Monday, May 6, 2013

MIXING IT UP

Fish Hooks Creative Director's Log
Fishdate: April 29, 2013

Every two weeks we board the 
starship: 
to mix an episode of 
Fish Hooks.


General Maxwell Atoms and I 
immediately head to the bridge
of the ship where
and 
await us.


Communications Officer Huy Luong
is also there ready to make sure
everything happens on schedule:


As you can see,
the bridge has many buttons and dials 
to get us where we need to go:


Mixing the audio for a show involves
three things:

DIALOGUE

MUSIC

SOUND EFFECTS
(this includes FOLEY which we talked about over HERE)

But if all three of these things 
are played at the same volume
at the same time,
all you'd here
is a 
MESS!


So it's Melissa and Fil's job
to ride the volume up and down
so the dialogue is crisp and clear,
the music is driving the action,
and the SFX are accenting the right points
all without drowning each other out.

It's no small task.

That's why there are
snacks and cookies:


General Burton and I watch the two episodes
Melissa and Fil have mixed
and take notes.


We ask for some dialogue to be clearer...

For some music to be softer...
(or completely removed)

Some monkey SFX added here.
A fart added there.

And then we watch the shows
AGAIN
only this time over 
small computer speakers.

Why?

Because not everyone has an 
eleventy billion dollar sound system 
like the 
Starship: Advantage Audio.
Most people have a regular TV
with regular speakers.
And we wanna make sure
Fish Hooks
sounds great on
EVERYONE'S
TV!

I heard a story that Ric Ocasek of The Cars
used to transfer all his songs to cassette tape 
and then listen to them in his car
before approving the mix...
because that's how most people
heard his music!


Troy Underwood,
our
Series Executive
from Disney Fleet Command
(not pictured for security purposes)
attends the small speaker pass
to give us another set of ears.


After the mix is done,
it's outputted and sent back to Disney
where we prepare the last and final step
of production:

PLAYBACK!

That's our one last
viewing to make sure
everything looks and sounds
PERFECT!

And now you know everything 
you need to know about mixing!

Captain Warburton,
out.





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