Dudley Perkins Documentary: World Premier

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Dudley Perkins (aka Declaime): Interplanetary Peace Talks Documentary (Directed by A.J. Calomay), a feature documentary on visionary rapper Declaime, is finally released! I believe I worked on this in 2008 or 2009, beginning with dialogue editorial, then sound design, and then mixing. This documentary took over 5 years to make and I’m proud to announce that the documentary comes bundled with Declaime’s new LP: Self-Study. You can also watch it below for free

This was very fun to work on! A.J. really wanted to make this documentary different. He wanted to keep it organic, unique, and of course “hip hop.” I wanted to sustain a “rugged” and “grimy” feeling throughout. The one thing about documentaries is that you really can’t ADR (the integrity of the documentary would diminish); as a dialogue editor for docs, you have to work with what is given to you no matter what. That’s why it’s important to request all the production audio. I often found myself searching for syllables in other parts of the show to complete a word I was editing. There are some passages where the dialogue was completely distorted and even the noise reduction tools I have couldn’t help it much, but it did decrease the distortion just enough to let the intelligibility through. The best you can do is keep it the way it is and not add anymore noise; luckily, I think it added to the overall feeling of a 1990s guerilla style hip hop documentary.

I had a lot of freedom to play around with synth beds, sound effects, and unique dialogue effects like delays and reverb, which I think really complimented the video editing and title cards that were superimposed throughout. I was very happy with the dialogue sound design as I think this is what really separates this doc from your typical interview-style documentary. I think A.J. and I looked at this documentary as one giant song, where a balance between delivering the message while keeping it unique and interesting with effects and music is key.

Hope you all enjoy!