We got word yesterday that our building is officially unsafe after Saturday’s earthquake. It’s been a bit of a weird ride as soon after the quake an engineer thought the building was mostly fine. We even started cleaning up.

Yesterday though we learned that the building has some pretty serious structural damage. Pretty soon after the CCC gave the building ‘restricted access’ status which means we can go in and get our stuff but we can’t work or be there long term.

So it really is an end of an era for us. We’ve been in the current premises for nearly 5 years and spent a huge amount of time, money and energy making it into a great place to be and record. We’ve had a lot of really great bands and friends help us along the way and support us so it seem like a good time to say thanks!

But we’re certainly not beat! We have set up a temporary mixing and audio post space at Ben’s house and we’ll be actively looking for a new space as of next week. We’re not sure where or what that will look like (or what we can really afford… eek) but The Sitting Room will be back at some point.

Our thoughts go out to all those who are far worse off than we are – people with wrecked homes, businesses with no insurance or in big financial trouble and those who are still anxious and frightened about what the future holds.

Today begins the huge task of dismantling everything in the studio and packing it up to be stored. Interesting times ahead!

Audio Post Production for TV and Film.. Who cares?

When you think about it as a % your movie or tv watching experience surely depends on the sound about 50% as the visuals also about 50%, right? . The finer details could be argued that either is slightly more important at given times or depending on the style of entertainment you’re watching, however the % is probably sitting close to half most of the time.

Given that, the audio recording, soundtrack or music, sound FX, foley fx recording, ADR and audio post mix is quite simply bloody important and more often than not, very time consuming.

The Sitting Room is doing more and more audio post production these days, everything from tv shows, advertisements, documentaries and film and I love it. It’s quite a different challenge to recording and mixing music and can is extremely rewarding when you see (hear) the finished product.
The Hell Pizza interactive adventure was no exception, we had a totally blast with the SFX recording (zombies, blood, bites) and the great vibe of the project.

Here’s hoping there’s more exciting Hell Pizza adventures to come!

And for anyone interested in a little laugh this stuff happens all the time in the Audio Post or Location audio recording circles:

ADR and Hell Pizza

Audio post production, Sound fx, the soundtrack and audio post mixing for film and TV is often under estimated and overlooked by the general public in the finished product. Often if the music and audio post production mix is done REALLY well it’s designed to not be noticed, in fact it’s usually only noticed when it’s done badly.  There’s a real art and skill to piecing together a dynamic and emotive sound mix for film or tv and one very important part of that is the dialogue recording. Whether it’s an action, a horror, a rom com or even a doco the dialogue is very important, the watcher must be able to easily hear what is being said, and this can be extremely tricky if you’ve decided to record your audio on location and there’s the lighting guy’s generator cranking, or planes flying overhead, it’s near impossible to get a good clean take of every line. So the process of ADR was invented and implemented.

ADR or Automatic dialogue replacement is essentially the process of ‘over dubbing’ good clean audio takes of the dialogue. It’s most usually a case of getting the actors back after the shoot, have them come into an audio recording studio (like the sitting room) and re recording each of their lines, mimicking exactly how they delivered the lines during the actual shoot. Now, clearly this is a very time consuming process and there’s a lot of factors here that can make or break a good ADR session. Consider such things as:

• Microphone placement or distance to the speaker vs how far away they are on screen
• Emotion and being able to exactly replicate ‘how’ something was said
• Movement, if lines were being delivered whilst running or eating, they sound very different to just standing still in front of a microphone
• And phrasing, I can say the same thing in different ways 100’s of times without even consciously trying to do so.

Given all this, the role and job of being able to record and/or re deliver your dialogue lines is tricky even at the best of times. Once again, if the ADR recording and editing is done well then it’s hardly noticabe even to a trained eye/ear… done badly and things can be out of sync or just sound wrong. The Sitting Room recorded and edited the and fingers crossed there’s not too many points where it’s too noticeable !

Check out this great video about all the issues sound production and audio post teams face on big film shoots:

Shooting

For those who haven’t been involved in film or audio post production for film, shooting, editing and mixing this amount of footage of this calibre is no easy feat. In fact it’s a time consuming and costly process, but once again Logan and Katie have managed to ace this and the proof is simply in the pudding.

Logan has been a big DSLR fan and in fact one of NZ’s DSLR poster boys. He’s been using and shooting HD video on DSLR’s longer than anyone else I know in the industry and as far as I’m concerned getting some of the best results in the country. All this does not come easy or cheap, he’s spent 100’s of hours using, shooting, researching and testing to make sure he get’s the best results.

The shoot for this campaign was spread over 5 shooting days and comprised of a 2 camera set up, a large crew and crap load of Hell Pizza for lunch.

Film shoot, location audio recording and zombies

Some of you will know that one of the major drawbacks to the DSLR shooting at the moment is the audio recording capabilities. Not that it has none, but that they’re limited and well, average to say the least. It was discussed at length before we started the shoot how we’d deal with this as usually I would be swinging a boom or making sure we’d be recording location sound as best we could, however being an actor and also the tight shooting schedule meant that we opted for a shoot with little or no location audio being recorded to be used in the audio post mix… scary? Yes.. a little dangerous… yes.. but did it work out.. yes, just. Essentially this meant full ADR recording for all the actors, massive foley sessions and FX laying and some very long and intensive audio post mix sessions..more to come on this in the next few posts.

Busting your balls in the strangest of the ‘industries’

The older I get the more I understand that there really isn’t a ‘top secret’ formula or series of events that makes one band or musician more popular or successful than others. In my youth I thought there must’ve been some secret that all the top bands had that I just needed to find out ‘what’. It turns out that I was so far off the mark it’s not funny. Sure there are a lot of tasty ingredients that make up the ’success pie’ and depending on exactly what flavour you’re hoping to bake depends on ‘where’ you need to get your groceries.. so to speak (only mildly confusing I guess).

One particular ingredient that I believe is overlooked, especially within this ’sit-down’, sms, facebook digital age, is the lost art of pure and simple ‘hard work’. I know too many musicians (definitely me included) that take the easy road far too often. This is most certainly not the case with The Eastern. I mentioned in an earlier post that I believe the band is the hardest working band in the country and here’s how. Consider this:

In the last 2 years the band has:

- Written over 300 songs
- Recorded over 50 songs
- Released 3 EPs
- Released 2 Albums
- Toured the country 5 times
- Travelled over 80 000 NZ kms
- Toured the USA twice
- Played over 600 shows (averaging 4 or 5 shows a week)
- Supported and played with acts such as the following: Steve Earle, Jim White, The Old Crow medicine show and Fleetwood mac
- Sold over 2000 cd’s
- PLUS so much personal stuff that puts my achievements to shame.

What’s MORE amazing is that all of this was done completely independently, off their own backs, 5 members full time musicians, no publishing deals, no nz on air or creative nz grants, no record deal, no management.

Are they tired? Yes, of course.

Are they happy? Yes.

Can anyone do this? Sure if you’ve got the heart of a bear and the balls of a brass monkey.

Sometimes I think they’re all mad and it’s only a matter of time until one of them implodes, however most of the time it’s just an overwhelming respect I have for what they manage to get done. So, next time you see The Eastern playing in your hood make sure you pop in, buy them a drink and shake their hands, they friggin deserve it.

The Eastern’s 2nd Album

The wonderfully talented Michael Edge-Perkins, and his gorgeous partner in crime ‘Sylvia’, joined us for a couple of nights in the wood cabin. While they were there Michael shot a bunch of great photos. Simply enjoy.

Environment vs Vibe vs Acoustic Perfection vs Whiskey

I am a firm believer in not only creating a good ‘vibe’ for the band to record in but making sure the entire experience of recording surpasses anything they’ve dealt with in the past. There are many thoughts and theories behind the art of ‘recording music, capturing performances and making records’, and I have my feet firmly in the territory of ‘A great song + (a great performance + sexy vibe) = A great experience (to the power of a great recording)’. So with this in mind the compromise of perfect acoustics vs an environment where people were equally relaxed as they were focused and excited was a no brainer.

Personally it was also as much of a challenge as it was an experience. The wood cabin (named Kea Aura.. i know.. good eh) is simply gorgeous. Featuring a large open planned living/sleeping area with an exposed wood ceiling, I set up a bunch of room mics to capture the vibe. I then proceeded to place the band ‘in and around’ the room trying to use the bleed from each instrument to my advantage of a roomy feel for the other’s mics. That and the fact that the band don’t like using click tracks or even using many overdubs means that it makes for an interesting, exciting and challenging concept for all involved. I was so very much into giving this a good nudge as these days every other studio or engineer seems to be talking about beat detective tips, re amping tricks, the latest vst amp simulator or how to trigger their drumagog samples via wifi from their iPhone….please.

If there’s one thing I love about the Eastern it’s that they believe in themselves and their mission. Any mention of a click track or multi tracking (let alone Auto-Tune) will result in either personal pummeling or a 10 minute lecture as to why they don’t believe in that (now that’s a whole different discussion). Whether I agree with it 100% of the time or not is irrelevant but what I do 100% entirely love is that they stand by their mission and will see it through to the end of the project. This attitude and conviction has an ‘air’ of misfit to it which is not only down to earth and real, but very attractive to work, learn and live with.

The simple fact is: this band is ‘hands down, without a doubt’ New Zealand’s hardest working independent band (I will get into this in the next post). Even though they may not be the best musicians in the country, they are definitely the most passionate and hardworking of all the full time musicians I’ve ever met. They’ve had some of the best studios offer to record them or work with them (most of which are clearly FAR better at this whole game than I am), yet they politely turn these offers down. Why? They simply believe in growing a local community. As they grow stronger, we all grow stronger. Who else is ‘actually’ doing this? I mean, everyone ‘claims’ they’ll do this, ‘claims’ they’ll move away north, or tour the country and spread the word to help the local Christchurch music community….. but….. who is ‘actually’ doing it? The Eastern. And what’s better, who is actually doing it off their own back? Off the smell of the smell of the SMELL of an oily rag? The bloody Eastern.

And who drinks whiskey to keep them going?……lots of whiskey. The God damned Eastern.

Give me a woody!

Ok, let me start by saying that in no way do I want the following posts to sound like a verbal or literal wank fest of the people involved, it is a legitimate and accurate description of the facts (with a little subjective offering thrown in for good measure).

Exactly 1 month ago today I took my well rested, over fed (xmas style) arse up to the studio simply to pack it all down in to a series of cardboard boxes and empty beer crates. I was preparing to take a mobile version of The Sitting Room away to record an album in a remote location, something I’ve wanted to do for a very, very long time. This particular location was a wood cabin located in a national park within Arthurs Pass near the Devil’s Punch Bowl. The cabin is surrounded by native bush, Keas, waterfalls and alpine smells (mostly pleasant) simply wonderful, bordering on perfect.

I can’t think of a single musician that wouldn’t be interested in the idea of recording in a secluded atmosphere with zero distractions and only one task at hand. In the wild, in the woods, no internet, no emails, no fagbook. It seems to good to be true, and more often than not it is as sadly most bands just can’t organise the time off. They’re too busy working their day jobs as accountants or internet marketers or retail fiends. Not the Eastern. The Eastern are the only band that I know in this country that are not only open to ideas like this but have the balls to make it happen, and not only just make it happen but make it happen off their own backs, oily rags, tea towels and tea cups. Anyway, it was a month ago today I arrived at this wood cabin and started setting up gear for The Eastern’s 2nd full length album and what would turn out to be one of the best experiences of my life. Stay tuned for a fistful of posts, thoughts and photos of the madness that ensued.

Wonderful photos care of Michael Edge Perkins

Just a quick post about this lovely clip. Oberst’s new band is so hot! Check it out!

Client: University of Canterbury
Medium: Radio Commercial
Our Role: Creative, Location Sound, Production

UC has a brand kept fresh with the use of students on billboards, magazine ads and promotional materials. In the past, UC’s radio ads had remained unrelated to the rest of the advertising campaign. The Sitting Room was tasked with bringing the ads in to line with rest of UC’s marketing.

We suggested interviewing students about what they love about UC and distilling these down to a 10 – 15 second audio clip. We went on location to the university to capture students in their natural habitat. The result was a radio ad that felt very genuine, fresh and yet conveyed those important brand messages.

Listen (click to play): An example ad with a student called Steph.