Well, that’s totally overstating things, but it’s been a LONG time since anyone wrote a new update on our web site. A lot has changed since we last updated anything on this site. When last anyone wrote anything here, our main mixing operation was located in downtown Albuquerque, in the awesome basement of the old bank building which housed halflife* digital (as of this writing, the google street view still shows our sign). That was a great space for a mix stage, but alas halflife* moved out, so this past September, we moved our primary operations into I-25 Studios, and we’re delighted with the new location. The mix stage is bigger, has theatrical stadium seating, and the acoustics are clearer. There was also space for us to open a new ADR stage. We had a recording booth at halflife* and did shoot some ADR in that room, and we’ve also recorded some ADR at our home base, the room we still use for Foley, not to mention we’ve been doing ADR in New Mexico since a few weeks after we arrived in the fantastic big room of Santa Fe Center Studios. We can still record projects in Santa Fe Center Studios if that’s right for the job, but our new ADR stage @ I-25 gives us more scheduling freedom without sacrificing audio quality. We outfitted the room with a Neumann KMR-81 shotgun mic, which is the 1st or 2nd choice of all the ADR mixers and supervisors we interviewed in Hollywood, and a Sanken COS-11 lavalier, which is the only lav we’ve seen on production sound reports in the past 5 years or so. We also got a 2-channel Focusrite ISA pre-amp, which is the cleanest front end we’ve owned in the history of Hear Kitty Studios, and really does great justice to both mics and the room. And finally, this may not seem exciting, but the space in I-25 Studios allows us to have an office, complete with our own coffee pot, microwave, desk, and comfy couch.
We’ve also done a lot of very fulfilling work since we last updated anything here. We’ve did full audio post on at least 6 feature films since then, including a Steven Seagall action film (Force of Execution), a truly inspirational documentary by local documentarians Jilann Spitzmiller and Hank Rogerson (Still Dreaming), the fascinating story of R.G. Studios and their internet art films (Double Digits), and the PBS American Master’s piece about photographer Dorothea Lange directed and produced by Lange’s granddaughter and local filmmaker Dyanna Taylor (Grab a Hunk of Lightning). We’ve also continued our run of doing ADR on every TV series to shoot in New Mexico with Better Call Saul, The Night Shift, Killer Women and The Messengers. Short films continue to inspire us about the future (and present) of New Mexico filmmaking, including a piece directed by Michael Becker–an A.D. with roots and strong ties to New Mexico–which showed at the Kennedy Space Center as part of the launch event for the Orion rocket (Delivery From Earth).
That’s probably enough for one update even if it is the first in almost 2 years. We promise to be more dynamic with our content here in the future. Rock on.
Yeah, that’s right, we now have a dedicated computer for each of our re-recording mixers. We had the idea one day when we were moving the ADR stage from I-25 Studios to Albuquerque Studios for a session out there. The whole ADR rig became portable at the beginning of the most recent season of The Night Shift and we’ve gotten to the point where we can wrap an actor at one location and two hours later be recording an actor across town at the other location. If we could do that, sure we could move the ADR rig on to the mix stage for a two-mixer setup. Right? To quote Apocalypse Now, “absolutely god damned right” we can. The first time it took about 2 hours, and that included a lot of troubleshooting, so we’ll probably have that time down to about an hour pretty soon.
