Audio Post Hallmark Christmas

Audio Post Team for

THE FINNISH LINE AND CHRISTMAS QUEST

ABOUT

T’is the season! And at Flavorlab, we got into the spirit waaaay back in July when we started work on The Finnish Line and Christmas Quest, two of the three Hallmark Christmas movies we did post audio on this year. While you were at the beach, we were in the workshop adding in dog barks for the dogsled scenes in The Finnish Line. When you were watching Fourth of July fireworks, we were making sounds of trap doors and massive stone walls opening for Christmas Quest. Both movies premiered on Thanksgiving weekend.

WHAT SETS IT APART

“The thing about working on audio post for a Hallmark Christmas movie in July is that we’re cheating the time of year,” says Flavorlab’s partner and re-recording mixer Brian Quill. “The birds, the crickets and the cicadas are going crazy.” Brian lives in Connecticut where many Hallmark movies are shot. In winter, he’s been known to record around his small town to capture tape to swap in for Yuletide season films. Brian says removing cricket chirps from dialogue is no easy task.

BEHIND THE SCENES

When you shoot in the winter, you need a variety of different sounds to fill in the interior scenes which can be stagnant without help from nature sounds coming through an open window. Flavorlab sound mixer Eric Stern approaches that challenge by creating a series of beats with the dialogue and a variety of sounds. “If you’re in a basement, there’s a hissing pipe or a radiator doing something,” Eric says. “Upstairs there’s like a fire crackle or a floorboard creak.” Music can enter to support that rhythm. “Together, they can all dance together and keep things interesting.

IF YOU HAVE TO CRY

If you’re prone to cry during Hallmark Christmas movies, Flavorlab might be part of the reason. “Obviously, the composer has a lot do with it,” says Eric, “but it’s also about levels in the mix.” “To help you connect with where a character is emotionally, we start to pull out the backgrounds and raise the music so that it becomes more internal,” says Brian. He explains that the same thing happens when you get an emotional state yourself. “You kind of shut down things and you sort of go inside. We’re trying to mimic that with the way the levels play. That’s how we draw the viewers into the storyline and into the emotional space of the characters.”

EFFICIENCY

It’s no secret that there’s a Hallmark Christmas movie formula. Because of the consistency of their approach, the sound from film to film must remain even. “When we get it, every movie sounds different,” says Brian. “It’s recorded in a different place by different people. Our job is to make them all sound consistent.” This year, Hallmark is premiering 41 original holiday movies. We were thrilled to work on three of them, including Holiday Touchdown: A Chief’s Love Story. While the projects did have their similarities, Brian and Eric said each came with its own unique challenges (and a tight timeline). “Our efficiency came from our experience and confidence,” says Brian.

FRIENDS

Flavorlab loves working with our friends at Hallmark and Synthetic Cinema. Our Christmas wish is a New Year full of interesting projects with old and new friends that push us to think creatively and learn new things. Happy Holidays to all of our friends from The Entire Flavorlab Family.