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The tour started off with a screening in the Gower Theater, made up of clips from Paramount movies from way way back until the present day. A most interesting collection and good fun trying to remember which ones I’d seen at the time of their first release.

 Walking about the studio streets I was most impressed with the tidiness of everything. The well laid out grounds and roads, the planting of trees and gardens, the well kept look of all the office buildings. The many permanent exterior sets of American city streets , which appeared to cover most US architectural styles, were most impressive. All were in first class decorative condition too.

The tour didn’t make the ADR stage - a session was in progress. We did, however, gain access to the scoring stage which our lady guide informed us could accommodate 200 musicians and was often hired out to record companies. I have to admit it is quite a remarkable size, especially it’s height.

There was also a look in at the props department and a few minutes in one of the large stages fitted out with tiers of audience seats, reminding me of 30 years ago when I sat in similar seats to watch that episode of I Love Lucy being filmed. In those pre video days, three 35mm film cameras were used and as the guide had been using the word ‘filming’ with reference to various TV shows, I asked her if they still used film cameras. Film, she said, was used for drama productions but video for game and talk shows.

The fact that I had been privileged to see an I Love Lucy show being shot impressed several on the tour, most of whom were more interested in TV than in movies. This must be the norm for the studio tour, as most of our guide’s stories and facts were to do with TV shows.

On the way back to the hotel, I managed to get the cab driver to pass the old Warner Bros Hollywood Studio where The Jazz Singer was shot. It’s still in use, now called ‘The Lot’. Hopefully it will be Burbank on my next LA stop over.

BOB ALLEN

AMPS GENERAL MEETING REPORT

AN EVENING WITH FAIRLIGHT

Unfortunately it was a rather small number of AMPS members who chose to take advantage of Fairlight’s invitation to spend an evening at their North London HQ for refreshments and a look at their most recent product range. Originally scheduled for a month earlier, the meeting had been postponed to allow us to see the upgraded ranged previewed at the IBC exhibition a week before.

2000 is Fairlight’s 25th anniversary and MD of Fairlight Europe, Chas Rowden, outlined the direct line of product development from the original Computer Musical Instrument (CMI), with its firsts of sampling and waveform editing, all the way through to the MFX editing system. A few years ago Fairlight moved its business headquarters to Los Angeles and now employs 180 staff. Chas then briefly ran through the complete updated product range and where it they are being used. It would appear that Hollywood has found homes for a large number of MFX3 editors with over 100 at Warner Bros where they complete some ridiculous number of hours of episodic TV every week!

Fairlight’s Simon Daniels then presented the new MFX3.48 to us, the first of their products to make use of what they refer to as QDC Technology - an application of Analog Devices’ SHARC DSP processors to increase speed and processing power, plus the implementation of Fast Wide SCSI. In practical terms this means that the new MFX can punch in and out on all 48tracks at 24-bit/48kHz using only a single hard drive.

We were also introduced to Merlin, a 48-track hard disk recorder related to the MFX but with simpler editing and processing capabilities. All the audio used at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony was both recorded on, and played back on the day, direct from a Merlin system.

Other Fairlight products such as Fame 2 and the simpler Prodigy 2 mixer/workstations, DADPIus digital ‘dubber’ and the ViVid video disk recorder were briefly covered before a demo of networked MFX/Merlin production. Following a Q&A /hands-on session, the meeting retired to enjoy the refreshments and excellent selection of wines that Fairlight had provided.

Many thanks to Fairlight for their hospitality and a very informative evening.

KSA

The AMPS Newsletter’s editors would like to thank Peter Musgrave for his kind assistance in keying and subbing some of the text used in this and the last issue (for which we omitted acknowledgement). It was much appreciated.