Well, dear readers, I have breaking bombshell news: we’re closing in on the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. I ask you, where else on all the Internet can you get such up to the minute breaking bombshell news. I am currently sitting here like so much fish, listening to Richard Rodney Bennett’s Concerto for Stan Getz, with John Harle on saxophone. And I did manage to watch a little something on the Flix of Net, six episodes of something entitled Voir. Each episode runs around thirty minutes, some less. I found it pretentious and pretty boring, but others seem to like it. It’s about film and its effect on various people, mostly people who I don’t find very interesting – a film blogger, a film critic, and others. The first episode is the film blogger and how seeing Jaws changed her life. I don’t really care how Jaws changed anyone’s life, frankly. They’re short, so that was a big plus. I watched all six episodes and a couple of them had interesting things, but mostly I didn’t really care about any of it.
Otherwise, we’re just bidin’ our time, waiting for the New Year, not that there aren’t things that must be done. Yesterday, there were things to be done and I damn well did them. I did get nine and a half hours of sleep, answered e-mails, and then did the things that needed doing. Richard Allen sent me a new musical cue I asked for, he prepared the duet with Sami and Karen Ziemba and we sent it to John Adams for mixing. Just so you understand how we shot the musical numbers – for the audition scenes involving songs, Sami had an earpiece and sang to the piano track. There is a sync thing we do so that it’s easy to sync up. Then Marshall culls together a complete vocal, usually from the final take and then replacing any lines that aren’t quite good enough. Then he syncs the piano track with it and voila. He mixes those himself. For the songs at the nightclubs, same deal – singers with earpieces singing to the piano track. We make a vocal, put the piano in and edits the sequence. For the club performances, we then send the final vocal track, the piano track, and the edited number to John Adams, who mixes it, adds a nice club-type mic reverb and gets a nice blend between piano and voice. He then sends that finished mix and Marshall lays it back against the edited picture and voila. For the numbers that take place in the studio, we pre-recorded Sami’s vocals just before shooting them, then she lip-synced to those performances, and I have to tell you that she is GREAT at lip-syncing. I believe the lesson I learned is that the audition scenes work perfectly the way we do them. But I think if there’s a season two, we’ll pre-record the nightclub stuff – it’s much easier doing it that way and having them lip-sync rather than have to sing the song six or seven times as we film the different angles. I suppose we could also lip-sync the audition songs, but there’s something spontaneous about doing them live, as she’s auditioning. However, it’s all been working out fine.
I had several long telephonic conversations, had a couple of irritating irritants to play dodgeball with, I made some bowtie pasta with leftover spaghetti sauce – that was very good – and that was about it, save for a few too many evening snacks. Sometimes you just need a lot of evening snacks and I suppose that was the case. And now, after the Concerto for Stan Getz, I’m listening to the real deal, Stan Getz at Tanglewood with Arthur Fiedler and Boston Pops, a fantastic album that I’ve loved ever since RCA released it. It’s a live recording, but a great one.
Today, I’ll be up by eight-thirty and out the door by nine, as she of the Evil Eye will be here, coming today because she’s leaving town for a couple of weeks. So, I’ll go have a reasonable breakfast somewhere, then go to the mail place to pick up the package that arrived yesterday, then to Gelson’s to get something small for later in the day, then home and I hope I can get through the day without exploding. I’m expecting a couple of tracks from Richard Allen so I can get them to Marshall Harvey, and I may try to make a show order or at least a stab at one. Then at some point, I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow and Friday are more of the same, Saturday is our Annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve Bash right here at haineshisway.com, the best partay anywhere, and our balls will drop as we count down to the New Year on both coasts, then on Sunday it’s a brand new month and a brand New Year, and I begin writing my next novel, which I’m pretty excited about and nervous about, because it’s kind of different than anything I’ve done in certain ways.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eight-thirty and out the door by nine, I must eat a reasonable breakfast, go to the mail place, go to Gelson’s, come home, do whatever needs doing, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamaland, as we close in on the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023.