by Jason Snell
Scoring a TV series remotely
“Star Trek: Discovery” composer Jeff Russo is recording the score for the show’s third season by recording individual musicians in their homes and then having a sound engineer put it all together in post. Russo (in a Facebook Live session), as reported by TrekMovie’s Anthony Pascale:
What we are doing is recording individual session players from here in Los Angeles. They are fantastic and most of the people I have used on the Star Trek scores and Picard scores and Umbrella Academy scores. So we will record each individual in their home and then combine all of it to make the orchestra, so we don’t have to put everybody in the same room….
Michael Perfitt, who is my recording engineer and mixer, is and has been working diligently with the players to make sure they have the right microphones and the right mic pre-amps and where to put the mic in conjunction to the instrument. And then it is literally his mission to figure out how to take all these players and put them together and make it sound like it is at the Warner Brothers or Fox scoring stage, or wherever we record these things.
An approach like this isn’t what anyone prefers, but it’s what is required now. My guess is that it’ll sound great. (“Discovery” season 3 is also being edited at home.) A lot of movies and TV shows that have completed principal photography are being finished by talented professionals using computers at their houses. Hopefully it’ll all give us more to watch this summer and fall.