Chris Fogel - Music Scoring Mixer / Album Mixer / Recording Engineer
Mixing "Charlie's Angels" - by Bobby Owsinski
from Surround Professional - October 2000
| After having much success
mixing mega-hit records (such as the two multi-platinum offerings from
Alanis Morissette, as well as offerings from Robbie Robertson, U2, Aerosmith,
and The Urge), engineer Chris Fogel was recently tapped to mix the music
for the high budget, even higher profile theatrical remake of the 70's
television show Charlie's Angels. Having collaborated with composer Ed
Shearmur on two previous films (including the hit "Blue Streak"),
Fogel already had some experience mixing in surround. But faced with a
new console (a Euphonix System 5 in Studio B of Glendale, Ca. Front Page
Recorders) and a larger, more complicated mix than usual, his work was
cut out for him. Do you have a different approach to mixing movies than records? It's a completely different approach in that I think of how things are going to translate to a theater in that the theater tends to have a looser bottom end. In records I tend to make the bottom a bit tighter, compress things more and keep things in a tighter space. In movies I like to go for as big a bottom as I can possibly get. Then I try to keep things more in a mono space so I can place things easier in the multichannel environment. With stereo sources I'm stuck with either front to back or side to side. Other than those two things I pretty much mix the same. Do you find that there's a difference between mixing in stereo and or mixing in surround? This is only the 4rth film I've done so I haven't mixed that much in surround. The one thing I find interesting is that I don't really know what I'm doing in surround so I'm not burdened by any steadfast rules. So what I tend to do is put things like a hi-hat or some strange, quirky kind of loops in the rears along with the ambience. I like to place real point source kind of sounds all over so that you can distinctly hear them. I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to be done, but for me, it sounds good so I do it. Was Charlie's Angels different from the other films that you've done? It's different in that we married a 75 piece orchestra recorded on the Sony scoring stage with programmed elements. I'd say that the electronics and rhythm section took precedence and are about 75% of the mix though. Two of the other films that I did used just a rhythm section (drums, bass, guitars and keys) with electronics and no orchestra. Do you use a lot of outboard gear for film mixes? I try to stay within the console for dynamics, but I'll set up 5 or 6 of the old standby effects ((a Lexicon 480L, AMS RMX, TC2290, Yamaha SPX 990, and Eventide 3500) that I know I'll use throughout the mix. On this film I tried out the TC6000, which I like because it gives you a 5 channel output. I used that for some of the lead lines and orchestra. Did all elements come in on Protools? We actually cut in Digital Performer but the intention originally was to take all the sequenced material from DP and digitally bounce it over to the Euphonix R-1, then do all of our rhythm section overdubs on it. I've got to admit that I was really happy with the way DP performed though. It sounded fine since we didn't use any of the standard converters and just came digitally in and out of the System 5. We also used the new Euphonix 727 format converter, which basically bypasses the Digi 888's and allowed us to come straight off the PCI cards in the computer, and it worked flawlessly. How about the System 5? Sonically it's the best sounding console that I've ever worked on bar none. It's beefy, it's responsive and the EQ's work really well. The EQ's tend to be about 25 or 30% more responsive than what I'm used to on the CS series (Euphonix CS2000 and 3000). The thing I like about it is you put the faders up and it just sounds right, even though we were only at 44.1kHz. Why 44.1? The original programmer set up the sessions at 44.1 and so much work had been done before I became involved that it didn't make any sense to go back and change it. But it still sounded great, and they wanted it on the dubbing stage at 44.1 anyway so we just kept it in the digital domain all the way through. How many cues were on the film? There were about 45 cues on this one. From what I understand, about all but 10 minutes of film have music. I've done a film where there was as few as 10 cues, but this one had the most. I hear that you use a dbx120SP Sub-harmonic synthesizer. I use it on 50% of the records that I mix if they're meant to have a heavy bottom. In surround I use it as an effect where I put it on an aux send, then send some kick and bass to it, then return it just to the boom channel (LFE). I don't monitor it anywhere but in the subwoofer. What I like about it is it makes it feel like you've got a lot of air in front of you. It's not perfect on everything but it's great once you've got the settings right. Were there a lot of tracks involved? I had the desk maxxed out. We set up on a 106 input mixer model and I used every input. We had 48 inputs of orchestra and about 25 electronic tracks on average, so it was anywhere from between 70 to 100 tracks of audio. Do you start your mix on a film differently than for a record? Yeah, because I don't do as many films, it takes me a little longer to set the desk up the way I want it. With records it's so easy that I can basically leave things set up from mix to mix. But in films I have to decide what I'm going to send to the center or the surrounds and set up DP so it's sending those out in mono channels rather than stereo channels. What I do is lay out what I know I'll need to access during the course of the entire film, like mono percussion and mono synthesizer, and I go into DP and route everything out that way. Sometimes it takes some time but by the 5th or 6th cue everything usually sits that way I need it to. ---The End-- |