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Director Boris Paval Conen
contacted us half a year before shooting the "de 9
dagen van de Gier" (the 9 days of the Vulture). We
were very enthusiastic about the scripts and we were
already able to get a good picture of the series even in the early stages,.
It was decided that Danny would plunge into sound and mixing, with the help of Bart and Jankoen. Maurits and I (Han) would create the
music.
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recaps
and credits; click to play
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music
It took us a while to find
a way, but eventually we decided upon a stylistic division
between Maurits and me. Maurits would work on the purely
acoustic part and the character in-depth, while I would
direct my attention to the overall form and the electronic-acoustic
music (sometimes combined with sound design).
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We were eventually granted 3 days with the Metropole Orcherstra (after being put off many times). The sessions with the Metropole passed very smoothly. We heard warnings about problems with the Metropole Orchestra from various sources, but these proved to be groundless: they played very well. With the Metropole we recorded a modular music package, a set of rough diamonds, later being polished up into complete episode pearls. After the editing and mixing of the orchestra recordings we had a week for every episode to create the music. We (Boris, Maurits and I) met weekly to go over a single episode. For us 'De Gier' was a project that offered a lot of deepening in thematic material, since the themes came back episode after episode.
Han
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Sounddesign
May 2001 director Boris Paval
Conen asked me (Danny) to be supervisor for the sound of
NCRV-televisionseries "de 9 dagen van de Gier".
In 8 hours I saw the rough material of all 8 episodes and
realized what an enormous task Boris was asking of me.
I was glad, for even this
not yet finalized version ran very well. All Sound design
elements added to this impression.
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I wanted to create the feeling of the busy environment of Rotterdam throughout the whole series, as much in interiors as in exterior scenes. I particularly synthesised 'room tones' and 'musical skylines', by combining elements of busy city sounds with parts of the music and mixing them so that they were undetectable. The basic material for the sound library for the series was composed of the stereo effects recorded on set, wild takes, and set noise from sound engineer George Bossaers, together with the huge library Jankoen de Haan recorded specially for the series in Rotterdam.
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Music
special: click to play
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I recreated this to make a sound montage and a good source of assorted sound atmospheres and effects. Every scene from every episode was mapped for its needs in terms of sound effects, atmosphere choice, music cues, and the quality of the dialogues. Throughout the series there are total scene dialogues that were dubbed, but because of our expertise and those of the cast, they are hardly recognisable. About 10 continuous minutes of film in the last episode are completely dubbed, due to sound pollution in an enormous shed. Naturally every phone call is also recorded and treated in the studio.
If you listen to the episodes carefully, you can hear that the sound is always very 'rich'. The flight of the vulture above Rotterdam, the action scenes outside, but also the dialogue scenes inside always have a lot of 'movement'. Mixing, for me, meant respecting all the elements of the audio as compared to the image. The sound elements were composed as if made for a film. Every scene had its specially composed music (produced with the Metropole Orchestra), sound design, atmosphere, sound effects, set sound, extra dialogues and dubbed dialogues. It was a joy to spend days and nights of my time mixing for this film. Even more because I had an online quality copy of the film to mix to. This makes a lot of difference for your personal impression. 'De Gier' got unanimous positive reactions from the press. This took some getting used to.
Danny
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