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[HOPE AND FEAR] : BEHIND-THE-SCENESPost-production: dubbing. |
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On 11th and 12th May 1998, at 9.00 a.m. Dawn Velazquez supervises the last post-production session - dubbing, which means laying in all the dialogue, the music, the sound effects, the background sounds, and the Foley track. The episode plays on a full-size movie screen. She and three sound mixers sit at the board. One mixer concentrates on dialogue and some of the background, the second mixer works with the music and the Foley, and the third handles the sound effects and the rest of the background. They start at the episode's beginning, and will view the show three times, or, as they say, "make three passes." The show may be 43 minutes long but the three passes will take two full days to complete.
They begin with a "write pass", which means the mixers write in all their computer moves, at the same time locking the dialogue into the new master they are creating. The "record pass" puts together the sound with everything else. The third pass is the "playback pass" when they will play it through and just listen, though inevitably they go back and forth and forward and backward, over and over and over, until they are satisfied with the result.
On 13th May, early in the morning, Paramount's television operations department beams the show up to a passing satellite, thereby delivering it to the broadcasters.
On 20th May (and coincidentally, Kathryn Janeway's birthday, as stated in [Year of Hell]) the episode is aired on tv.
tv screenshot
tv screenshot
tv screenshot
Over fifteen weeks have passed since the writers first sat down to break a story for this, the Season's final episode. The result of that first meeting and all the hard work performed by hundreds of people, cast and production staff, is being broadcast - all that effort and it is over in an hour. (The show is 43 minutes, as mentioned above - the figure is not an error: there are opening and closing credits in addition, and in the USA the show is an hour as it includes adverts). The show will then be released (without adverts) on video in the UK several months later and on BBC2 many weeks after that. It will also be released in various other countries. But whenever people see it, it is an exciting climax to Season Four, and viewers start looking forward eagerly to Season Five.
Credits:
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