# Cues, reels and your DAW



## Christof (Mar 15, 2014)

How are you handling your workflow with cues and reels?

I am in my second feature movie now and I still try to find a good way to deal with the large number of cues (up to 60 sometimes).
For now I use for each cue a new Logic project, because it saves a lot of work when the editors make changes with the movie.

I have heard that some composers even have all cues and all reels in one single large project!

What is your best experience?

Christof


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## marclawsonmusic (Mar 15, 2014)

Hi Christof,

Some thoughts from my last project...

I spotted the film by myself first and developed a list of "suggested" cues, with start/stop time for each. I then reviewed this with the director and we came to agreement on a final list (and contents of each). I've included some attachments so you can see what I mean.

I asked for the reels to be cut in the 20-30 minute range (but not during the middle of a cue). So, for a two-hour movie, this was 4 or 5 reels.

I put each cue in its own Logic project, loaded the reel, and set the start time in the DAW to correspond to the timecode for the start of that cue (minus some time for a 2 bar count-in or whatever).

Made comments in the DAW for the various hitpoints within that specific cue, then got about writing the music. 

I always bounced the music WITH video when sending to director for review because I wanted to make sure the director was seeing EXACTLY what I was seeing (versus sending an audio file and having someone else not line up the cue properly - this has burned me before!).

For delivery, if you are sending individual cues, just bounce each and make sure you use the right sample rate / depth. If you are delivering a full mix (that can be dropped straight in to the reel), you can create a project for that reel with just two stereo audio tracks (assuming stereo of course!). Import cue 1 to track 1 (at correct timecode), cue 2 to track 2, cue 3 to track 1 and "stripe" them like this for the entire reel.

You can then focus on mixing transitions between the cues and also making sure they balance with each other (e.g. cue 5 isn't louder than all of the others). I guess this becomes a bit of a "mastering" effort at this point, but keep in mind that the music will need to be dubbed in with the rest of the audio for the picture, so you probably don't want to do a traditional "pop album" master (e.g. lots of compression, eq, hard limiting). There still needs to be room for dialogue, fx, etc. Without a doubt, the key is coordinating with the engineer who is doing the final dub to understand exactly what they need from you.

As a final note, I am not nearly as experienced as some of the other chaps on this board who do this every day, so take this with a grain of salt. However, I did find this workflow suitable enough for my needs.

My best,
Marc


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## dgburns (Mar 15, 2014)

one logic session per cue.logic synced to Protools running(separate machine) the omf/aaf media from video dept.video running in protools.Usually reels start at each hour,so reel one at one hour etc.I keep all reels and video audio in one master Protools session.most times,there are video changes,so i create a new pt doc for each new video revision.

i print all stems in logic and dump over the mixes into protools so I can have playback in protools and output video approvals.When the reel is approved,i dump over the stem files and output to mix,cleaning out whatever is not relevant.Sometimes i just create a fresh pt doc and do a session inport function to import just the tracks into this fresh new pt doc for delivery.depends mostly on how i feel at the time(is it 5am,then no)

the nice thing about having two machines,one for logic and one for pt is that you can have a bird's eye view of the entire film(or tv show) as the work progresses.i recently completed a tv series where the entire score happened in the ONE logic session.A rare thing for sure,but it was a very different kind of score,lots of rubato and off grid playing.i still output the cues individually and input into pt for delivery to mix.

the thing about doing it all in one session is you get to refine the tracks/plugs etc.And you can def spend alot of time creating lots of interesting channel strips and patches.The notion of recurring cues/themes means it can pay dividends to create a clean template after each cue,so you can take advantage of all the tracks/processing you created in the course of writing the cue.It's also nice as you can track import stuff from previous cues as well.Anything that helps you get more efficient is good to think about.imo.

i used to use the pt sync i/o for syncing the two machines.i now just use midi mtc generated from logic into pt.pt seems to lock ok.but pt will not chase the cycle if you have logic looping on a section.not a big deal for me however.

as i stated in another post,i name the cues based on the (reel)(abrev film name)(cue mum) and (tc,also possibly date).i also now have gotten into the habit of naming the logic docs the same way.so "my big 3d film". would have a cue called 1m1 mb3d 01 00 00 00 mar 14th rev 2 .this of course is the first cue of the first reel with a start time of 1hr and it's my second version ,so there exists another previous cue as well.the nice thing about this naming convention is on the timeline,you can easily see if you have 1m2 followed by 1m4 ,you know you are missing a cue in there somewhere....

again,i don't need to post this stuff,it's of no help to me,but i sincerely hope it can help others,and that is the reason for posting.


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## Jacob Cadmus (Mar 15, 2014)

I'm currently working on my very first feature film. It's also my first film using Digital Performer, and the "Chunks" feature has been extremely helpful with separating each cue on a single project per reel. Also, the visual streamers are pretty nice. I'm contemplating on switching to Cubase though, because the workflow feels more at home with me than DP. I'd imagine that working on separate projects per cue is fairly similar to "chunks," right?


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