On a rainy Monday morning in late October, we met at Bren
Events Center outside of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts to make the
55-mile drive up to Burbank to visit Warner Brothers Studios. Ning got scolded
at the gate for taking pictures, so we didn’t press our luck on the rest of the
lot.
We started our tour with a peek at one of their larger ADR
(automatic dialogue replacement) stages. Damon Banks led the tour giving advice
and info about the facilities and process along the way. As scheduling for this
room is tight, we were fortunate to get to see one of the most utilized
recording spaces in Los Angeles.
From the ADR Stage, we moved on to Rerecording Stage 4. Two editors were prepping for a meeting with Lionsgate executives to come in and listen to the final mix for an upcoming film.
Our next stop was to Rerecording Stage 1, where the Audio Editors and Music Editor walked us through their workflow and fielded questions. Here, two editors are able to work simultaneously on the console; one mixing dialogue while the other works on SFX and ambiances.One of the highlights of the tour was visiting the Foley stage where UCI Alum MaryJo Lang showed us her typical recording session. We explored their stock of sound props, varying floors, fabrics, metals, and fluids used to create Foley tracks. Two of the staff Foley artists talked with us about mic placement, different recording techniques, and some cool tricks for our Audio for Video projects. It was outrageously cool.
Our final stop on the Warner Bros Lot was the Scoring Stage. We just narrowly missed a session with the orchestra recoding music for The Simpsons. The space has been used to record Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, and many other composers, artists, and musicians.
We had a great trip! Everyone was really jazzed about
working on our upcoming film audio project following the trip. HUGE thanks to
Damon and MaryJo for making the trip possible!
