiere of "Kaiju Big Battel". I think Xeni Jardin described it best when she referred to it as part Japanese Monster Movie, part Mexican Wrestling Match, part Indie Rock Concert.

The floor of the Avalon which normally holds hundreds of rock fans was dominated by a square wresting ring surrounded by a chain-link fence---the Danger Cage. Unlike your average wrestling-fare, the floor the of the Danger Cage was covered with small buildings, ready to be stomped on by giant monsters.

A little after 8pm the opening act started---a band called Darkness My Love. They weren't bad. A couple of their slower tunes had rhythms simultaneously pounded out on guitar, bass and drums while the lead guitar warbled in reverb-drenched spacey-ness, just the way I like it.

Of course we were really there to see guys running around in foam-rubber monster suits, pounding on each other and destroying the model city. We weren't disappointed.

Since I've watched a lot of Godzilla movies and "Ultra-Man" TV shows in my day, I get the whole "Japanese Monster" thing. This one's a giant sea anemone mutated by nuclear fallout hell-bent on destroying Tokyo and that one was a brave astronaut accidentally killed in a tragic alien encounter but brought back to life and given super-powers and cool suit by the same alien. I was also a regular viewer of WWF back when Hulk Hogan was good and wrestling stars like Junkyard Dog, Iron Sheik, Randy "Macho Man" Savage, or pretty much anyone who showed up in a Cindy Lauper video tussled in the ring. So this event was full of things I loved as a kid.

And accordingly I had a great time. However I never went to an actual wrestling event when I was little and I realized that now I would much prefer to sit down with the heavily-edited and synchronized to music DVD, than stand in a sweltering rock club watching it live for 3 hours.

Things like the new kaiju hero Super Wrong! coming out, dancing to "Yatta!" and then getting immediately beaten in the fight or the drunken Hell Monkey falling all over himself were pretty damn funny. But the thing that was great was whenever one monster landed some "ouch that must of hurt" move on another---jumping off the top of the cage onto an opponent, punching the other so hard that they did a backflip and things like that. Unfortunately those great moves don't happen all the time and that's where for me the DVD would be better.

Posted by Jon at 8:03 AM | Permalink

It's very hot today. And very muggy too. We've been having this heat wave in Los Angeles and it hasn't been pleasant. I work all day long in a well air-conditioned building. So well air-conditioned that I often have a sweatshirt with me. To step from that 68°F indoor temperature to 100+°F outdoors is rather shocking.

I hopped into our cart to drive down to the ATM to get some cash for a little event I'm attending tonight. (More on that tomorrow.) Plus I figured it would be a nice change from the vending machines to see what refreshing drinks they were offering at the Universal's convenience store. Even sitting on my butt, clipping along in our cart I was sweating. It's so hot out.

The ATM and the store were uneventful but the real fun was on the way back to our building. One corner of the studio lot ins next to the lines for the Jurassic Park water ride in the theme park. Years ago a worked in a building near there and it was infuriating because that stupid John Williams theme would be in your head all day long. I came around the corner and passed by the line of tourists standing under the misters waiting to get soaked by the ride. At this point the road slopes down and passes between a sound stage on the left and back of several theme park stores and restaurants on the right. It's enough of a slope that you can feel the governor kick in and slow down the golf cart.

Even above the rattle of our puttering car I was could hear the wine of several engines. Suddenly four of the most colorfully garish ATVs I have ever seen turned the corner and started toward me. And riding those ATVs, decked head-to-toe in spandex during this lovely warmth, was Spider-Man, Green Goblin, Storm and Wolverine. I quickly dug in my pocket for my cellphone so I could snap a picture as I passed. Unfortunately the jouncing of the cart caused me to accidently hit the "Discard" button instead of "Store" and I lost it.

It was truly a classic sight. I only wish I could have shared it.

Posted by Jon at 4:31 PM | Permalink

Once again I find myself sitting in the customer service lounge of Robertson Honda working on my computer. When I took my car in nearly two weeks ago for a check-up, there was one thing they couldn't complete without special-ordering a part.

I've had this recurring problem with my CR-V where the engine light comes and goes. When it first happened I looked it up in the owner's manual and found that it means there's a problem with the emissions system---usually it is no longer sealed. When I brought the car in they told me that it's usually because the gas cap isn't on tight enough. But they checked it out and found that the cap didn't seal properly and so they replaced it.

That was a year ago and it continues to be a problem. I might go months without an engine light and then one day it's on. I'll get out, turn the gas cap tighter and sometimes the light goes out. But sometimes it doesn't. And if it stays on, the next time I start my car it might be out. It's very random.

Well I explained this all to them again when I brought my car in this last time and they checked it out and decided that the gas tube that runs from the outside of my car down to the tank is malformed and that caps are not fitting properly because of it. They ordered the new part. It's now in and so I sit here waiting for my ride to Universal so I can go to work.

Since I've spent so many hours in these chairs I can definitely say that Robertson Honda has fairly comfortable chairs in their lounge. ;)

Posted by Jon at 8:41 AM | Permalink

I spent the day down in Long Beach enjoying good-natured political arguments, BBQ chicken and a 60" HDTV with my aunt and uncle. I can't believe how hot it was down there---easily in the 90s. That's very strange, especially for this time of year. I took some pretty pictures out the window on the drive home as the sun was sinking low in the sky.

Posted by Jon at 8:51 PM | Permalink

You can always tell if it's the Friday before a three-day weekend on a studio lot. The place will be a ghost town. Yesterday was no different. We were cruising around in our sad little golf cart passing row after row of empty parking spaces. Streets between sound stages that normally bustled with activity were quiet.

Studio executives usually take most if not all of that day off and it starts a cascade down to all employees. Those of us who end up actually doing work on that day feel a bit like Robert Neville late in the afternoon on a cloudy day.

Yesterday I didn't really remember that it was a three-day weekend until I walked into the commissary for lunch. Usually the various food stations have long lines of people waiting for a sandwich or "make your own pasta" or some cooked meat on a bun from the grill. Normally my food for the day is determined by answering the question, "What line is shortest?" Yesterday I had my pick since all lines were nonexistent.

After collecting my penne, chicken and marinara and paying for it. I walked into the dining area. That's when it really hit me. "Oh yeah. I don't have to go to work on Monday. And I still get paid for it." There are probably 50 tables where you can sit down and each your lunch at the employee commissary at Universal. On a normal day at about 1pm 48 of those will be filled with people eating, laughing, reading and generally taking a break from the day's duties. Yesterday there were people at 4 tables. One of those was occupied by people from my own crew who had gone to lunch a little early. Another held several of the picture editors from "Battlestar Galactica" who are at the other end of the hallway in our building.

It's days like these that make me feel like the entire world around me has shrunk down to the handful of people I see every single day. The rest of the world must be empty space because these are the only people that seem to exist. It's a strange feeling. If it weren't for the trams full of tourists driving by my office window every 5 minutes on their way to see the backlot, the falling bridge, the flood, King Kong and all the other little mini-attractions, the picture would have been complete yesterday. We definitely would have been a little island of Robert Nevilles surrounded by a sea of emptiness. At least until dark.

Posted by Jon at 8:58 AM | Permalink

Yesterday I started working again with the fine folks at Universal Studios. Yes, those damn trams full of tourists are once again driving by my window every 5 minutes.

The nature of the movie business is such nowadays that studios are extremely reluctant to release movies without screening them for several test audiences and focus groups to make sure that there will be a market for the movies. After watching a test screening, every member of the audience is handed a piece of paper with lots of questions. Some of them are simple, "On a scale of 1 to 5, how much did you enjoy the film?" Others are ask for more information, "Who was your favorite character?" or "What was your favorite scene?" And still others are directed at that ever important "word-of-mouth" advertising, "Would you recommend this movie to your friends?" or "What reasons would you give a friend to see the movie?"

In general I feel that this kind of thing tends to dumb-down movies. You're playing up to the lowest common denominator instead of asking the audience to elevate themselves. And don't get me started on the fact that Hollywood can't seem to make a single original film anymore. Go pick up a copy of the Hollywood Reporter or Variety and you'll see that every single movie that's in production at Paramount right now is either a sequel or a remake of on old movie.

Be that as it may, working on movies pays my rent and post-production sound, even though sorely ignored in the budgetting-realm, is a fun job. So stepping into the assisting chair yesterday was an interesting one for me. I didn't start this movie. Someone else did, but it was on hiatus for a while while the studio worked on it.

That's another fact of life of the film business now. And the fact that a film goes on hiatus shouldn't be taken as a positive or a negative thing. It simply is. Under normal circumstances, post-production sound usually takes three-and-a-half to fourth months to complete. But I should be hesitant to use the word "normal" because often that is no longer the case. Since studios want to maximize their return on investment many shows today have longer post schedules while the studio tries to make a movie that will appeal to the largest audience. The sound department will often go on hiatus. If studios had to ok the final budget on movies prior to giving them the greenlight, they would never get made. We have to turn in budgets with 12 to 16 weeks for post-production sound even though the reality often turns into 20 to 26 or more.

This flexible scheduling also makes it difficult because shows often overlap now. Being a good supervising sound editor you line up your next three shows. But then the schedules start pushing and everything starts falling on top of each other. Now you need to scramble and hire second crews and figure out how you'll be on two dub stages at the same time. One possibility of course would be to not look for shows until after you've completed the previous one. But that can mean a lot of downtime. There is no easy solution so every tries to make do.

And that's why I'm here. I'm taking over the assisting on a show so that the assistant who actually started it can continue on another show that began during the hiatus. Of course the fact that I can't really talk about specifics on any of this makes things a little more difficult.

After starting up this weblog I imagined that I might talk about what it's like making movies from the post-production side of things. I still want to do that, but now that I'm sitting down to actually work on (nearly) an entire show, I'm finding myself hard-pressed to find interesting things to say---interesting things that I can actually talk about.

For example I can say that while I'm typing this I'm taking some files (about 5GB of digital picture) and copying them to another drive. Oooo! I can already see that you're enthralled. And now, I'm going to delete those files from the original drive. Aaaah! I know, I know. You can hardly contain yourself.

I will come up with something. You're welcome to ask questions and I'll answer as best I can. But now I must go... there's more copying to do.

Posted by Jon at 10:31 AM | Permalink

You know I was at my friends' house tonight enjoying good company and great tacos. They have a monster flat screen TV and an HD Direct TV box hooked up to it. I hadn't been over there in a while and I was disappointed to discover that a couple of the very few HD channels that are offered were only showing the damn Republican National Convention.

I got to see McCain's weird-ass watery red eye in all its nauseating detail. I was unpleasantly reminded of the "vulture eye" in "The Tell-Tale Heart".

Yuck.

Ew.

Posted by Jon at 11:29 PM | Permalink

I am still here. I've just been busy tinkering away behind the scenes. I've been wanting to do a major revamp of this website for a while now. Some of you may have noticed a few bits and pieces as they've been installed, like my photo moblog. I've been working on a new look to go with it---and practicing my CSS.

Here's a sneak-peek:

It's not done yet. But the major "look and feel" is pretty much in place. Now I'm adding in all the little extras. Then it's adding the new look to all the other templates. Lots of testing to make sure I didn't miss anything. And then installing it on my website. Maybe I'll be done by the end of the weekend. That would be nice.

Of course the new Movable Type 3.1 will be out in a couple of days. I should probably wait until then so see what new fun things I can add in. But sometimes I get the urge for these things and I have to keep going no matter what.

I've also been reading "Xenocide" by Orson Scott Card. Fantastic book.

Ok, time to get back to things...

Posted by Jon at 3:22 PM | Permalink

There are several of us sitting here waiting for our cars in the customer lounge at the Robertson Honda service center. Most people are reading or just sitting. Two young men walked in about 20 minutes ago and they are quietly to each other in Spanish.

A fellow Mac-user walked in about 40 minutes ago and perhaps inspired by my own use of my laptop, pulled out his iBook and started typing away in Word. (You can tell by those annoying sounds that Microsoft products make if you don't go into the general perferences and turn them off.)

Our quiet patience was rudely interrupted a few minutes ago. A man, perhaps in his early 50s, shuffled over to the corner where the TV is mounted to the wall, and proceeded to turn it on. My fellow Mac-user was sitting right next to the television. He shot the man an ugly look, pointedly gathered up his things and moved to the other end of the lounge. I don't blame him. We were all enjoying the escape from the ever-present brain-drain of the TV.

To make things worse, the man who turned on the TV sat down in a seat, pulled out a book and began reading. I can't believe he would actually annoy everyone with the television and then not actually watch it himself.

I'm tempted to go over and turn it off.

A mother and her daughter, 8 or 9 years old, just walked in. The girl is now watching. I don't want to make things more unpleasant for her than necessary. I remember sitting in lounges like this with my mom when I was little. It's boring enough when you're an adult---in can be shear torture as a child.

That guy is still not actually watching television!

I just noticed that it's "The View" that's on. Poor girl. At least she should be enjoying some cartoons.

Posted by Jon at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Ok, this is cool.

I took my car in for it's 20,000 mile check-up. They say it's going to take 2 hours and since I'm not working right now, I figured I might as well just sit and wait for it. Renting a car for 2 hours is silly.

Last night in anticipation of that, I finished setting up my idmonsters.dev virtual host on my lapto