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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/941139
MacDirectory 109 FEATURE LA-based New Wave Entertainment used Blackmagic Design's Fairlight DAWs for sound design on the advertising campaign for 20th Century Fox's "Murder on the Orient Express." Based upon the novel by Agatha Christie, the film follows thirteen strangers stranded on a train, where everyone's a suspect as mysteries unfold during a lavish journey through Europe. As Chief Engineer and Senior Mixer Mark Rodrigues noted, the campaign was heavy on sound effects design. "Locomotive noises and ambient backgrounds mixed with screams, gunshots and lots of train whistles were used to create a musical-type feel, all with sound effects," he said. "Heavy sound effects design can slow the editing and mix process slightly, but Fairlight's speed more than made up for it. Also, the Xynergi controller provides hundreds of commands within one or two button pushes, which came in handy with the huge amount of sound effects editing on this project." Rodrigues and his team rely on eight Fairlight systems with five 3.5 bay EVO 24 fader consoles, a 3 bay EVO 18 fader console, a Xynergi controller with three XE-6 fader panels and a pre-lay room/ edit bay with a second Xynergi system. Due to New Wave Entertainment's multiple entertainment divisions, its Fairlight systems are used for a vast array of projects and deliverables. For "Murder on the Orient Express," the company was specifically tasked with delivering both domestic and international television spots and trailers for broadcast, radio and online, as well as in-theater advertising, behind-the-scenes pieces, and social media marketing spots for Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and more. Rodrigues explained, "On a project like this, having separate default projects in Fairlight for television broadcast, social media and in-theater pieces is a huge time saver due to the ability to have separate delivery compression setups. We had more than 225 individual pieces with up to 10 versions of each spot, putting the total around 2,250 digital files delivered. Fairlight's speed and the ability to move entire spots and mixes from room to room gave us the ability to have three mix rooms all working on the project and combine them onto one desk when finished. After each spot was approved, we could then dedicate a single room to handle digital stem deliveries. This room could grab an approved spot from a mix room while the mixer was getting other spots approved by the client without interrupting or slowing down the approval process."