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Casey Stone Scores Mixes Records X-Men United with System 6000
Talk about having a great weekend! The superhero sequel X2: "X-Men United" sold $155.2 million worth of tickets worldwide in its first three days of release. Those numbers must please everyone involved with X2 including the film's scoring mixer, Casey Stone. We spent a few minutes with Casey the morning following the super opening weekend, curious about his use of the System 6000 and how he got to record and mix the score for one of the year's biggest films.
Casey moved from Iowa to Los Angeles in 1989 to study at the University of Southern California, where he majored in the Music Recording Program. After his formal schooling, Casey began his working career as a second engineer at Mad Hatter and Sound Castle Studios. Later work brought him into contact with noted scoring engineer Tim Boyle. It was during this period that Casey saw music scoring as an area of engineering worth pursuing. On his way to working on one of the biggest movies of the year, Casey lent his talents numerous music and television projects and over 50 feature films.
Casey recounts: "The TC System 6000 was an essential part of the sound of the X2 score. All of the reverb/ambience I used in the score was from the System 6000. I used two units, each with eight additional outputs available (on top of the six built-in). On one 6000 I used a VSS6.1 Vienna Hall algorithm "Large Hall," which I modified somewhat, for use on the orchestra. I fed a mono input and returned 5 channels (LCR LS RS) to the console. On that same 6000 I had another Large Hall for the Choir, 1 input and 5 outs. It had to be a separate reverb since the Choir was being printed to a separate mix stem."
"On the other 6000 I used VSS6.1 algorithm "Excited Hall," somewhat modified, for use on the orchestral percussion. This was used when I wanted to give percussion elements some bright reverb tail. This was fed mono in 5 channels out. I ran two stereo programs on this 6000 for reverb on synth elements. Programs varied from cue to cue, generally Large Hall types. Again, they had to be separate reverbs since these synth elements went to their own mix stems also."
"I chose the surround reverb from the 6000 over competing products because the reverb tail is much more spacious sounding," Casey explains. "With the reverb processor I was previously using, I noticed that the reverb tail sounded very mono. It wasn't wide or "surrounding" at all. The TC, in contrast, adds a nice wide depth to the sound. In the surround reverb market, the 6000 is the best I've heard."
"There is a cue near the beginning of the film where John Ottman, the composer, supplemented an existing stereo recording of Mozart's Requiem with additional orchestra (especially brass and percussion). In the final mix I wanted to make that stereo basis of the cue into a full surround sound field, like the rest of the score. I used the "Unwrap" program on the System 6000 to do this. I found it very useful. I could just hold the ICON remote in my hand; sit in the middle of the sound field and tweak the settings. At first I thought the L-R decorrelation was too wide, but I quickly found the parameter to adjust and make it the way I liked. I ran the subwoofer output through a dbx 120 boom box for extra earth shaking!"
"There's a lot of power in these machines!" Casey adds. "The ability to store the machine's complete set-up as a scene for each cue made recalls a breeze. I also just love the routing flexibility. It was very easy to add the additional D-A converters and make sure all the inputs and outputs were what we intended. The ICON interface is just fantastic."
X2 is Casey's 5th film working with composer John Ottman. He also worked with Ottman on Halloween H2O, Bubble Boy, 8 Legged Freaks, and Trapped. Not content to rest, Casey is starting immediately on American Pie 3 "American Wedding", his 10th film with composer Christopher Beck, who Casey met while attending USC.
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