Cool video about the use of virtual orchestras for film

[vrocko]

Check this out.

http://online.wsj.com/video/in-disneys-tangled-live-or-virtual-orchestra/EC14BFD3-11E6-4594-8789-FF72F3D722D6.html

[lookatthisguy]

For a second there, I thought we were being told Disney used only virtual orchestras for this movie, in which case I'd have been astonished. Pretty neat little insight into how orchestrators are working these days (especially since I'm applying for Berklee to study film scoring). I kinda wonder what ski thinks about it, since he's done some work with Disney before, if memory serves.

[ski]

vrocko,

 

Thanks for posting that link. It's a nice little insight into what goes on. The reporter got it kinda wrong, but that's OK.

 

What you see in that video is nothing unusual. That process (with variations) has been going on for many many years. Some of the variations include those composers who do their own orchestrations and, to some extent, their own mockups. Another is the composer who has an orchestrator who then sends out the score to be mocked up. Yet another is the composer who dictates parts to a "take down" person (or two) who in turn write out a rough orchestration; that goes to an orchestrator, who then sends it to the mockup person. And in those last two scenarios, orchestrations are usually approved by the composer before mockups are done.

 

Other tasks of the mockup person include revising parts, sometimes writing parts or adding additional flavors. One mockup guy I know is sometimes asked to add synth textures and Omnisphere stuff that's not necessarily written out.

 

So there's some more insight for you!

 

As far as the work I did for Disney (Disneytoons to be accurate), whether or not samples are used depends on the level of the project. Some projects are expected to be mocked up to the finest degree but will then be sweetened with a small orchestra. On other projects, the mockups are only used as a guide or to get approval, and then they're discarded entirely.

[lookatthisguy]

So the guy doing the mockups (assuming s/he is an additional body in the process in any given case), does it usually stop at recording the mockups, or is that person usually the copyist as well? Depending on the software that person is using, I could see it being a convenient next step, but on the other hand, engraving is a tedious process…

[bcampbe3]

no, he would not be the copyist. In this case Disney has their own copyists, but for most big movies the orchestrations and copying are separate teams.

[ski]

One time I thought I could save some money by doing the copying myself. It turned out to be quite the "false economy". I worked myself into a deadline stupor trying to get it done in time. It didn't matter that I had the parts all played into Logic already and that I'm fast with the score editor. There were just too many parts and too little time. Well, I got it done but I learned my lesson: copying work gets farmed out to a copyist.

 

To bring the conversation around to Logic just a tiny bit, with Logic 8 a new feature was introduced which makes preparing MIDI files to send to a 3rd party copyist a hell of a lot faster: the "fix note positions and durations" function. Here's how it works...

 

Logic's score editor is pretty darn good at turning live-played parts into readable notation. Not that there isn't sometimes a bit of tweaking to do, but, for example: a series of straight 8th-notes played slightly ahead of the beat to make the attacks sound on-the-beat in the mockup can be displayed properly as 8th notes (playing on the beats and the "ands") and not as bunch of 16th's tied to 16th's (starting on the last 16th note of the previous bar).

 

But more importantly than simple quantizing of note positions, applying this function quantizes the durations as well -- a very important aspect of preparing MIDI files for the copyist. And here's why: live-played parts rarely have consistent note durations. An 8th note as notated might have been played in with a duration of around a 16th or dotted 16th. If unchanged, when such notes appear in Finale, etc. a string of live-played 8ths may appear as a bunch of notes with randomly changing lengths of less than an 8th. So when using this function in Logic prior to exporting the MIDI file, all displayed 8th notes become exactly one-eighth in duration. This ensures that when the copyist gets the part that 8th notes look like 8th notes right off the bat, saving him/her time having to clean up the score.

 

Anyway, that's it for my lil' Logic digression.