Grizzled Mac veterans may occasionally curl a lip at the blithe praises computers get for making complex tasks simple. (Remember your first experiences with telecommunications?) But Opcode Systems has a package that can really do the trick for those who compose music for film or video. Sure, playing and composing music can be creative and intuitive fun stuff (no letters, please). But determining the length and tempo of the music you're paid to put behind a four-and-a-half-minute battle with the hideous alien forces from Galaxy K-3G, complete with a musical “hit” timed exactly to every laser shot, tentacle slash, and spaceship crash takes time.
Multiply that by every scene in the film — from touching romance to gripping tension — and you’ve got a job that needs one old-fashioned no-kidding attention span, brother.
Written and documented with intelligence and a real knowledge of the industry, Cue takes much of the drudgery and guesswork out of the tedious task of synchronizing cues — short bits of music — to a film’s various parts. Cue automates two of the toughest chores in film scoring. The first is spotting and logging not only each point in a film where you want a cue to start and stop but also scene cuts and other noncued reference points as well. The Input window provides a stopwatch that times events in the film and displays them (in any of the American or European SMPTE, 35- or 16- millimeter formats you might need) next to a 24-line field where you describe the action. The software automatically assembles each set of times and comments in a nice, readable list on the cue sheet, which you can print out in a number of different formats, depending on what you want to see. If you don't like what you've got in the cue sheet, there are a number of simple ways to change or delete any one or a range of your entries.
The second big job the software accomplishes is to search for a tempo. Once you know all the points you want your cue to accent, the trick is finding a tempo that will put musical beats on the hit points.
Cue presents you with a list of tempos and the number of hits each one catches. It then lets you zoom in to see just which hits a tempo catches and which it misses.
To better its score, it calculates accelerandos and ritardandos — minuscule or large that catch more hits.
In addition to its two main functions, Cue has many more features than can be mentioned here. It creates streamers and punches that help the orchestra conductor follow the score; lets the user tap in a tempo on the Mac keyboard; generates music-notation scratch paper with cue-sheet information already written on it; and sends out MIDI clock data for synchronizing to a sequencer.
And in order to assist you at the business end, Cue generates a Performing Rights Cue Sheet listing the title of the production and its cue and reel number and name; the percentage and affiliation (BMI, ASCAP) of the composer and publisher; and the way the music will be used in the production (background, on camera etc.).
With Cue taking care of the details — synchronizing hits, taking care of the business end of things — you'll be able to concentrate on the more important things (like creating music or schmoozing with producers).
As they say in Hollywood: Cue baby, you're beautiful.
Tully, Tim. (February 1989). Cue: The Film Music System. MacUser. (pgs. 80-81).
Rick Johnston
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