Mix Masters

We have audio!
The Green Chain moved into Post Modern Sound this week and our post team -- Jana Fritsch (editor), Darron Leiren-Young (coordinator) and I -- moved in with our mix masters. So we got to watch, listen and work with Gael MacLean (sound designer), Mark Hensley (head mixer) and Don Mann (effects/foley/ambience mixer).
It was wild seeing the movie on a big screen, hearing it on a half dozen speakers and layering in the dialogue, foley and effects.
And it was even wilder to realize we're almost done...
Mixing was a new adventure for me. I've been involved in producing three albums and I've done a fair bit of radio work where I’ve seen foley artists in action, but this was the first time I've had the chance to play with the sound on screen. It was amazing working with audio to find new ways to tell our story and capture the worlds of each scene.
On our first day of shooting, Brendan Fletcher was fifty feet up a tree. During the night shoot, coyotes started howling at him. Brendan howled back. After I said "clear-cut" our sound man tried to capture the coyote howls -- but I guess they'd recognized Brendan as the alpha dog and run off. Now the coyotes are back, sounding exactly like they did that night.
But the mosquito that decided to take up residence in front of our boom microphone for a large portion of my favourite take of Scott McNeil's performance has finally been swatted.
And I've been introduced to a dozen subtle variations in the sounds of silence.
Magic.

Battlestars go Green

If you look at the credits for The Green Chain it kind of feels like we should be cutting down trees with laser beams or starting a replanting project on New Caprica...
Two of the stars of The Green Chain are also stars of Battlestar Galactica.
Tricia Helfer (our "superstar" who comes to logging country to speak out against clearcuts) plays a Cylon. Actually, she plays a lot of Cylons and what may or may not be an imaginary character in ex-President Baltar's head.
And our firefighter, Tahmoh Penikett, plays Lt. Helo Agathon, the heart and conscience of Battlestar.
Tricia and Tahmoh are the two Canadian actors that Battlestar's Executive Producer David Eick recently raved about as the show's breakout discoveries in a recent interview in Reel West Magazine (that'd be the same mag that featured Tricia and me on the cover).
Eick noted that Tricia had to "carry the miniseries" and describes her as, "a tremendous talent and someone who has been extremely important to the show."
And Tahmoh? "Tahmoh is quite a success story because he was a day player for the miniseries and he was so compelling in the role and such a natural star we recreated the role when we were trying to convince the network to give us a series order."
The Green Chain's executive producer, Donna Wong-Juliani, has her own Battlestar connection. Her son, Alessandro, plays Lt. Felix Gaeta -- one of the show's most idealistic characters (even if he did perjure himself in the season finale). When we were casting and wanted to find out whether Tricia and Tahmoh were good to work with, it was Alessandro who assured us they were amazing.
For those of you who don't watch Battlestar Galactica... go get some DVDS and catch up... It's consistently the most powerful -- and most political -- series on TV.
And since our logger, Scott McNeil, is one of the biggest stars in the worlds of anime and animation and I spend most of my time these days working in fantasy TV (my first episode of Blood Ties -- the detective/vampire series just aired on Lifetime) and animation (Pucca and Class of the Titans coming soon) I keep thinking... maybe we can be the first non- genre film ever to play the San Diego Comic Con...