I got a call to play glass armonica on a film score for a feature called Terra. (A ‘feature’ is a film that is distributed to movie theaters (first), not for TV—at least initially). Here’s how recording film scores work:
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| ‘Post Production’ at Warner Bros. |
When making a film, they have ‘pre-production’, which is when they do all the planning for the film, ‘production’ when they actually shoot the film, and ‘post-production’ when they put all the pieces together into the finished product. Although the film composer will already be working out the themes and can start writing the music for the film during pre-production and production, the composer really needs the final edited version to time all the music right. So the film score is largely a ‘post-production’ task, and they never really want to give the composer much time because by this point they’re very anxious to get the thing done. Then once the score is done there’s generally a bit of a mad rush to record it all—for the same reason. (By the way, it’s surprising how many films are completed and are put on the shelf.)
Assuming that the film score is using an orchestra, orchestral musicians are used to playing with other orchestral musicians, and they can get a lot more music recorded in the same amount of time if they record the whole orchestra all at once. One thing they typically do, though, is have a separate microphone for every ‘desk’ (two musicians playing the same instruments—e.g. two violinist—sitting next to each other reading off of the same music). This can require 24 track recording or more, but later as they’re doing the final mix, they can decide “we want a little more French horn in this spot”.
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| The sound stage |
But there are instruments that are problematic to record in this context. Percussion is a good example—it can be so loud that it’s hard to balance it with the rest of the orchestra in the orchestra recording session. And then there are quiet instruments—like me!—that can too easily be drowned out by the orchestra. So a frequent plan is to record the orchestra, and then record the percussion and instruments like glass armonica, one at a time, later. Which is what they did this time.
In the control booth they have the edited film, and the orchestra recorded to it; they give me the music, I’m the only musician in the studio at this point, and I can hear the orchestra in headphones. I also hear a ‘click track’ that clicks out the beat, and I have my own display of the film that also shows the measure/beat number in the upper corner. So they start the recorder—I’ll be track 42, say, along with the rest of the orchestra—I know I come in on beat 3 of bar 92, I watch the measure/beat counter and listen to the track and play when I’m supposed to.
Later they’ll do the final mix down of all the musicians into the final product that you hear in the theater.