Newbie question?

[minister]

We don't know. You should talk to the mixer at the stage.

If you can't get an answer, send a mix (for intentions) and a sensible amount of stems.

[Big Andy]

4 days to polish your mix in Stereo? or 4 days to do a surround mix? Eitherway, that isn't much time. Not so scare you or anything.

[jt916]

4 day to polish, if you can call that, to mix in stereo.

I had never done this on sound stage at all so I have no idea what to do. The director and the DP of the film love what I did the sound in the studio but I know it could totally blown up differently once listen on the sound stage.

thanks

[JoeMilner]

Hi there,
Like Minister said, definitely speak to the stage in Thailand. If you mixed in Pro Tools, they'll very likely be able to accommodate you no problem, even to the point of them having your original Pro Tools mixing session to work with.

If not, then print at least a Dialog stem (preferably 2, or print each DX track as it's own Mono "stem", at that point it's more correctly called a predub), an ADR Stem, MX score, Source MX, hard FX, Backgrounds, & Foley.

One thing to be careful of, if there's suddenly money to mix on a stage, is that the sound delivery requirements haven't also exceeded what you've provided (unbeknownst to you). If the mixers in Thailand say "OK, we're ready to start the M&E now, where's all the foley?".........that could be awkward if your original scope-of-work doesn't include that. Talk to the producers.

And as Big Andy said, it's not a lot of time, so you want to make sure that as much time as possible is spent "polishing" and not "unwinding" what you've done in case there's an issue.

Good luck!

Joe

[Lipflap]

I agree with everyone who's piped in so far: Talk to the post facility to find out what's needed; and be ready to be as flexible as possible.
You've been very straight about the fact that you've never done this. It's no crime to not know what to do, so get all the help you can from your producer and be sure to have a very frank and detailed conversation with the mixer. Get as much in writing as possible from the mix facility in order to avoid confusion or ambiguity.

This is supposed to be fun (as well as hair-raising), so do occasionally remember what a thrill it is!
Best of luck,

[jt916]

Thank you everyone, especially Joe.

The info's are really helpful here. The producer and director had no clue either, they clueless about audio but know what sound they like.

I plan to bring my own Protools session and all the stem in the hard drive.

Now, do I burn the FX's (reverb, delay, etc.) on the separate track or mix down the stem with FX on?

Thanks

[JoeMilner]

Aww shucks, everyone gave good advice, but thanks

As for your reverb question, when making hard (ie, rendered) predubs often the verb returns are printed on their own tracks, so if the director doesn't like the verb, it can be changed. If you did the same, at the very least you would appear conscientious, and hey: Pro Tools tracks are cheap!

But if you're bringing the PT sessions and you can confirm that that's what they will work from (and have the same verb/delay etc plugins you used), then theoretically you don't need to do any of that. Still, printing at least basic stems will be nice to have as a backup in case something goes wrong with the session.

cheers, and good luck!

Joe