June 12, 2011

POD HD500 case SSP (Sham Shui Po) mark 1

The case fits everything pretty much perfect!

Pros:

Light weight

good size

shiny

Cons:

the seal between the lid and the case warps towards the center near the handle so if it rains, water is definitely going in

The latches are pretty flimsy and i cant help but wonder if the case is going to open mid journey (might re-enforce it with a luggage strap)

Thanks for finding this ben! You the king of SSP!

It is pretty much Line 6 exclusive content except for the the cable with is a fender.

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April 10, 2011

Movie Challenges

The Facts

I've been working on the score and sound design for a new movie made in HK and NYC. The scoring process was relatively painless, but the sound design and dialogue editing has been challenging.

The production track on-the-whole has been great but there were a few scenes with loud aircon and off axis mics..
I am writing this to remind myself in the future, that dialogue editing is EVERYTHING!!

It's vital to review the footage yourself and try to dialogue edit it to get a feel of the production track... then you know that it will be okay, or LOOPED!

There are some scenes that have a great deal of background noise that no amount of de-noising or EQ will solve.

Challenges

We had a lot of re-syncs to do due to edit changes. The edit changes were necessary, and they have improved the picture. But these changes lead to a number of difficulties.

Re-syncing a movie takes a LONG time. Once the movie ahs been re-cut , often EQ is needed to blend in with the new edits.
Imagine doing this five or six times, Aalittle bit more EQ here and there and soon your dialogue track sounds rubbish! over-processed. It's hard to tell when you've been listening to it for ages.. your brina actually makes it sound acceptable!

The guy I'm working with as the main sound editor has done a great job, but his working style is a bit disorganized.

It's very hard to find files and we have spent up to 1 hour searching for work in the past! It would seem to me that organizing your files is a given thing, especially on a tight schedule.....Which it is always a tight schedule!

Solutions

Dialogue edit WELL at the beginning and give this smoothed dialogue to the Assistant Editor to sync with the edit. GET YOUR ADR SORTED EARLY while the actors are still in town. Output OMF so they can import and we still have handles to work with when they change the edit.

This takes time but in the long-run it will saves loads of headaches.

There will be more work on the film, 5.1 surround mix - extra music, DVD extras.. a great deal of work to be done!

I have learned a MASSIVE amount from this project. I am very grateful to the producers and director for getting me involved.

It's stressful, yes, but very rewareing.. Can't wait to see it on a big screen!!

April 1, 2011

epiphone vs. p rails - ROUND 1!

This post is the first in what will hopefully only be a 2 part blog.

I had the opportunity to get some gear brought over to me from the US and I asked the band mates for suggestions. Ben recommended the P RAILS made by seymour duncan. To make a long story short, they do cool stuff!

After watching a few demos on youtube, I was sold and quickly began to order parts to be brought over to the other side of the world.

I boned up on my seymour duncan installation diagram and decided to try and do it myself! How hard could it be right?

Marc came over to offer support as well as an extra dose of common sense. Stella was there too.

Here is what I had for gear....

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So we hit the epiphone hard with lots of gusto. After cracking it open and seeing the state of the wires inside, we began to question whether or not it could be done. We spent about 3 hours messing with it and cross referencing the diagram and any help we could find on youtube. We were in the end foiled by the proprietry wire that was connected to the 3 way switch. I think our big mistake was thinking we could reuse the existing wires and simply disconnect and reconnect them to the right parts. As it turns out, the wiring is significantly different then the factory wiring, no doubt mostly because of the difference in the circuitry of the push pull pots which I need because of the nature of the P Rails.

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Finally we through in the towel and admitted defeat... at least for the night.

After some careful thought and the fact that I know have a guitar that doesn't work, I decided to get some extra wires and rewire the 3 way switch from scratch. That and I have also modified the wiring diagram by color coding the wires so I can tell what exactly is going on.

With a little dutch courage, I hope to finish this off in time to have a working guitar by tomorrow!

I also hope to avoid a repeat of this!