It's been a long pregnancy, but I'm starting to feel contractions.

There's a good chance the final audio mix for I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN will take place in L.A. while I'm there for CREDO's screening at the Chinese Theater. In order to take best advantage of our use of the room (which is associated with a very successful TV show, so I'll tell you about it after it's done, seeing as we could still get booted out at the last minute), I'm hitting the soundtrack as hard as I can. I want as much finessing as possible during our time in the room, which means I don't want any not-quite-right sounds, placeholder sounds, tiny sync problems, and so on. Every minute spent dithering about a sound's appropriateness, or moving things back and forth by thousandths of a second, is a minute not spent taking advantage of very limited time in a high-end mixing room.

You can tell where I am in the project because my to-do list doesn't say things like "Find a cinematographer" or "get picture cut together" anymore. Now it says things like--

In fact... here it is. The ones with bullets are completed.

ILY To-Do

FOR L.A.

· Finish mix w/out Foley.

Scour DATs for "Lizzie Borden takes a hatchet."
· (If not there, record Larry)
And Eddie yell of pain when the lid closes on his fingers.

Find the power cable for the DAT machine or buy a new one.

Move all linked files to KS Media Drive.

Get legal version of Bolero.

Body grabs post-Lizzie

Knee to Eddie's face - sfx

Less feet on Agnes' exit

Add impact sound to TL hitting Eddie's face

Change B's last racking sound

Add vibra-slap to first Delilah cymbal

Add timpani to Delilah's hip bumps

Align B hitting CP at end better

Buy/replace phone FX.

Even out background hiss in power-down sequence

Less gun rattle on pre-TL 2-shot.

Audio build (ting through punch) on slow-mo cymbals in Samson.

· Lizzie lightning strikes

Flasher SFX

Slide whistle hi-res into foley track. (Already bought and downloaded.)

Pre-L.A. mix with Bob Auld

· Record foley

Finish mix w/Foley.

Finish title sequence w/Jason

Change post-Eden sky to gray

Send mix to [helpful guy in L.A. who set up the final mix session]

· Finish title sequence music

· Alter first shot music (delay opening crescendo to JUST before thug entrance)

Meet w/[helpful guy in NY who thought the last version had pacing issues]

· Cut 20-40 seconds:
· - Eddie's last reaction shot
· - "Clarisse?" not necessary. Start w/ "Honey?"
· - Revisit Samson cutting

· Record Larry: Samson grunts, "takes a hatchet."


FOR FINAL

Subcontract picture fixes:

1. Wire and head removal (Mrs. Borden)

2. Exit sign removal

3. Phone number removal

4. Fleischmann's label greeking

· Re-export Eden Ahh and lightning strike sound effect from DP

Noise-reduction on vocals

Eden graphics?

- - -

Don't forget:

All footage delayed exactly 13 seconds to allow for title sequence

The foley session was Monday. I took the day off from the day job and the train to New Jersey, where Cynthia (a friend of Greg, the choreographer) did footsteps, slaps, gun rattles, and so on. I synced it all up to picture on Tuesday and Wednesday. That doesn't mean it's finished--it still has to have its levels adjusted now that it's cohabiting with the music, the ambiences, the vocals, and so on. And a lot of will never be audible because (for example) a gun whoosh and rattle can't compete with a big forte blast from orchestra and industrial music effects.

One thing I'd love to do, if this is ever issued on DVD, is to allow the user to turn various soundtrack elements on and off, maybe in a Special Features section. Each of these tracks is a musical composition of its own; the factory machines, Samson and Delilah's desert sounds, the thugs' cigarette flicks, nose flicks, gun draws... music is organized sound, and the lines between music, musique concrete, soundtrack ambience, and foley are blurry.

Anyway, I've been waiting for video to render at Starbucks, and now it's done.

Ow! Another contraction...

Added 3:16 PM: Here's a partial list of my Sounddogs.com purchases for this project:


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