Previewing score with GarageBand
Alex Wurman is busy writing the music for The Movie, which in this digital age means a lot of files shuttling back and forth. Rather than tapes, we have QuickTimes for each reel, with timecode burned in for reference. When Alex wants us to listen to a cue, he sends an mp3 with instructions for where it lines up.
This hand-off works great when we’re in the editorial office, with the Avid churning away. But since Alex is working on weekends and after hours, I wanted to be able to preview new tracks on my home computer (a MacBook Pro).
My first instinct was to fire up Final Cut Pro. It worked, but it was kind of grizzly. Neither the QuickTimes nor the mp3’s are native formats for FCP, which meant a lot of rendering or a lot of dropped frames. Plus, it felt like overkill to build a project with just two assets. Apple’s Soundtrack would be a more natural choice, but I hadn’t installed it.
Then I vaguely remembered that the most recent version of GarageBand — which came installed on the computer — had some sort of basic Soundtrack-like features designed to work with iMovie. It turned out to be exactly what I needed. The program happily churns through both QuickTime and mp3, making it easy to sync music to picture. The video preview window is a fixed size, but it’s fine for these purposes. Plus, it’s more or less free. In a market of $999 super-apps, it’s easy to overlook the gems that came with the computer.
September 17th, 2006 at 9:09 am
There is nothing like finding a free application to truly get the job done. Truly satisfactory.
September 17th, 2006 at 9:10 am
And I just realized I used truly twice in a row. Way to proofread Steve. Must not have had enough time with my eyes shut last night. Oh well.
September 17th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Don’t you just love this modern world we live in?!!!
September 17th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
John:
You really don’t need Garage Band. When you get the Quicktime mp3’s, just Export those files to AIFF and run FCP. Keep in mind that you need the full version of Quicktime to export files.
September 17th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Plus, iMovie is absolutely the worst. There are just waaay too many things you can’t do with iMovie.
September 17th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Yeah, because it would be terrible if consumer-oriented movie editing software that comes free with every Mac chose to include fewer features in the interests of simplicity
September 17th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
How much does a good composer contribute to a film? To me they are priceless, yet so many indie, and low budget movies skive on paying much attention to the soul of the film. They care about the look of the film, the heart of the film, but forget the film’s soul. My question is/are how much do you put aside for a composer, and do you look for a composer before filming along with the rest of the crew or wait till post when the money’s almost all gone?
September 17th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
We’re not paying our composer nearly what he’s worth, but we did set aside a larger portion of the budget than usual for the score.
Because the main theme plays on-camera, he had to start composing weeks before we started filming. But it also meant that he and I could have some brainstorming time independent of all the rush and stress of post-production.
September 17th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
I play the movie in Windows Media player and the score in iTunes and just sync up the timecodes.
Last project I did this way I saw my composer only once. He forwarded the completed 24 bit files to the sound designer, who plugged them into the film.
Amazing. The truly modular construction of films where the director is seldom in the same room as the other trades.
September 17th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
i’ve got a bunch of composers who live above me.
…except i’d pay them MORE than they’re worth to get them to SHUT UP.
September 17th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
Kevin Lehane:
Typically, you want to set aside 3% of your total budget for the composer.
Although most Indie films wait until they’re way into post before they even look for a composer. Which by the way is a colossal mistake.
And of course, something that I just did. The great thing is, there are a ton of great composers out there. We literally just got over 200 submissions.
September 18th, 2006 at 12:20 am
There are a lot of good composers out there, and they are surprisingly easy to find. Before I even put out a request looking for a composer on my most recent film, I got a ton of submissions just from people who saw the Hollywood Reporter production chart listing.
September 18th, 2006 at 1:55 am
I edited my first short with Windows Movie Maker. True story. And that was after I had Premiere and Pinnacle installed on my PC. And so far, everybody who watched it said it looked very good.
September 18th, 2006 at 10:07 am
John, I hope you’re using mp3s for evaluation and collaboration and not for the final product. Since it’s a compressed format, mp3 is subject to clipping and dropoff, which could lead to artifacts in the final soundtrack (we’ve had that happen in the past). I would recommend getting either aiff or wav for the final versions.
-Mitch
September 18th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Mitch –
Believe me, mp3 is for previewing. We’re spending millions (okay, thousands) on sound. We wouldn’t blow it on a bad file format.
September 18th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Mitch - Obviously a guy like Wurman knows exactly what he’s doing…..come on.
September 18th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Silly me. I should have checked Alex Wurman’s link first. I just saw the red flag and had a flashback
September 18th, 2006 at 10:39 pm
John, if you have the full Final Cut Studio, you could also use Soundtrack Pro. If Garageband worked for you, that’s great, but STP does have a few professional features that allow for more precise tweaking. I recently did the final mix for my feature film with it, and it was more or less fine for the task.
September 19th, 2006 at 12:43 am
John-
I was in a similar situation when I received files from my composer for my latest short film. After noticing that the files were in mp3 format, and having already experienced problems with mp3 files in FCP, I burned the mp3’s into a playable audio disc from iTunes.
This automatically converts the mp3’s into .AIFF files on the disc. It worked for someone like me who doesn’t have Quicktime Pro as a conversion tool. All I had to do from there was open the audio disc and drag the files onto my desktop. Conversion complete.
It’s an extra step, but it’ll allow you to view the sync files in a larger preview window. Keep grindin’…I look forward to seeing The Movie.
September 19th, 2006 at 6:56 am
To clarify, the main reason FCP was dropping frames was not the audio (which rendered out quickly) but the highly compressed video. These little reference Quicktimes are deliberately small, and run 20 minutes. GarageBand (or Soundtrack) don’t really mind, because the programs aren’t trying to make the video editable. For FCP’s sake, I could have converted the video into a different format, but that would have taken a long time, which sort of spoils the whole quick-and-dirty concept.
I hadn’t installed Soundtrack because I wasn’t intending to use it on my MacBook. Its loops take up a huge chunk of hard drive space.
September 20th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Hi John,
Is it allowed to deliver a screenplay written on MS Word to agents or producers in Hollywood ??