Walter Murch: interview

Academy-award winning film editor Walter Murch talks about his career path.



[full video - via Roadtrip Nation]

Happy Holidays

[via rebelscum.com]

The Complete Making of Indiana Jones

The Complete Making of Indiana Jones will be released on May 22, 2008, the same day the fourth Indy adventure is set to hit theaters. This new book will cover the making of all four Indy movies, including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

[via starwars.com]

...from the Past…out of the Future...

...from the Past…out of the Future...

There are places where consciousness and matter coexist.

Perhaps they share the same origin.
We learn that collective consciousness is shared among human beings, dynamically redistributing itself via unknown processes.
It permeates objects themselves and contributes to reality in its entirety.
We can perceive only a small part due to our biological nature and our tools for scientific research.
Our unconscious through reminiscence collects and dynamically rearranges fragments, and they interact in the explicit order.
The uniqueness of all things appears under different forms of experience..
We are searching for the wholeness, but we can only guess, sometimes in our dreams, in the arts, and in our philosophical speculation.
We ask ourselves about the deepness of matter and spirit with often inadequate or sometimes inconclusive tools and believe in the specificity and singularity of phenomena.
Each event persists in a place, in the past, in the future, because it is a permanent image itself, flowing the wholeness, like the story and the experience.
There's no distinction, no limits, no difference, every possible infinity resonates in the wholeness.

Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi
(Unidentified Sound Object) will be online today 23rd December 2007 for a live gig via Mogulus, the Internet broadcast network. Starting 21:00 UTC time, you can enjoy a live video feed of USO performing live with Kyma and Ableton Live from Rome
Don’t miss the event!

• 21:00 UTC time (Time Converter)
• Live video feed from Rome via our Mogulus Channel

Later rebroadcasts will also be available on the USO channel.

Less music is purchased-and more purchases are digital

[via wired.com]

Pixar's corner

The new trailer for Disney/Pixar's WALL•E is now online!

WALL-E Exclusive Trailer

You can download a higher quality quicktime (640×360) on IGN.com.


More on Lifted:

Is Linguini...

( Copyright 2007 Disney / Pixar. All Rights Reserved)

... the unfortunate human who gets brutally bashed about while he's being abducted in Gary Rydstrom's Lifted?

( Copyright 2007 Disney / Pixar. All Rights Reserved)

Tinny actually make a quick cameo in Pixar's most recent short, "Lifted." This tender-hearted wind-up toy is located under the bed during the attempted abduction sequence.

( Copyright 2007 Disney / Pixar. All Rights Reserved)

( Copyright 2007 Disney / Pixar. All Rights Reserved)

[via mikemcstay.blogspot.com]

Santa being taken to an Imperial Shuttle—or something like that

[courtesy of gizmodo.com]

Thinking About Helmut Lachenmann, with Recommended Recordings

Helmut Lachenmann, the German composer born in Stuttgart in 1935, has been at the center of musical debates for nearly four decades and remains there, undaunted, today. His works offer both listeners and performers tremendous challenges — insurmountable challenges, some would say — but his music nonetheless is performed and people do listen to it (perhaps in the ways in which the composer intends). Vital to his aesthetic belief is the reformulation and renewal of musical traditions; why simply accept the hierarchy of traditions the evolution of music has handed down to us? He achieves this musical bouleversement by asking his listeners and performers to suspend, or perhaps completely reject, their inherited beliefs about music, because they serve only to hinder and distort the listening experience. His ability to achieve beauty through the use of unheard or undesired sounds is a testament to his meticulous craft.

[read the entire piece - via La Folia]

Producer sues New Line over "Lord of the Rings"

The Academy Award-winning producer behind the "Lord of the Rings" franchise has sued the films' distributor, New Line Cinema, to force it to disclose its accounting for the multibillion-dollar epic.
The lawsuit, filed by octogenarian producer Saul Zaentz, was at least the second involving profits from the trilogy against New Line, which is accused in both suits of hiding profits.
Zaentz acquired the rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" novels in 1976 and licensed them to Miramax Film Corp, which later assigned the license to New Line.

[read the full article - via reuters]
[Saul Zaentz Media Center]
[Saul Zaentz Company]

A happy holiday season from Lucasfilm

A donation has been made to the Imagine Bus Project, which provides visual art education to underprivileged children and at-risk youth in San Francisco, Marin and Sonoma Counties.

[via starwars.com]

[imaginebusproject.org]

Pierre Schaeffer - "Etude aux Chemins de Fer"

The first piece of musique concrete, composed by Pierre Schaeffer in 1948 out of sounds produced by trains.

> This is posted as a reference to a series of articles on the problems of composition posed by musique concrete.

[the article on Pierre Schaeffer can be found here]

David Lynch - The Air is on Fire

The Triennale di Milano presents David Lynch, The Air is on Fire, a major art retrospective devoted to the multiple facets of David Lynch as a visual artist. This exhibition event brings together the movie director’s paintings, photographs, drawings, experimental films and soundtracks. The public will have the chance to discover and rediscover David Lynch’s fine art, with never-before-seen works, and site-specific installations created specially for this exhibition.

The Air is on Fire takes us into David Lynch’s studio cluttered with paintings, black cupboards full of old files and shelves packed with labelled folders containing hundreds of drawings. This is Lynch’s own beautifully kept personal collection, dating back to his high school years and displayed in Italy now for the first time. Revealed to the Director of the Fondation Cartier, Hervé Chandès, all these works have been gathered together and specially staged for exhibition by David Lynch himself: pictures hung on large metal frames and mounted on brightly-coloured curtains, animated films projected in a tiny cinema evoking Eraserhead (1977), the sketch of a living room turned into a life-size scene. These settings give the visitor a rare insight into David Lynch’s approach to production design and his unique visual style.

[read more]

[David Lynch - The Air is on Fire

Triennale di Milano 9 October 2007 – 13 January 2008

Opening hours: 10.30 am-8.30 pm, closed Mondays]

TMH Sound System: next generation surround sound

5.1 was named by Tomlinson Holman in 1987 and came out on film in 1992 and became popular since then. What comes after this is the addition of more channels and from that comes the 10.2 sound system which is twice as good as 5.1. How far the number of channels can go is known and largely speculated but the most logical answer at the moment is 10.2.
The purpose of 10.2 is to allow much greater flexibility for sound designers and create a far more immersive environment for the audience. With these channels, it is possible to recreate the acoustics of nearly any location with astonishing realism. Holman found that the second most important sound wave to hit the audience - after the one from the source - is the one that comes from a point on the ceiling, halfway between them. This is because most rooms have hard and reflective ceilings, but the walls are semi-absorptive due to objects in the room; while the floor, usually covered with carpet, absorbs most of the reflected sound. So this first, overhead reflection reaches the ear at a slightly different time, allowing the brain to both localize the primary sound and compute the size of the room. By placing two speakers 45° above and to the left and right the audience, this key sound wave can be recreated. The other speakers can fill in the other major reverberations from the sides and off the back of the room, recreating a full acoustic signature. The strength of traditional 5.1 surround is that its left and right surround speakers are diffuse; they spread the sound around the entire area. This helps to prevent the " Exit Sign Effect" - audience members looking away from the screen at the source of a localized sound, not realizing it is part of the movie. However, this diffusion carries a cost in flexibility. Therefore 10.2 augments the LS (left surround) and RS (right surround) channels by two point surround channels that can more finely manipulate sound - allowing the mixer to shift sounds in a distinct 360° circle around the movie watcher.
The .2 of the 10.2 refers to the addition of a second subwoofer. The system is bass managed such that all the speakers on the left side use the left sub and all the speakers on the right use the right sub. The Center and Back Surround speaker are split between the two subs. The two subs also serve as two discrete LFE (Low Frequency Effects) channels. Although low frequencies are not localizable, it was found that splitting the bass on either side of the audience increases the sense of envelopment.

[read the full article - via uscsoundconscious]
[tmhlabs.com]

Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1928-2007

One of the great visionaries of 20th-century music, the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen passed away on December 5th 2007 at the age of 79 and will be buried in the Waldfriedhof (forest cemetery) in Kürten, Germany.

News of his death was released by the clarinettist Suzanne Stephens and flautist Kathinka Pasveer, two "companions" who had been associated with him for than 30 years and performed many of his works.

May he rest in peace.

[announcement, via Guardian Unlimited]
[stockhausen.org]

Skywalker Sound: Technical Building revealed

Skywalker Sound is located in the serene rolling hills of Marin County, California, forty minutes north of San Francisco. Occupying the 155,000 square foot Technical Building, Skywalker Sound is one of the largest, most versatile full-service post-production facilities in the world.

[Read the article: The hills are alive with the sounds of Skywalker - via CNET]

[CNET photo gallery]
[skysound.com virtual tour]

Working to capture a sound that rings true

Immortalizing a performance takes more than hanging a mike and hitting 'record.' There's an art to these engineers' science.

Rick Rubin, George Martin, Timbaland, Brian Eno, Phil Spector -- the average pop music fan, if asked, could probably come up with at least a handful of names of notable recording personnel. It seems fair to say, though, that the typical consumer of orchestral and chamber music recordings, faced with the same question, would draw a blank.

Yet just as in rock 'n' roll or hip-hop, the engineer for such music -- who is often, though not always, the producer as well -- is the person who makes or breaks an audio performance. He chooses and then places the microphones for a recording session and later meticulously splices various takes -- in the old days with a razor blade and tape, today on a computer -- to achieve the best possible version of a composition. It's a version that may well reach far more listeners than live performances of the work did even many years after its premiere.
...
While you can eliminate mechanical imperfections, you can't make someone an artist by making 400 splices," he says. "You can't give a violinist a more beautiful tone or a better conception of the music or a better idea of the tempo. You can make it sound mechanically and technically solid, but all the things that make 'music' can't be fabricated."

By Constance Meyer, latimes.com
December 2, 2007

Techstuff: analog synthesis

[via synthtopia]

Wired into existence

Björk ·· All is Full of Love



[Director: Chris Cunningham]

Skywalker Sound "secrets"

CNET News.com reporter Kara Tsuboi spent a day at Skywalker Sound, putting her ear to the ground to learn some sound secrets.


You can't imagine how many splashes there are in the world...
[Randy Thom]

[take me to the video - CNET]

Jazzmutant: Dual Mode Capability

JazzMutant introduces the Dual Mode capability for the Lemur and Dexter controllers.

The Lemur is dedicated to anyone who's looking for maximum modularity and customization of their controlling experience. The Lemur can adapt to all kinds of applications, from live Djing software to light control and interactive media arts.

Dexter is a dedicated solution for studio professionals looking for a complete and easy way to get access to all features of their Digital Audio Workstations. Dexter provides in a minimal form factor functionalities only expected from large bulky desks, and introduce novel ways to get in touch with your DAW.

You can now get both on one single device: the Dual Mode capability lets any Lemur or Dexter run the two feature-sets on the same machine. Since Lemurs and Dexters are based on the exact same hardware, installing the Dual Mode capability allows you to select Lemur or Dexter functionality when booting up your controller, effectively doubling the potential for your JazzMutant hardware.

The upgrade will be free to all Dexter users.
Lemur users will be able to upgrade to dual-boot for 390 euros.

Encyclopedia of Sound: Ben Burtt

Ben Burtt on Star Wars



Ben Burtt on Sabers, Walkers, and Explosions



Ben Burtt on the Empire Strikes Back



[via PindarMoloch]

Francis Coppola - The Conversation (1974)

[via wonderzhao]