Dolby Me!!

A TwoFlutes tune gets Dolbyised for the Stockholm Film Festival.
(Ham & Cheese roll kindly provided by Lipsync staff)

As sponsors of the Stockholm Film Festival, PKR will be showing a trailer before some of the movies - music provided by yours truly ;)

Because the trailer needs to be transferred to film, the overall process involves a bit more than just providing a nice stereo mix as I'm used to. I got a bit of a fright when I read that the sound 'must not exceed 82db leq (m) and supplied pretested on a Dolby 737 meter' - I think that means the average volume level of the complete trailer shouldn't measure over 82db.

These are Dolby's regulations on how advertisements are presented in a cinema environment, so dodgy ad companies don't ruin the audience's hearing, and projectionists get to some down time from the volume knob.

So, I went down to Lipsync Post in Soho to get my track Dolby-ised. Because I monitor my mixes with headphones, I was worried the track would need a fair bit of EQ and compression malarkey done for playback in the theatre, but I was chuffed when they told me that it was fine as it was - so the expensive headphones were worth it non-believers!

A nice 'bleep' is added to the beginning of the track, which is synced to the white flash frame at the beginning of the picture - for the lab dude when he's mashing them together onto 35mm film. A bit of Dolby Surround magic is applied - hearing your track all Dolby-ised and seeing the whole piece work well on a big screen inspires a giggle. Once everyone's happy, the 82db thing gets sorted, the various elements get transferred to the appropriate media, and it's sent to Dolby for licensing and approval... And after the thumbs up (hopefully), to Nordiskfilm in Stockholm.

And cheers to Paul and the guys at Lipsync Post - although I was only booked in for an hour, it was great to spend some extra time being filled in on the 5.1 mixing process. Hopefully it won't be too long before I get to put those tips to use...