Studio Blog

A sneek peek at the new Johannesburg facility

carel — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:48:39 -0500

We have some exciting new developments on the way in Johannesburg. We are in the process of setting up a new production hub in Bryanston with amazing new partnerships and incredible new facilities which include a 30+ seater final mix cinema, a state of the art Foley stage, ADR and music tracking rooms, and most importantly, a 50 square meter pub for a bit of R&R......

Watch this space!

Lark In Studio

carel — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 02:46:03 -0600

Since 2005, multi-award winning South African rock-electro group Lark has been a regular fixture at Sound & Motion Studios. In fact, it was during one of these studio sessions in the early days that they asked Fuzzy if he would be keen to join on bass as well as sound engineering duties.

The last month has seen step 2 in the mixing phase of their new album, Gong Is Struck, with the final stage and tentative release set for June.

Paul and Fuzzy have been working crazy hours while Paul is down from London with Inge and Sean coming in to record the weird and wonderful ways that they are famous for.

The album is heavily reliant on analogue and “old school” technics from the 60’s and 70’s once again, harking back to Razbliuto, with a strong crossover into hard electro. Live piano’s, strings and lots (and lots) of wacky tape have been used already, with at least one song being mixed off the studio’s Otari MTR90 into our new Audient ASP8024 console.

For the geeks, we’ve included some cool videos of “the story so far.” We hope you enjoy seeing Mr Sakitumi teaching us what a 4/4 really sounds like, trashing a piano sound with multiple noise generating old reel machines, running a mix off our Otari and torturing and old spring reverb!

BLAZE BLACKHEART-UK HIP HOP

carel — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 02:40:45 -0600

Recently we have been very lucky to have Blaze Blackheart, soulful singer and hip-hop artist, down from the UK producing his album with us.

After initial meetings we enlisted the production services of Adriaan Hellenberg who is co-producing with Blaze. Matt has been doing all kinds of recording (and the odd drumming session!) with mixing privileges going to Fuzzy.

The album is well under way and we hope to get permission to post a little teaser soon. For now, you can check Blaze out at www.blazeblackheart.com

SAFTA Nomination for Best Feature Film Sound

carel — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 02:37:33 -0600

Last week we were absolutely surprised and delighted to be nominated for our sound mix for the feature film Retribution.

The film has done really well and has 5 other nominations including 2 Best Actor nominations, Best Editor, Best Writing Team and Best Cinematographer.

Wish us luck at the SAFTA Awards Ceremony on Sat 10^th March! Of course, it’s really great to be nominated and we look forward to seeing our friends “Sunrise Animation Studios” there for their nomination for Best Animation, as well as “Moonlighting Films” who are very well represented between their nominations for Retribution and, of course, Skoonheid.

For the full list of nominees, go to: http://www.screenafrica.com/page/news/industry/1175380-SAFTAS-nominees-announced

Fuzzy in LA, cinema mixing part 5

carel — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 04:23:34 -0500

Hey all, so here’s my final entry in what I can only describe as one hell of a ride!
Last Friday I spent the day at Sony Pictures and Saturday was spent picking up the last few bits for the studio, with a spot of theatre and wine tasting in between for good measure.

Sony is a city. I didn’t actually realize just how expansive their film operation is but it’s basically the composite parts of Columbia Pictures, the old MGM and a whole bunch of other subsidiaries clustered under the Sony banner. Unfortunately they are very security conscious so wasn’t able to get many photo’s, but in true Hollywood fashion I crossed paths with 1 (one) celebrity (I ain’t saying!) and then had the pleasure of watching him getting mobbed by 3 tour groups, haha! He was very good natured about it.
But I digress. An interesting thing about the lot is that much of it can be accessed by the public but it’s a running studio…in fact probably my favourite part was seeing the production end in action. As you know I’m mostly a post-production kinda guy, but I got a real kick and learned a great deal from checking out their soundstages, TV production stages (including the old Married with Children spot, haha!) and even though not my field, their set design. Ok, Carel would probably have got a lot more out of it than I did, but still….

Of special interest to me was the Foley stage, which is very different to the one I visited at Todd-AO (post 1). Of course everyone has a different way of doing things but looking at the commonalities was very important. Coming from a smaller industry it’s nice to know what “industry standard” means!

To round off my trip there was that trip to Vampire Vineyards I promised myself when I first got there for some tasting under the guidance of their Russian barkeep (thanks Igor!), a cool evening at the Odyssey Theatre and a lucky visit to a music shop to pick up double bass strings for the coming Lark tour, hussar!

I’ve met so many lovely and fascinating people over the last fortnight, and am thrilled that most of them gave me their details so I can continue the relationship and have welcomed any questions I may have…that alone is worth the trip! So, thank you to Gary Hecker, Nerses Gezalyan, Peter Brown and his crew on the Hollywood stage, Gary Summers, Maysie Hoy, Mark Stoeckinger and most importantly, Kim Jimenez for looking after me and Michael Broomberg for making it possible! And now back home to my Lady ☺

Fuzzy in LA, cinema mixing part 4

carel — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 04:12:34 -0500

Greetings once again for my penultimate blog post! Yesterday was probably one of those highlight days in my adventure in sound that I will look back on in years to come and smile about. I travelled to Todd-AO Burbank and spent a day in the studio with mix legend Gary Summers.

Now I don’t like to use the word “hang” as it speaks of a certain familiarity (like someone brushing past Samuel Jackson at a hotdog stand inflating the story to “hang” status, you know?) So while I was tremendously excited and thankful that Kim had organized for me to pop in to Burbank and see Mr Summers in action, I expected to sit in quiet euphoria in the corner—which was not the case.

Turns out Gary Summers is a friendly, approachable and all round fun guy! In between mixing we chatted at length and he told me some wonderful stories and anecdotes from some of the movies he’s mixed, including Avatar, Transformers and one of his recent favourites, Warrior.
We talked a bit about EQ and workflow, dialogue mixing and directors, all with an air of affability. In short, once again I was blown away by how someone on this level was happy to chat about experiences, was free with information and generally super helpful! In fact, perhaps the unaffected and easy manner of the people I have met here, all of who are leaders in their field, is the greatest lesson I’ve learned.

I was also lucky enough to sit alongside picture editor Maysie Hoy for the mix. Maysie has edited many dramas and comedies including Smoke, What Dreams May Come, Freeway and For Colored Girls. Another person very happy to talk about her craft, it was quite an insight talking to her from the perspective of project management, ADR and scheduling, and the pitfalls that go with it. I still have so many questions, thanks Maysie for giving me your email!

On the way out of the complex, Phil form operations (pictured) was nice enough to give me a facility tour (drool!)
And on the way home I decided it was time for some pop-Americana and indulged in a chili dog and a root beet float. Nice.
Till part 5,
Simon Fuzzy