China Stories

Thank you for the music...

10th Aug 2008, Maria

Today I mixed two programmes with Bronek, our dubbing mixer in Glasgow. While we were working our way through the films we realised that in some places there was just too much happening sound-wise - especially in the bits where the contributor was being interviewed - we could hear their own voice, the voice of the English speaking actor, music and even actuality. So we decided to take out any music that was running under these interviews. It was a lot easier on the ears.

We have used library or mood music for all our films rather than specially composed scores or commercial music. There are loads of companies out there who own all the copyright to the music in their libraries and this means if we find a composition we like we can use it without having to get permission from the composer - it's much more convenient and cheaper than going through normal publishers. These companies send us CDs (or we listen and download them from special websites) and we choose the ones we like - some companies will even make up a playlist for you if you tell them the sort of mood you are looking for. More importantly, I think the CD covers add a bit of colour to my desk, but I don't think the cleaner likes them very much.