Locking Down the Music

By Dan Engelhardt producer

Brad and I headed over to meet with our sound team last night at 11pm. They have just about finished mixing all the reels (our movie is divided into 5 reels), and are waiting on some music cues to throw in. This sounds simple, but mixing in the music is a huge part so we are delivering any missing pieces tomorrow. This will give them a litte over a week to finalize the sound mix before it has to be delivered to our post house on March 28.

So far I am beyond impressed with the quality of our sound design. It is being mixed in Dolby Surround, and greatly enhances the experience of watching this film. We left hollywood at 2am or so (Thank you so much to Laura and Christian for putting up with our crazy hours!!!), and headed over to USC to meet with Geoffrey Pope who is composing some original music. He played us previews of what we recorded today.

THE RECORDING SESSION

Our composer Geoffrey Pope is a really talented composer from USC, who Brad and I have worked with many times on our shorts and corporate projects. He grew up in Palo Alto so that works out nicely for the film.

This afternoon he recorded an original score for the abandoned house scenes. As usual his work is top notch. Because we are on a limited budget instead of renting a recording studio we utilized a practice room at USC, and a sound engineer Pope knows came with a portable pro tools set. The sound quality is great, and we avoided a massive hourly fee.



The main challenge presented to us in doing this style of recording was controling outside noise. The room we were working in was not sound proof so I had to "secure the perimeter" to make sure that no once raised there voice, played other insturments or used a lawn mower. I ended up succeeding in this effort so we are moving forward with a very clean and professional recording... despite a very giurilla setup.

Thanks Mr. Pope! You're the man!

New York, New York

By Dan Engelhardt producer

We are so proud and excited to announce our premiere at the 6th Annual Tribeca Film Festival. This is absolutely the perfect venue for us. The festival attracts major distributors as well as other industry professionals, and also represents an amazing chance for us to pack our screenings with the many college and high school age students living in the area.

Locking down a festival premiere is huge milestone for all those involved with PALO ALTO, and I can’t even begin to express the huge sense of gratitude we feel for those who have made this film possible. This production not only had an amazing talented cast and crew, but was also surrounded with a huge amount of enthusiasm from community members in and around Palo Alto, equipment vendors and industry professionals - we are starting to put together our credits, and it is no surprise that the specials thanks section is pages long.

We have to deliver the final cut to Tribeca on April 6th so crunch time has begun. Brad Leong (director), Kevin Gasca (editor, post-supervisor), Eric Robinson (music supervisor), Laura Schmadel (sound supervisor), and Christian Buenaventura (dialogue editor) and I have been pulling all nighters for the last couple weeks to make this deadline. Picture editing and color correction is complete, but we need to lock our soundtrack, and complete our final sound mix. In fact, thanks to the dedication of Laura and Christian, who are truly taking this film to a new level with their sound design, we will be at a sound spotting session most of tonight.

Also, there are some Visual FX to be done. In order to have logos in the movie they have to be cleared, and some of the companies have not approved the use so we are removing them from the picture. There are a total of 53 VFX shots to complete by April 1. On a large production with a team that is working full time this would be an easy accomplishment, but on project of this size it can be quite daunting. We are lucky to have Kevin on the mission, who has brought on two amazingly talented VFX artists.

On the subject of post-production, I wanted to mention that Kevin (Gascanation as we like to refer to him) has truly carried this project through post. He has been our guiding light. Not only has he spent countless hours editing the film, but he single handedly pulled together the entire post-production team as well as the resources needed to get the job done. This also includes locking down locations, crew, and gear for our Los Angeles based pickups. We would be dead in the water without him…

So the count down to Tribeca begins. We have a film to finish, and a massive PR and sales effort to execute on. Like we did during production, we will try to keep you updated on al the major happenings over the next 6 weeks.

Congrats and thanks again to our dedicated cast and crew for helping us land a premiere at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival.