Dialogue Editing

CHAPTER 17
Preparing for the Mix
By the time you fi nish your fi nal pass on the dialogue, the tracks are as good
as they’ll ever be. Now it’s time to take off your editor’s hat and put on the
hats of offi ce manager, secretary, and shipping clerk. In the days remaining
before the mix, you’ll have to deal with the following details, or at least make
sure that someone in the production offi ce does.
• Confi rm that the dialogue sessions are in sync with the newly arrived
answer print telecine. If you make sync changes, pass along this
information to the supervising sound editor or other editors.
• Print (or draw) and annotate the cue sheets.
• Prepare your materials. Confi rm the drive type (including connector)
that the mix facility prefers. If your OMF, auto-assembly, and other
elements are spread over several drives, consolidate them onto one
FireWire drive. Find out if you will play your fi les from your own
drive or if you have to copy them onto the mix room’s. Allow time
for copying once you get to the mix.
• Make sure that each reel’s session is made up of the same tracks, in
the same order. Disable and hide any tracks you don’t want, such as
your work tracks.
• Make sure the head and tail sync plops are correct. Check them again.
• On each reel, copy your 1 kHz reference tone onto all tracks that will
be active during that reel. This will ensure that the output of the
playback workstation is accurately patched into the console and help
identify broken connectors or shorts. If a track won’t be used at all
during a reel, don’t copy a reference tone on that channel and do
deactivate the track, so that the mixer and her assistant will know
that the channel isn’t engaged for that reel.
• If there are some truly unique sounds in the dailies, make a copy of
them for yourself. The sound effects editors will undoubtedly have
done the same thing. Even though you’re a dialogue editor, you never
know when the sounds of a 1927 Quadrant motorbike or a 1966 Susita
303