Michael Maroussas

Hi all - firstly apologies (principally to Rene after he'd gone to the trouble to start the conversation) for taking such a ridiculously long time to reply to this thread. It'd be great to pickup the chat where you left off last year. I'll start off with just a couple of points relating to what's been discussed so far: - Might be mis-remembering the conversation but don't recall there being much condemnation of too many lav mics. Personally I'm all for them as they increase my chances of avoiding ADR. I think one of the negative comments may have related to feeling overwhelmed by all the material that needed phase matching. However, now we have the Sound Radix plugin 'Auto Align Post' this isn't much of a concern anymore. In terms of having a lot more material to have to listen through - it's undeniably more work but the payoffs for that time spent checking the lavs can be great. I've known quite a few occasions where I've dug out a little sigh, grunt or even a little adlib an actor did that was only on the lavs, not the mix track, that the director was unaware of but ends up liking and wanting to keep. Obviously have to use discretion with this so as not to muddy the dials with excessive, unnecessary detail though. Kind of see all that labour as my job though: to try and get the best out of the material I've been provided with by you PSMs. - The other comment I'd like to mention is re the clapperboard. I'm not suggesting getting a clean clapperboard for every take - clearly that's not practical. I just need 1 clean clapperboard per location. It doesn't even need to be a particularly pristine clap: I've managed to clean up a clap in RX before that had a bang or bit of voice on the tail. It's just that often the clap has everyone moving around and chatting over it in which case it becomes impossible to make use of it as an IR. So I would perhaps change my request to 'please try and get me 1 good clap in each location, as clean as you can - especially in locations where you're struggling with noise issues and think ADR may be necessary.' The way I use these IRs is not for pristine, perfect reverbs for the dials, they're just really helpful for dirtying up ADR. It might sound odd but although they can produce quite scruffy, boxy sounding reverbs, they are often great for helping match in ADR if used judiciously. Together with EQ matching (in RX or Pro Q, etc), it's a starting point for matching in ADR, then the re-recording mixer will do the final polishing in the dialogue premix. So just a couple of points there, having read back through everyone's comments. Like i mentioned, sorry I'm late to the party but would love to pick up this chat if you're all still in the forum!