NEWS

NT Audio’s premier quality control theater in Santa Monica was the site this year for best sound judging for the 2011 Hollywood Post Alliance annual awards show. This was the third year the HPA has requested the theater for this critical sound judging.

Judges listened and judged three categories:

Outstanding Sound: Feature Film – Television – Commercial

NT’s own Quality Control Audio Technician, Allan Bond was one of the judges.

Bond notes that music and sound effects are playing a larger role in production; particularly in commercials. “Sound mixers are taking advantage of what the 5.1 medium offers and are complementing the visual effects with more sophisticated audio.”

The NT Audio QC theater is designed as a “reference room”. It was built to SMPTE Sound Committee specifications and is used routinely to quality check the final soundtracks for feature films.

The Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) serves the professional community of businesses and individuals who provide expertise, support, tools and the infrastructure for the creation and finishing of motion pictures, television, commercials, digital media and other dynamic media content.

A complete list of winners and nominees can be found at the HPA website: www.hpaonline.com

NT recently completed synced dailies and initial color grading for the new independent film, All Together Now, that wrapped shooting in December. The mission was to create a workflow maximizing the independent filmmaker’s budget and avoiding unnecessary expenses.

To stay on budget, the super 16mm project needed to maintain a low shooting ratio under challenging conditions. The documentary approach to the story of a group of young people attending a nighttime rock concert in the middle of the woods was shot primarily on a soundstage with a set dressed for night in an isolated wooded location with very low light levels.

The challenge in creating dallies was to maximize exposure without increasing grain and noise. NT developed a custom filter and look-up table giving the client images that maintained the director’s vision of a dark ominous atmosphere while providing the necessary technical spec’s.

NT’s DI team met with director, Alexander Tavitian, cinematographer, Zoran Popic and producer, Michael Younesi several times prior to filming to discuss the requirements, desired look and location issues. NT provided charts for camera tests and reviewed the results with the film crew in our theater to establish a workable practice.

We always recommend and make ourselves available for pre-production meetings, planning and film tests. We can not over emphasize the importance of involving post at the onset of a project.

NT delivered both DVD’s and digital files to editorial. The project is now in editing and is scheduled to return for compositing and final color grading later this Spring.

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