Recording - May 2017 - 59

Continued from page 56
Jon: I do prefer those with ring-outs myself,
not that I'm editing them. But that's what I
always tell composers if I'm working on a production music library compilation, which I'm
doing more of now. I would say, "Don't give
me a hard-out. Just give me a little bit of
reverb at the end so there's some presence at
the end, so it's not just a direct cut."
And Dave from an editor's perspective why is it
more useful for you to have music that ends like
that?
Dave: It makes it easier for me to edit. At the
end, since it's a defining point in the music
cue, if I'm using it to get into an interview or
out of a scene, then it's over and it's an easy
cut point or edit point where I can use
throughout, the cue itself. And I can cheat a
little bit. It's odd, but it gives me a little leeway, because I can just hit the beats, hit the
snare, and if it stings, I can throw it together
real quick, and then I'm done with that scene
and I can move on.

Dave: That would only take me a day...or like
a couple of hours for that. Jon would have
given me a cue for that, I would have laid it in,
and then I would have back-timed it. And the
picture cut I've already done. The groundwork
is laid out, and then I'd put the cue in for the
act-out, back-timed it, and then I start going,
OK, we're going to add some layers here. The
cue's great, but I've got to beef up the end to
let everyone know that this is the end of the
act, you're coming to a commercial break, stay
tuned, and boost the intensity and the energy.
How many hours do you take on just the music
aspect of a single episode of a show like this? And
that's just your end. Jon, after he's done,
give us...
Dave: I'll actually tell you. We get six weeks to

edit that episode, and the first week we're
putting in interviews, and story editor has
already strung out [laid it out in rough
sequence] just the story bit part of it. Then we
get it, we clean it up and cut it down. About
the second week is when Jonathan would start
giving us music. And we have to give him the
string-out, and then he's already... In that week
that I'm cleaning up and adding interviews,
he's picking cues. So that next Monday, five
days later, we're starting to add music. So two
weeks in, it's done for an internal cut. And it's
two editors on a 42-minute formatted episode,
so for about 22 minutes it's taken us about 10
business days to get all the music that Jon is
feeding us. It's just a constant roll.
Look for Part Two in next month's Insider.

Can you tell the audience what it means to back
time something-back time music into a scene?
Dave: The way I do it is I would find the end
of the cue and I would put it to wherever the
emotional or the total end of that scene is over
or a shift. Then I would put that in there and
make a mark in the cue and I would just roll
the head out. I would also find the front of the
cue and then I'd start moving it around to
make it all sound correct. But it goes
backwards as opposed to forward in editing, in
a way. Does that make sense?
Anyway, why don't you start and show us how
you would lay it. I mean, go through the whole
process. Put some music in a scene for us on the
big screen...
Dave: Well, this is already cut. These are
selects that I chose. And this is actually a scene
from Challenge, where Jonathan was actually
was the music supervisor and he picked all the
cues. [David plays the scene.] Right there I use
the sound effect to actually get out of the cue,
because it [the music] was going to change.
Now, if I were finding the cue, I would actually
put it right there [and he indicates where].
That one I actually didn't find the end, because
I thought the beginning was more important.
[He plays more of the scene.] So the cue ended
there, and if I were editing this, I would have
actually just roll it out where that sound effect
was. [More of the scene plays]
So how long would it take you to do the sound
effects and the music on a scene like that?
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