Composers Ticker Tape Parade!

[GenJerDan]

Anyone use Ableton Live? Any good? Better to use Acid? (I've no clue what Live is, and barely glanced at Acid, so I don't even know if they are similar enough to compare....)

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

no, i rarely use the narrow but i love the large one. here's a very rough mix of a track from our new record. recorded entirely with that mic except the organ which was direct. there's no drums yet.

obviously we don't have the budget for a really well produced album so we're looking for the raw sound of like a G. Love record or a Jack Johnson record.

www.elmatadorfilms.com/weight.mp3

lyrics by my little brother evan (abraham)

you guys got more talent than should be legal

but yep that's the mic, and it sounds a little muffled (not that present) to me

if you google that mic you will find nothiing but people ragging on it

still if I hadn't been listening so closely for mic quality I might not have noticed and it does have that sort of raw sound you said you were going for

here's a cool page on EQing vocals if you decide you ever wanna make the mic a little more present
http://www.digitalprosound.com/artic...fterinter=true

kickass song though man -- really -- not just saying that because I don't like the mic, that's really a great track.

[TheMacB]

thanks for that link! that is REALLY helpful. this track is just a rough mix that i made. it will be mixed and mastered professionally by a friend of mine (for free). glad you dug the song. should have a whole record for you by the end of march.

[RMI Studios]

I've been mac since 1999! Here's a 4am photo of me in my tracking room working on Pandora:




(see if you can spot the extra large cup of coffee)


C.R.


JDANSTAN:

somthing like that was my dream from like age 16 - 23
now I have a laptop, a nanosynth sound module, korg sound module, virtual orchestra, a couple of "OK" M-Audio monitors, some awful mics, M audio audio interface and a very small control synth, but I get by OK ... except for the mics -- I always wind up using my senhieser ME66 shotgun for everytyhing and it sounds much better.

Oh and ben a MACuser sine 1991
__________________

I'm 23 at the moment, so maybe I'll wake up when I turn 24 and just sell everything lol


C.R.

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

well I just gave up because the price point for even the system I have now was SOOOOO out of reach in the mid to late 80's / early nineties. Plus I was supposedly going to be an actor at that point, but became a theatre director and composer/sound designer for theatre, and got more work than I wanted in the latter category.

So if I had been focused as a composer or recording engineer -- who knows.

Now I have 12K of video gear vs. audio gear.

Which reminds me ... I was so f@cking jealous of the completely professional ultra smooth camera movement in A Brief Case and then I looked at your BTS pics and all that sh@t is homemade ... WTF! I was sure you had some store bought mojo like a cobra crane, etc.

I think in addition to mics we also have the same book, Killer DV Rigs, you can build. But I have never gotten my dolly (the only thing I've made from the book yet) to be smooth. I think this is the biggest production area of mine that needs work - stabilization and dolly / crane movement.

They're just such effective narrative tools and add so much value.

and I loved the shostrings holding the camera at the right angle - that's just exactly what this digital revolution is all about!

You guys obviously did a nice job of putting that thing together also.

[TheMacB]

I think in addition to mics we also have the same book, Killer DV Rigs, you can build.

i actually saw dan selakovich do a training session at NAB last year. he built this dolly/crane right in front of us in like 15 minutes! i bought the book immediately. very cool guy too.

You guys obviously did a nice job of putting that thing together also.

i'm not much of a "man's man," if you will. i don't really build stuff or have any tools. so i got my dad to help me out with this one. it took us about 6 hours (including the 2 hours at home depot). the fun part was the 45 minute drive to the office location with fourteen 10foot PVC pipes in evan's tiny little toyota camry. we had them in the trunk, sticking through the backseats, and popping out the passenger window. it was a very cold ride.

and I loved the shostrings holding the camera at the right angle - that's just exactly what this digital revolution is all about!

Ghetto from the get-go! Safety Second, Photography First. also, notice the extension cords in some of those shots. i had lost my battery the weekend before at a music video shoot so we had to have someone carry the cord next to the dolly to make sure it didn't get caught in the wheels. fun stuff. i have since found the battery (yes!).

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

I saw that and was gonna say that you should pick up one of Jarred's 5600 batt's and then I thought ... wait you just won one didn't you?

I have three of those big ass things and i've rarely had to use more than one on a shoot, yout're gonna love it of that's not the batt you already have, and even then it's great to have more than one.

[TheMacB]

yeah i am psyched about that battery! all i have now is the one that came with the camera. excited about the mattebox too but i'm not sure exactly what it does. do you know? i just got a sweet camera bag for christmas so that will probably go to somebody else who worked on the film. very jealous of your steadi-cam. you're gonna get some sweet stuff outta that!

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

yeah i am psyched about that battery! all i have now is the one that came with the camera. excited about the mattebox too but i'm not sure exactly what it does. do you know? i just got a sweet camera bag for christmas so that will probably go to somebody else who worked on the film. very jealous of your steadi-cam. you're gonna get some sweet stuff outta that!

the mattbox is for (in order of importance)
1) making your camera look cool (more like a movie camer) impresseing clients/other dudes/and the rare chick that gives a damn
2) cutting lense flair
3) I think this one will hold rectangular filters. Which means you can use a graduated ND filter to make the sky darker but not the horizon. Pretty much any filtering you can do in post. Only thing you can't do is pull information from a blownout area, so a grad filter might be necessary for that. You can get all sorts of cool tobacco, and coffe grad filters too, but again you can do those in post. The rectangular filters are sometimes thought to be higher quality but they are more expensive to.

While you can always tape a piece of cradboard on the side that's creating the lens flare, the guys that did Broken said they wished they'd had a mattbox on set, because they used a century wide angle ... which is another advantage I guess - you MIGHT be able to use it with other lenses that the stock "lens hood" that says LEICA in big letters may not fit over on a lens by lens basis.

[TheMacB]

sweet! i'm all about reason #1! btw, Happy Birthday, buddy!