Is Your M&E Track Fully Filled?

Picture: Generally good quality…
Audio: Failed, M&E track not fully filled…

Most of us that work in post-production know what an M&E track is. But for those who don’t, here is a brief lesson in Post Production 101. The sound in a movie contains three discreet elements of audio: Dialogue, Music and Sound Effects. Everything you hear in a film comes from those three combined parts. When the Dialogue is dropped out, you are left with the Music and Effects track. This is used when someone wants to place foreign language dubbed dialogue in the film for viewing in another language. This only works correctly when the M&E (Music and Effects tracks combined) is fully filled with all of the sound effects needed to make the show sound normal. Every door slam, footstep and shuffle of papers on a desk. Where would society be without the sound of Indy’s bullwhip, the hair ripping out of a 40-year-old virgin’s chest or the seductive zipper on Angelina Jolie’s bustiere? If any of these effects are missing, the M&E track is not fully filled. The film’s technical quality will be rejected like undercooked pork tenderloin when a diligent Quality Control operator sits in a dark room scrutinizing the show frame by frame. And, according to some mysterious arbiter of all things acceptably viewable on your television somewhere in the world, society will crumble into chaos and anarchy. Simple, right?

So, M&E is the background noise that takes place under the talking. It is what fills the void behind everything we are watching and paying attention to. If it is done well, you usually don’t notice it. But if the M&E were not there, or if it were not fully filled, the overall impact would be that there is something very seriously wrong with this picture.

So it is in life.

Take a moment to think of M&E as the background of your life, the things that go on behind all the talk and chatter and ranting. Think of M&E as the ambience that gives our lives flavor, character and depth. Strip out all the voices in your head and the verbal ballyhoo around you, and simply listen to what is left. Is it fully filled?

I remember the day I decided to go to film school. I was sitting in my truck on a hill somewhere in Glendale overlooking the valley and drinking beer with some friends. This was our favorite pastime back then; and yes, it is a miracle that I eventually found a woman who would marry me. I am pretty sure we were listening to the soundtrack of a John Hughes’ movie on the cassette player, killing my battery once again. John Hughes’ films of the mid 1980’s captured exactly what my generation was feeling right then, somehow making you feel like that movie was made just for you (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles… Pretty in Pink). And the music became the backdrop of our lives. So sitting on that hill, I had an epiphany (yes, epiphany) that changed the course of my life. Music is what makes movie reality different from our living reality and wouldn’t it be great if we all walked around with our own theme music or score playing in the background of our daily rituals. John Williams and the Boston Pops following you everywhere, playing music that fit each moment perfectly. You are standing in line at Starbuck’s choosing between a Caffé Vanilla Frappuccino® Light Blended with soy milk and a Half Caf Cinnamon Dolce Crème, and just when you choose the Frappuccino® and the barista hollers the order in, your string section blares with a triumphant chord and the audience knows you’ve won this battle…until next time. That is what separates movies from reality, I thought. Music! I know what you are wondering. And I will tell you. I was drinking Olde English 800.

5 years later I had a degree in film production from the illustrious CSUN film school. I spent the next 6 months unemployed and wondering why no one offered to give me money to make the film I had not yet written, my own Sex, lies and Videotape indie blockbuster. I have a FILM DEGREE for crying out loud! It was another 6 months as a gopher lackey to a so-called producer born and bred in Beverly Hills with a Cartiere platinum and diamond encrusted spoon in her mouth before I started doing anything meaningful with my education. From there I began my career as a servicing manager, and my long education in the world of post-production was underway. That script still isn’t written, but I’ve stopped wondering why no one is knocking down my door to give me money.

I have often wanted to ask people, what would the music behind their daily life be? Classical, Rap, R&B… Calypso? Be careful. Whatever you say hints greatly at how you perceive yourself. Think about it.

Music is obvious. It is easy to think of music in the background of your life. It can be a powerful accent to everything we do, heightening or taming our emotions, adding a sense of poignancy to the events of the day. But if music is the constant structure on which we ride throughout life, effects are the beats, the spice, the sizzle, the nut. Effects are those elements without which life would have no value or interest. Effects are the noises that add texture and substance to everything we do. They are things that give you peace and fulfillment; what you do when you are not behind a computer screen, making a dub, designing a DVD menu, generating a revenue report or trying to fake a laugh at yet another of your client’s off-color jokes over cocktails when you would rather be home with the kids playing Go Fish and wiping Ritz cracker crumbs off your shirt …I digress.

Effects can be anything: books, writing, poetry, painting, riding your bike, cooking, fishing, hiking, playing Xbox, traveling, horseback riding, motorcycle riding, teaching high school kids how to play the drums, paint ball wars, swing dancing, gardening, protesting the Iraq war on a street corner in Atwater Village and trying to get cars to honk in support... the little things that make you you.

I am a book guy. I love learning, love reading, love exploring life, religion, philosophy and the arts. Give me the Bible or poetry by Pablo Neruda, Of Human Bondage or The Sacred Art of Japanese Bondage, the Tao Te Ching, The Tao of Pooh… The Te of Piglet, and I am a happy guy. Get me in the kitchen on a Saturday afternoon, tri-tip roast, a rack of spices and a bottle of fine Napa cab, and you won’t find a more contented man.

For most of us, if our lives were put through a 2 pass, 4 channel master QC, we’d fail. We’d fail not because we don’t work hard and try to put the best picture out there for the world to see. We would fail QC for the smaller things. We’d fail QC because our M&E tracks are not fully filled. We’d fail QC because we didn’t spend enough time listening to the music, reading that book, playing with our kids, molding another ashtray out of clay or standing up for what is just and right and good in this world.

Let’s be honest. Our industry is all illusions. From the make-believe script to the actors pretending they are really saving the world to the flickering light on the screen that makes us believe those images are really moving and talking. All illusions. Perhaps the greatest illusion in our industry is the illusion of importance that is given to the products we turn out. Executives have tirades when something goes wrong and that hysteria trickles down through the ranks until every person along the way knows that during that one scene of “Hannah Montana” her skin tone in that one 5 second shot was just a little too red.

But for those of us in this industry, they are our illusions. It is what we do. We take pride in them as the glass blower does a new vase or the carpenter his cabinets. We make the illusions just a little bit better, doing our job as best we can. They are what motivate us through our daily tasks, and most importantly, what pays our bills. Just don’t forget that it isn’t real. What is real is the M&E.

Enjoy the music. You are free and able to fill your life fully with amazing effects that will make you smile and laugh and cry. Go on. Get outta here. Seriously. Go.

© 2008 Patrick Caneday