movie review: Skyfall *spoilers*

*spoilers*



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srsly.  don't read this if you don't want spoilers.


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ok.  This is my quickie review of the latest Bond flick: Skyfall.




Now, for reference I do my absolute best to avoid any and all media involved with any film I plan to see before I've seen it.  This means that I never saw that trailer or any other than the teaser before actually experiencing the film in its full glory.  I also never read a review, and I purposely stayed as far away from the film's online presence as I could.

I do this for every big film that I plan on experiencing fully in the theater.  I find it gives me a much better overall experience.  As an example, that trailer has probably 6 or 8 things in it that I sure didn't want to see before seeing the movie in context.  It gave away so many interesting moments that I have no regrets about avoiding it.

 I'm currently avoiding any mention of Lincoln until I see that one as well.  :)

I saw the film in Imax at the Northpark AMC.   While this theater isn't "true" Imax - its certainly impressive.  Utterly perfect digital projection, probably the second largest Imax screen in the DFW metroplex (second only to the true Imax screen with film projection at the Webb Chapel Cinemark) and a truly capable and well calibrated sound system.  Stadium seating, ample foot room, and we sat dead center about 1/3rd of the way up.  Tickets were $16 each.  As a theater experience this is close to as good as it gets.

So first off, overall impressions:

I felt that this was probably the best Bond film I've seen.  I certainly haven't seen them all, but I'm sure I've caught at least 80% of them going back to the Pierce Brosnan days, and this one is easily the best I've personally experienced.  I like Daniel Craig as Bond, even though I don't like him as much in almost any other role.  He brings a certain self-loathing to Bond that completely redefines the character in my opinion, and in a good way.  Its far more believable that Craig's Bond would get the girl and kill the bad guy than Brosnon's (or even *gasp* Connery's) would in my eyes.

(That said I hated the poker enough in Casino Royale to write off the whole flick.  That film was a complete insult to poker players everywhere, and Bond was not only written as an awful poker player in the film, he was a complete dick at the table as well.)

While Skyfall started fast - as Bond films tend to - it didn't launch at the flat out breakneck speed that some in the past have.  The opening action sequence was punchy and interesting, but not so massive that it overshadowed the rest of the film.

(Another aside - I thought that The Dark Knight Rises suffered from this.  The sequence where Bane hijacks and destroys the plane is probably the high point of the film, and it happens in the first 20 minutes)

The opening credits were typically epic - as Bond opening credits tend to be.  They hit all of the classic Bond marks - silhouetted women,  guns, tombstones, 2d graphic styles, and general avant garde imagery.  I've seen others complain, but I personally really like Adele's take on the Bond theme, and I won't apologize for that.  For opening credits to be that memorable after the film is over is an achievement in my opinion.



Once the film was off and running I thought the pacing was excellent throughout.  It never felt long or drug out, nor did it feel too short by the time the film was over.  The last third of the film was certainly loud and pretty challenging, but even then it didn't have that "when will this end" moment that most of the final battles in the Transformers films end up at.

Javier Bardem was an excellent villain.  Again, the pacing of the film revealed him at exactly the right moment.  Not to early, but not so late that you didn't get a good sense of him before the final encounter.  I think he should take on something more heroic in his next role, given how huge his No Country For Old Men and Skyfall performances have become.

There were certainly plot holes though (many of them typically Bond).  *spoilers*

Spies probably know better than to run from their pursuers in the dark while waving a flashlight.  Bond would have had his insides liquified by three or four of the explosions that he supposedly survived.  Hacking computers doesn't work that way.   Helicopters can't sneak up on you.  Two tanks of propane can't blow up a massive mansion.  Putting it all on black does not imply that you don't care about the money, it only implies that you're trying to double it.  Also, you aren't likely to get a gun into a casino of that stature, and if you do you're unlikely to walk out after only facing three people and making a bet.  The other assasin certainly wouldn't have brought his payment with him to the jobsite.  If a coworker shot you on accident and let the other guy get away, it'd be pretty hard to get rescued by a stranger unless that coworker just packed up and left.  Fire extinguishers don't have that much foam in them. Car doors don't stop bullets.

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From a sonic perspective I thought the mix was excellent overall - with a couple of exceptions.

First I'll say that I felt I heard every word clearly - though I'll reiterate that I watched this in an excellent Imax theater that was clearly calibrated out well and running the film at spec.

I'll state again that everything I heard was 100% top shelf minus the couple of small things I'll list here:

• There was a moment in the opening sequence where multiple car wrecks were happening simultaneously with big score moments, and I think they could have stood to clear out some space for some of the car wreck elements that were taking up room on the screen but getting lost in the mix. 
• There were several moments in the latter half of the movie when the score contained a heavy brass section and was pushed loud enough to crowd everything else out.  I'm about positive that this was a director's choice (as well as an arrangement thing) rather than a mixer choice, but the end result clashed in the final mix.  It just felt like that typical thing where both the composer and the designers are trying to go to 11, but there's just not room for both to get all the way there. 
• There was very minimal ADR in the film, but in the few spots where it was needed (helicopter scenes etc) it was pretty blatant and not always synced well.  I understand that these actors probably had to be wrestled from their various exploits around the globe to get the ADR cut, but it felt as if they were told certain lines were good enough before they actually got there.  Probably only 4 or 5 lines that looked like this, but boy did they.
• Daniel Craig clearly speaks much more softly than the others on the set with him.  Again, I was in a very good listening environment there at Northpark, but boy howdy I heard that noise pumping on him every time he spoke.  In fact, it felt more like they were gating and editing around the noise on his lines than pumping Cedar or anything.  No one else seems to have suffered from that.  Its also possible that they were burying lavs a little more deeply in his costume than the other characters, but that can't really account for the big discrepancy between his dialogue and that of the others - especially on the very quiet soundstage moments.  I think his suits were noisy as well, which couldn't have helped. 
• Those are American sirens.  I'm pretty sure zero percent of this film took place in the USA.

With those out of the way, I'd like to add a few more kudos to the sound crew:

• The weapon sounds were probably the closest I've come to the feeling of an actual gun being fired in proximity to me.  Kickass field recordings of the guns being fired, and they were mixed LOUD, but somehow not painfully.  Bond fired his weapon indoors on multiple occasions, and in each case the sound of the gun in that space felt spot on, which I know is incredibly difficult to pull off.  Nothing felt exaggerated, but all of it felt very big and very real.  Probably one of the finest weapon sound achievements I've seen in film.
• Ditto the explosions.  The edit and the mix decisions really did those explosions some good when they were unexpected and out in the clear, but they really did give a genuine feeling that you'd get if you were in close proximity to that kind of explosion.  My wife and I both jumped out of our seats in a couple of key moments where they surprised us with a bang, and despite coming out of my seat and looking around I felt as drawn in during those moments as I ever have in a film.  Those things felt REAL.
• Vehicles were kickass, rare, screaming down the road, and as impressive as it can get.  The team recording them must have had a field day.   Ditto the extensive helicopter sounds.
• Punches and kicks felt the appropriate size in relation to the weapons.  Not massive, but still very satisfying and intense.
• BGFX from locations around the globe were deep, intense and clearly very accurate.  
• There were three massive sound events - the opening car/bike/train chase, the train dropping through the subway station, and the final asault on skyfall.  All three achieved what they were going for, but only the train dropping through the subway really tipped all the way into "that has to be exactly what that would sound like" territory for me.  It was just flat out impressive, and even more so for me given that I didn't see it coming.
• kudos to the production sound crew for scoring a place in the opening credits.  Well deserved IMO.

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 that's all I've got.  I'd recommend it for sure.  Suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride.

pouring concrete

Last week we poured some concrete for the foley stage concrete surface.  The pits in our breakaway floors are 4 feet long, thirty inches wide, and 8 inches deep.

After several days of curing the concrete has turned out very nice.  I was a total of 5 full bags to fill the pit, and the resulting slab has zero ringing to it and a very nice surface texture.

apologies in advance for the blurry photos.

a twitter converation about piracy

edited to remove the persistent "@" callabacks (for readability)
original link


Jack Menhorn
Bummed that he even thought of asking the question: ‪http://socialsounddesign.com/questions/3928/pirate-audio-samples-how-risky-is-it-really …‬ ‪#piratessuck‬

Frank Bry ‏
‪@KomradeJack‬ Wow, he admits to theft. Even for personal use, stealing sounds is not a good idea and the Universe does not look kindly on you

Jack Menhorn ‏
‪Just noticed it was 2 years old and someone named "mikol" resurrected it.

Jack Menhorn
‪mikol saw all those replies and still replied trying to justify.

rene_coronado
@KomradeJack @idaho_recordist there is a warez culture out there that the replies ignore.  the OP is probably culture shocked by the resp...

rene_coronado
...and his contemporaries would probably scoff at it.  our replies should always remain aware of that.

rene_coronado
not critiquing the responses.  just noting what I know is a disconnect between the two worlds.

KomradeJack
I suppose im a bit astonished someone in that warez-culture would still not realize piracy ≠ professionalism

KomradeJack
"Hey I need to record some ambiences, better go steal a stereo mic from Guitar Center"

rene_coronado
don't be.  think of the beginnings of the hip hop sampling culture.  many professionals came from those roots.

rene_coronado
the kid's trying to make the turn.  he should be encouraged, not slapped down.  my .02

KomradeJack
Not entirely sure that's this case, but I understand the sentiment. We all start somewhere.

Frank Bry
Yes, at least he wanted to make it right. I hope things worked out for him. Every game I work on I have to...

Frank Bry
 … I Warrant that I have license to use ANY audio I do for the client or they come after my ass.

rene_coronado
yep.  this kid is trying to learn that skill.  he should be encouraged IMO.

Frank Bry
Disney was the 1st client to require proof from me that I owned licenses for the assets I used.

rene_coronado
I believe it.  we had to really re-work our echo collective license to sell it to warner games.

Frank Bry
yep. Ditto.

Frank Bry
It's REALLY cold outside but I'm going to go out and record the crazy wind right now anyway.

touchscreen daw interfaces dont offer tactile feedback

saw this today:

and I thought to myself:

that's really not how I want to control my DAW.  I mentioned this a bit in the comments section of tonebenders episode 2 (check it out!) but I want to go into more detail here.

First of all, I get why random access control surfaces are probably the future - the ability to implement custom interfaces that are not tied to dedicated knobs and sliders is a powerful concept - but the fact of the matter is that finger access is never going to be as fast and accurate as mouse access for fast, sample-accurate and detailed editing tasks.

it also doesn't seem like you'd get the same "feel" as you would with a hardware controller if you're doing fingertip mixing.  All of these "pictures under glass" offer only visual feedback when you manipulate them, which IMO takes you out of the process of manipulating sound.

It also reminded me of this little rant I came across a while back - which very eloquently details the ways in which our hands manipulate the world and receive feedback, while pointing out that the touchscreen interface concept basically breaks that concept by refusing to give tactile feedback.  It forces us to use our eyes to see if we did anything and to measure the degree by which we've done those things.

We can close our eyes and turn a knob or move a fader, and instinctually feel the degree to which we've moved those things.  This is an important concept in manipulating audio, and all of these touchscreen interfaces break that concept.

I'd personally much prefer to see a system that looks like a flat tablet, but actually has a grid of actuators that pop up tactile feedback (much the way a refreshable braille reader does), and have that give feedback.  Maybe it could also be both touch and pressure sensitive, so that it could move with your hands as you manipulate the interface.

I think that would end being more useful for audio specific tasks, and as an interface in general.  Our hands currently aren't getting any feedback from our screens. 

A new podcast-launch of the Tonebenders

So I've gone off and joined/started a sound design podcast called Tonebenders with a couple of great guys - Dustin Camilleri (@pulsetrain) and Timothy Muirhead (@azimuthaudio and azimuthaudio.ca).

Tim has already written an excellent blog post describing how it all came together and how to subscribe - so go read that, subscribe to the podcast, and jump over to tonebenders.net and leave a comment.

thanks!

quad miking dual MS update

So instead of running more controlled experiments with regards to my quad setup, I ended up with a quick and dirty dual MS rig out in the field this past week.

The rig consisted of a pair of schoeps CMC6 bodies with the Fig 8 capsule and the hypercardiod capsule making up the front portion, and a Line Audio CM3 rigged up for the rear M all inside of a big rycote blimp.  The schoeps mics went straight into a 744t 1-2, and the CM3 went through a sound devices M1 and into the 744t channel 3. 

The obvious compromise in this setup was the fact that all three capsules weren't exactly coincident on the vertical plane, and since the idea was to use the figure 8 mic as the S to decode both the front and the rear M mics, I was interested to see how well this configuration held up to scrutiny.

The whole rig fit into the rycote blimp very well, and when I took it out of doors the blimp still provided great wind protection to all three mics, since non were very close to the edges.  I generally monitored the schoeps rig decoded, but sometimes listened to all three mics in mono.

I took this rig to a local hospital to record ambiances for a documentary that we are working on.  I came back with about 3 hours of recordings from a half-day all access shoot, and got some really killer stuff (including a real live surgery).

Back in the studio, I decoded and evaluated.

I protools I decided to align all three tracks and mute them.  From there I sent the Schoeps MK41 (supercardiod) to bus 1 prefader, the Schoeps  MK8 to bus 2 and bus 4 prefader, and the CM3 to bus 3 prefader.

I then set two stereo aux inputs up - a front one fed by bus 1-2 and out to LR, and a rear one fed by bus 3-4 and out to LsRs - both with Waves S1 Imagers on them set to decode MS.

I was shocked at how good it all sounded.  Maybe some of the best recordings I've made in my life.

Imaging was spectacular throughout, the balance of direct to reverberant sound was excellent, and that $150 CM3 played so nice with the crazy expensive schoeps rig you'd never guess the price of that thing.  I didn't find the time differential between the CM3 and the schoeps MK8 capsules to present much of a decoding problem, probably because most of my sources were ambient and were sending as much reverberant sound to the mics as they were direct sounds.

Summing all three decoded mics to mono caused zero issues.  Summing this rig to mono effectively removes the Fig 8 mic from the sound, leaving only the sum of the schoeps mk41 and the Line Audio CM3.  Given that they were both aimed in opposite directions and recording ambient sources, the non-time alignment didn't do anything particularly strange or phasey.  It's possible that time aligned capsules would lock together even more tightly, but  the 2 inch or so differential was insignificant in this specific setup.

This is without question a killer rig to take into situations where you need to capture lots of surround ambiances while on the move.  I think I still prefer the spaced mic technique sound to this one when I have to luxury of setting it up and not having it change the vibe of the ambiance I'm recording, but honestly I only prefer that technique over what I got here a little bit.  Things didn't feel as "narrow" as they did in my initial dual MS test, and the use of the same fig 8 on both ends really locked the image down tight from front to back.

Color me impressed.  As I go through and edit the recordings more closely I'll find a couple of nice bits to post up of both the front and read decoded recordings.

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update: here are some choice decoded sounds from the shoot:

impromptu voiceover mic shootout

During a session this past week a voice talent friend of mine named Nick Alexander happened to have his set of Neumann TLM 103s with him for a different project.

We had a moment after the session was over to grab some random copy and run a quickie shootout.

First I set up our standard AT4050, Nick's TLM103, and my DIY Austin Ribbon Mic with the three membranes as parallel as I could get them. 

With the mics set, I had Nick stand about 8 inches away and centered up so that we could get the most fair test of the three at the same time.  I'd typically mic a voiceover slightly closer than we did here - though Nick did lean in near the end and work some proximity effect.

We read some random copy both in a regular and kind of laid back style, and then a bit more in a louder, more upbeat style - and we were joking around a bit throughout.  I kept rolling as we had a casual conversation for a minute or so after reading from the script.

All of the mics ran into a rack of John Hardy M1 preamps.  The ribbon mic went through a cloudlifter as well in order to better match the impedance to what the M1s offer and to help match the gain to the much hotter output of the condensers.

Here's a photo of the preamp settings that matched up the outputs.  The 4050 is channel 1, the TL103 is channel 2, and the Austin Ribbon (post cloudlifter) is channel 3:

Both the 4050 and the TLM103 had very similar output levels, and the ribbon was still 15 db or so softer than them even after the cloudlifter pre-boosted its signal by 20 db.

so given all of the setup, here's are the final recordings (downloadable via soundcloud)


 after a couple of listens, here are my thoughts:

The ribbon mic was its own beast - pretty thick and wooly and the p-pops would actually flutter  rather than pop.  In my opinion that recording would need a good bit of work to really fly.  Mostly just handling all of the low end that was masking a lot of the rest of the spectrum.  The mic kind of smoothed out the transients in a different way than the other two did, and kind of had a natural analog compression to it, which I liked.

Both the 4050 and the TLM103 are very good sounding mics and very smooth across the frequency spectrum.  The TLM103 is not quite as bright as the 4050 but I certainly wouldn't rate the 4050 as harsh in any way.  In fact, I'd probably say that the 4050 was the most detailed of the three - which really showed through when Nick was rustling the pages of his script a bit.

The 4050 makes a recording that cuts through music with less manipulation, while the TLM103 makes a recording that likes to stand alone a little more.

I thought both mics flattered Nick's voice and worked with both reads well.