| Ideally you should find out from the next person in the chain what they want regarding formats and how they want them bounced. Last time I did music for film the dubbers wanted stems of all my score (did a strings/synth stem, a piano/celesta stem, a percussion/fx stem and a bass stem) - this as opposed to a full mix or individual tracks. So I bounced out full-length stems out of Pro Tools (all from zero/the beginning of picture - had to do one group at a time of course) - and they wanted 16/48 WAVs.
This isn't to say though that maybe they don't want full mixes - it depends on how complex the dub will be. I've seen everything from "proper film dubs" to "we're gonna drop the finished tracks into Final Cut Pro, adjust the clip gain on the camera tracks and layback to tape." So that's why you just gotta ask...
Basically, just make sure that everything is lined up fine - if there's no pop tone or anything supplied, just tell them "the session starts when the movie you gave me starts." Should be all good as long as there are no framerate shenanigans.
Hopefully the movie you're working with has a timecode window burn, that will make life much easier too as I would assume that the musicians will be able to see the ref. video on a monitor... nice big numbers, if they need 'em. You can get into streamers and stuff at this point too but without any notice it's not something you can really drop in at the last second, so you might need to shift stuff around. I would often record a cue with no streamer but I would come in late, so I'd have to back it all up, but as long as I 'ran long' everything would be OK - editing on the fly isn't that tough if the programme isn't too long.
On larger productions a music editor might be employed to help shoehorn everything into the right spots too, but that of course depends on budget/need.
Best of luck! |