uto, 1. veljače '05 u 15:18
Anakinova umjetna ruka.
Post notes opet... tri slike ovoga puta. u trećoj se vidi grivijus. Nice.
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The Voice of the Republic
January 31, 2005
I wasn't too worried about the two-hour delay of my flight from San Francisco to Heathrow. Also on my plane was George Lucas, and I knew the Episode III activity waiting across the Atlantic wasn't about to begin without him.
This week marks the final* step of what can be described as production, a brief surfacing of on-camera activity when the term "post" is put aside, when canary yellow call sheets once again stream off printers to be distributed to the crew, where a clapper board will mark the start of a take. It's just one last day of shooting, scheduled for later this week. The gathering of several Episode III principal cast members along with Lucas and Rick McCallum allows for some very specific postproduction requirements to be taken care of as well.
That's what brings me to London's West End early in the morning of Sunday, January 31st. The normally bustling Soho district is strangely quiet at 8:30 a.m., the cafes not yet open for business. My destination: the recording studios tucked behind a trendy restaurant. These studios have been booked this week for several sessions of ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) recording.
Oftentimes, it's Skywalker Sound back at the Ranch that serves as the venue for postproduction looping. But talent scheduling and geography makes sessions such as these in London necessary. Today, it's Ian McDiarmid's turn to re-record key lines for Revenge of the Sith.
The spacious recording studio has an intimidating bank of controls separating the crew from the talent, a bewildering array of status lights, potentiometers, and sliders. Off to one side, behind a partition of glass and soundproofing insulation is a thin chair and sheet music stand, with a microphone on suspended before it. A single earphone feeds the actor the sound, including the all-important triple beep that will cue the performer.
Present today are Lucas, McCallum (who has no shortage of stories of his early days maintaining a production office in this neighborhood), Supervising Sound Editor Matthew Wood, ADR mixer Robert Farr and assistant Mark Appleby. When McDiarmid arrives, Rick greets him warmly. "There's no question who the star is of this movie," he grins. "You're the new definition of evil." Much of the dialogue in Episode III will be gathered from ADR sessions, rather than the production audio captured during shooting. The controlled conditions of these recording studios produce a much better dialogue track than the often-noisy sound recorded on set. The actors are miked during the shoot, whether with wireless microphones or with a boom mike, but that audio ultimately serves only as a guide track for these sessions. Since that audio is temporary, it allows Lucas to make changes in editorial, to move lines around or rewrite them entirely, and then have the actor re-record them. This is one of the reasons the film has evolved considerably from what was written on the pages of the shooting script.
"We've got Ian doing Palpatine today," explains Wood to the ADR mixers. "He also does the voice of Sidious, and I have those lines separated out, so that he doesn't have to switch back and forth between characters." Ian doesn't mind switching between the two, so a compromise is reached -- for each reel, all the Palpatine dialogue is recorded first, followed by the Sidious dialogue, so that he doesn't have to keep breaking character.
"I'm depending on you," says Palpatine to Anakin Skywalker as they walk down the steps of the Chancellor's office, "to be the eyes, ears and voice of the Republic." A projector fills a large movie screen with this scene in front of McDiarmid. This dialogue was cobbled together, taken as fragments from a longer speech that was cut down in the edit. "I'm depending on you" originally ended a line of dialogue, so in the production guide track, its intonation and cadence sound more like a conclusion. In this new form, it starts a sentence, so Ian must change the inflection, but he must also keep the timing. The camera is on Palpatine, so the sync must be precise.
It's a very technical aspect of acting that doesn't get much documentation. People tend to prefer hearing about how an actor gets into the mindset of a character, rather than know about the specifics of difficult and sometimes tedious recording sessions. But ADR nonetheless requires essential skills from actors -- the ability to deliver a line pitch-perfect and at a specific rhythm time and again.
After pauses for Anakin's dialogue, Palpatine continues. "I think they will," Ian performs. "They need you... more than you know." In the production audio, this scene is filled with the creaks and groans of the wooden set, rendering these lines obviously unusable.
"Anakin, you know I'm not able to rely on the Jedi Council."
This line, said later in the film at the Galaxies Opera House, covers two shots. The first word, "Anakin" is said when Palpatine's back is to the camera, an over-the-shoulder shot showcasing the spectacular zero-gravity ballet performance that fills the amphitheater. The next shot is a reverse, of Anakin taking a seat next to Palpatine. For this, Ian needs only record the first word. Sync isn't essential, since we see the back of Palpatine's head, but the tone needs to match the next part. The ADR mixers are able to play back the new dialogue instantly, mixed with the dialogue in the edit, so that Wood and Lucas can see if everything matches.
We jump forward a few scenes. We're back in Palpatine's office, this time in his more private chambers. "They see your future and they know your power will be too strong to control. You must break through the fog of lies the Jedi have created around you."
"The performance was great," advises Lucas about the production audio, "it's just too noisy." After a pause, he points out, "this was two different performance done a year apart, but it's good." What he means was the first line ("They see...") was shot in Sydney in 2003; the second ("You must break...") in Shepperton in 2004.
For the scenes of Darth Sidious, Ian's voice drops a few octaves and acquires a dark oiliness to it. "His death was a necessary loss," he reads for one line. For another, it's just a fragment: "Send a message to the ships of the Trade Federation..." Still another: "You're fulfilling your destiny, Anakin."
Wood carefully watches Ian's pacing, sync and levels. "We could use more projection on this," he recommends. In the pin-drop quiet of the recording studio, one's inclination is not to speak too loudly, since the surrounding silence seems to amplify every sound. The microphone is sensitive enough to pick up stomach growls, and at one point Ian has to remove his watch, since Robert can hear the ticking through his headphones.But Wood points out that this dialogue will have to compete with sound effects and music in the final mix, and needs to stand out.
"If you give it to us too loud, we can tone it down," says Lucas, "but if it's too quiet, we can't turn it up."
One particular stretch of difficult dialogue requires no reminders for Ian to project -- it's all top-of-the-lungs shouting. I've watched McDiarmid do this scene three times now. Once in Sydney once again in Shepperton after the dialogue was altered, and once again today. The production audio is filled with the drone of wind machines, making it unusable. But I remember that day in Sydney vividly -- it was a performance that sparked an ovation from the crew. In Shepperton, it happened again.
And when Ian's voice boomed in the otherwise silent confines of the studio, his years of stage experience came out on a commanding blast of words. It provoked a third ovation, quieter only because of the small number of observers present.
* This asterisk is just a precaution, since I recall an 11th-hour shooting session for Episode II, of Anakin and Padmé holding hands, that only made it into the digital version of Attack of the Clones. You never know if something like that might happen again.
Pablo Hidalgo
I izašao je novi webdoc pod rednim brojem 14 samo zakorisnike hypercrapa. Ako ga želite, nema vam druge nego preko P2Pa.
Velik je 28.2 Mb i vidi se dvoboj Dookua i Anakina.
Torrent fajl
I nova Art of revenge slika
"Leaves from the vine, falling so slow.
Like fragile, tiny shells,
Drifting in the foam.
Little soldier boy, come marching home.
Brave soldier boy, comes marching home."
Orion izmjenio poruku 01.02.2005, 17:11
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