Noir Production Update

ADV Films Senior Producer and Co-founder Matt Greenfield sent us an update on Noir?s production. We thought you our loyal fans might enjoy reading it.

?We're getting ready to enter the home stretch on Noir and the cast has really been having a blast here at Industrial Smoke & Mirrors ADV's Houston based ADR studio. We're currently in the middle of recording the dialog for episodes 18 through 21 which is where a lot of the secrets to the series' biggest mysteries are finally revealed so this has been an especially interesting set for Shelley Calene-Black (Mireille) and Monica Rial (Kirika.) In order to keep their performances grounded in their in character's subjective realities as much as possible we've all agreed that our two leads will only learn what's really going on when their on-screen counterparts learn the same things. Needless to say there have been a lot of ?Oh my God!s? and ?Yays!? as we work through each episode but all the plot twists and turns have really given the cast a lot of new angles to work from.

?What's really amazing about Noir is how a show with so little dialog can be so intense recording wise. Not only are we trying to tell a very complex story with a minimal number of lip flaps which means that every word that we do have is critical but we also have more vocal foley (our name for all the grunts umphs and running sounds the actors have to make) in a single episode of Noir than one usually finds in five or six episodes of any other series. Fortunately however all of the leads are now experts at this kind of work so almost every episode has taken less time to record than the previous ones. This is good since the ramped-up production schedule we've adopted to keep The Anime Network loaded with new programming has really kept our noses to the grindstone.

?That accelerated schedule is reflected in the fact that while recording continues on one side of the building the episodes we've just completed are already being mixed on the other. I just finished proofing the final revised mix for Volume 4 which contains some spectacular 5.1 work by Wade Shemwell especially in a two-parter where the Noir team goes to China. Between this series and RahXephon I think our audio engineers are really hitting a new high in achieving totally immersive sound mixes something that's really been enhanced by great music and exceptionally clean source material. I was also especially pleased with the way the episodes in Noir 4 came out in general as they are the first ones to use a huge batch of new actors who have come in via our last two sets of open auditions. We've been getting so busy here with over 10 directors at the Houston studio alone that bringing in a lot of new voice talent was the only way to keep all of the new directors working constantly without major scheduling conflicts. I've always tried to bring in one or two new voice actors for every couple of episodes of any show I've ever directed but on Noir 4 I was breaking in eight first timers at once so I was very relieved to see that everything really had come out as well as I thought it had.?

?Oh and another little bonus you'll be seeing on Noir 4 is our first audio commentary track for the series. We took a few hours off of our regular recording schedule a few nights ago to record an hours worth of commentary for episodes 15 and 16 of Noir. Besides Shelley and Monica we had Hilary Haag (Chloe) Tiffany Grant (Altena) and yours truly all set up in the multiples booths in the ""meat-locker."" For those who're expecting a nuts and bolts technical type of discussion I'm afraid there's not too much serious stuff in there partially because at this point in the series we're trying to avoid a lot of spoilers but mostly because once you get Monica and Tiffany locked in a room together things just tend to go in a very wrong direction and I couldn't get a word in edgewise. If nothing else though you'll get to see just what a great director I am in EVER getting this cast to calm down and act serious.

?All joking aside I've been extremely fortunate with the casts I've been able to assemble on the last half-dozen series that I've directed. One of our original goals in setting up our own studios here in Houston and later Monster Island in Austin was that we would be able to build a solid ensemble cast of actors with enough experience at ADR that the director of a particular show would only have to concentrate on the story and performance aspects rather than splitting his attention between that and the technical aspects. Thankfully the maturation of our talent pool here in Houston really has hit that point where for any given part I can usually think of a number of actors who could come in and nail it both in terms of performance and in terms of lip synch every time. It's been a long road and in a way I really envy all of the new directors who're coming in now since they're never going to have to worry about casting in the same way that I used to basing decisions not just on acting ability but also on whether or not an actor could consistently hit lip flap counts or parse a sentence to break on a given pause. On the other hand with the huge influx of new titles we've still got to break in new talent... we auditioned 48 new actors last weekend alone... just to keep things fresh and exciting so you'll continue to hear new and exciting voices in every show that comes out of ISM. But for the last two years I've honestly been able to say that there is no talent pool of actors anywhere in the world that has more experience and skill in ADR as the one's we've got right here... and given the amazing increase in the quality of dubs over the last few years that's saying quite a lot.?

Posted on Friday, May 09, 2003 (Archive on Monday, June 09, 2003)