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 “I’ve been working with Russ and with RSPE for the ten years that I’ve been in Hollywood… It’s been a great working relationship”
RSPE sat down with artist and executive, Dane Davis of Danetracks and talented mixer, Tom Ozanich and spoke about Digidesign’s ICON, JBL speakers, and RSPE.
Danetracks offers a complete post production sound package. From sound design, editorial, and mixing, to recording in their ADR and Foley stage.
Dane: “We do it all, from the very beginning design aspects to the very final finishing aspects in the process, we do sound design and implementation for games. So there’s all the hunting and gathering aspect of what we do and then there’s all the crazy processing and manipulation that we do, which is a key part of creating something new and unique. Then there’s the nuts and bolts of editing in sync to the picture and then there’s the mixing, combining of all the elements into some kind of cohesive dramatically affecting whole.”
Dane, how did you get started in this business?
Dane: “I just always made crazy noises, all the noise that I made growing up, I got very interested in filmmaking when I was in high school and I was a musician and played a lot of instruments, so it was kind of a natural after going through film school that I’d figure out a way to make noises for films and I was interested in a lot of other things but just ended up doing more sound design for films than anything else. Now people actually pay me to make funny noises and make things come alive or feel real in movies and games and commercials. I really wanted to be Ingmar Bergman but it didn’t quite turn out that way! I really enjoy creating things that are new & unique. I love making sounds that have never been heard before, that’s the creative challenge for me. To me it’s an art form, I love music and music is very meaningful to me in my life and creating sounds is half of what music is. So it’s very fun to create new sounds and it’s very fun finding dramatic storytelling function for those sounds.”
Tom was always into sound and music as a kid. He would spend a lot of time listening intently to the details of the sound. His fascination for music and sound landed him an internship at a post production facility while he was in high school. At that time Tom wanted to go in the direction of the music business, however he stuck around at the post house and allowed it to evolve into various positions here and there doing everything from live sound to games to films to radio.
Tom: “I discovered that there was a lot of interesting things and different types of opportunities within sound… that’s not necessarily music in the classic sense.”
Prior to coming to Hollywood, Tom went to film school, worked in a couple studios, and had his own studio for a while all in San Diego.
What projects are you currently working on?
Dane: “I’ve just begun designing sound for Speedracer which is the new Wachowski brothers project for Warner Brothers, and it’s a kick! I’ve been in the ADR/Foley stage the last few days with compressed air, helium and balloons and all kinds of pipes, that we’re getting to resonate under high pressure and making all these crazy sounds that are eventually going to become mostly the engines for these race cars in a sort of alternate universe. I just finished the Hunting Party, which Tom mixed on. We just completed Battle In Seattle which just played at the Toronto Film Festival, but that’s not out yet. Tom mixed the whole movie beautifully I might add.”
Tom: “We worked on Warner Brother’s Return to House on Haunted Hill, Nicole Kidman’s thriller Invasion, My Generation: Who’s Still Who, and Pride to name a few. We also did a few game projects, mixing cinematics for Army of Two and Need for Speed.”
Dane: “We’re very busy here. Danetracks is also doing the Incredible Hulk, which we’ve just started. We just finished Pride and Glory.”
What led you guys to choosing Digidesign’s D-Control and how has it improved the workflow?
Tom: “What often happens in the case of a non Pro Tools or ICON based mix is that work that’s done during that temp never comes back to you, and that’s what we’re gaining in using this [the ICON]…”
Dane: “We love that any work that any mixer does that really contributes to the final movie should remain in the linear evolution of the soundtrack of the movie, and now when you mix in the ICON environment it can all remain integrated. It’s pretty revolutionary…”
Tom: “I’ve sat on many stages with a variety of consoles of all types and I don’t think that you’re going to get around to the particular track that you need when you’ve got 500 tracks of material playing back at you to be able to go and find that specific sound that you need to get to right now, I can get there on this control surface probably just about as fast or faster than you can on any other surface, and you don’t have to have 50,000 faders. Realistically I can push two buttons and get to a fader faster than I can slide my chair down four feet to get to it over there, it’s all about the speed and the workflow.”
Dane: “The truth is because we’re still in this intermediate phase, the reality is most of the big stages don’t have ICONs yet. I’m looking forward to the next generation of consoles where they’re all functioning on ICON level. When I’m taking my sound design for a movie over to a mixing stage, I’m still taking a really deep Pro Tools [session] that is performing every time they rewind and start again performing all of my automation with all of my plug ins because I try to keep all of my work virtual now because anything can change at any moment, whether it’s a director’s whim or preference, or the animation on the screen or the picture edit, so I have to keep everything virtual, so it means I’m carrying this huge Pro Tools to the stage that is basically repeating all of my mixing and all of my moves and then it just feeds into some 5.1 inputs on the console, and the dubbing mixer has no access to what I’m doing. So I’m sitting back there with my keyboard on the stage remixing things as we go and it’s a less than ideal approach… I would love it if those talented mixers that I’m working with could have access to all of my automation in the same way that in an ICON environment like here, [the mixer] can access everything that I did and take it from there.”
What speakers do you use?
Tom: “In here, we use the JBL LSR series, it’s really a matter of translation. Most theaters and most large dub stages all use JBL speakers, not these particular ones but there’s a characteristic that various companies have, you know, there’s a JBL sound… It translates well… Every room sounds different, and even the same room sounds different with different number of people in the room, so everything is different, but these get you really, really close to sounding like what its going to sound like in the widest variable of different spaces.”
Dane: “Meaning really big movie theaters, medium size, small movie theaters and nice home theaters, it has to include all of that, and that’s a tall order. I use JBLs in my room as well for that reason…”
Tom: “The use, what you’re using it for, the purpose of the thing is a huge part of it because I actually prefer Adam speakers, that’s what I use personally at home at my home studio and I love them, and for near field situation I think that they tell the truth better than anything I’ve found for the price. But the main thing we’re doing in here in this room is mixing films, and the JBLs are getting us where we need to be.”
What are your favorite plug ins?
Dane: “In terms of design, Pitch n’ Time is my favorite piece of software that I use within the Pro Tools environment. I love the Waves plug ins, I love the Doppler, I love the GRM Doppler as well. I love the new River Run, I’ve had a lot of fun with that one, things like Freak Warp is very cool. In terms of phasing and flanging, I love Phase Mistress, that’s one I’ve been using a lot lately. There’s a lot of cool things, and it tends to vary from project to project, I tend to use different plug ins for different projects, as well as different stand alone programs.”
Tom: “I have sort of a duality of purposes, whether I’m doing sound design or mixing, the list of plug ins that I use is way too long to go into, but as far as what I use a lot of, I use a fair amount of McDSP stuff, in particular the Analog Channel, the ML4000 and Filterbank.”
What do you guys like about working with Russ and RSPE?
Tom: “I’ve been working with Russ and with RSPE for the ten years that I’ve been in Hollywood. He’s one of, if not the biggest, Digi dealer as well as Waves dealer, and all the other components that I use, so consequently he’s moving enough product that he’s getting good prices and consequently I’m able to get good prices… He’s knowledgable about what’s happening, not just what happened six months ago or a year ago or just looking at some trend… he knows that ‘Oh, yeah, that particular computer is having a problem right now with that expansion chassis, you might want to buy a different one.’ And that can be huge!”
Dane: “We don’t want to have to find that out.”
Tom: “So it lends you sort of the PRO experience, and it’s truly the pro experience, not the prosumer experience. Some other places are gonna have a lot more dealings with people who do this maybe more as a hobby as opposed to doing this as a living and have an entire business totally dependent on this stuff working, and if we’re down for two hours, that’s expensive, that’s a big deal.”
Dane: “He takes the seriousness that people take us seriously. The scale of his operation I think is proportionate to the pressure that we’re all under. We’re under a lot of pressure to not screw up and not fall down on our face, people are dependent on us to deliver what we do. From an artistic and executive point of view, Russ and the RSPE organization create very few problems and complaints that work their way up to me, distracting me from what I’m trying to do, that’s really key. They’re able to deliver, and they’re on top of the potential problems… Everybody here, our engineers and Tom and everyone that’s technically directly involved has been very happy with the relationship with RSPE… It’s been a great working relationship I would say.”
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