Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1061972
63 Q4 2018 / CINEMONTAGE SOUND DESIGN TO SUPPORT THE MUSICAL NUMBERS As Gearty recalls, "The style we were after — and one that Renée helped to refine with me — was a detail-oriented sound design to support and work with the musical numbers. Unlike an effects-heavy film, our sound design for Mary Poppins Returns concentrated on establishing the world of '30s London using convincing backgrounds, effects and layered Foley, which we recorded in both Toronto and New York." While acknowledging that a great-sounding scene can be created with authentic sound effects, Gearty feels that it is more important that the sound design support and not intrude on the musical numbers. "In fact, everything was designed to work with the cues musically — not just tonally, but also rhythmically," the sound designer emphasizes. "We had a spotting session against a rough cut. From that point, we used the picture editor's [Wyatt Smith, ACE] temp track with its effects as a blueprint for the soundtrack. Renée concentrated on dialogue, music and ADR, while I oversaw the sound effects and Foley. It was a highly collaborative effort moving forward. Our philosophy was to serve the script and support what was on the screen." A major hurdle for Gearty to clear was accommodating effects against the full-on music tracks. "In other words, how to make your Ferrari Testarossa sound powerful when you have the Blaupunkt radio turned up to 11 listening to Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love,'" he analogizes. "We understood going into this project that a musical needs effects to sound like it is really happening then and there. Focusing on dialogue, music and visuals, we used well-crafted specific backgrounds, effects and Foley to help the performances of the songs sound as if they were happening right there in London, as opposed to sounding like they were recorded on an ADR stage. It would be a process that took 10 months to evolve." After a temp dub, the post crew received positive feedback from the director and Disney Studios, Gearty relates. "'You hit a home run,' Rob told us. 'I don't want to change anything!' Of course, we then spent months refining and creating elements after our temp mix!" During the Royal Doulton Music Hall scenes, the film moves into "Ceramic World," but the porcelain tubs and sinks were not working for the footsteps, according to Gearty. "So we had one of our Foley artists, Andy Malcolm, walk on a marble surface, and then sweetened the simple marble footsteps with sweeteners that he made on various ceramic surfaces," he explains. "I also had my assistant, Sam Mille, make a 5.1-channel and a stereo impulse response of a bowl — a Tiffany Royal Doulton — to add an overall resonance to our Foley/effects tracks. I then made slight changes to each track using variable pitches and other settings to create slightly different sounding footsteps for each character, depending where they were in the cracked bowl, with higher pitched clicks for the kids and lower pitched for Jack [Lin-Manuel Miranda]; of course, Mary Poppins got an extra special treatment. The other Foley elements also received the same impulse response sound." Perhaps the biggest sound effects sequence in the film is a chase scene that follows the music hall revue. "It was a nightmare sequence in which Georgie Banks [one of the children] is kidnapped and taken away in a coal-fired steam car — and a wonderful opportunity to create a very scary sound design sequence," Gearty continues. "Although it had a very strong music cue, I had a lot of fun designing the steam car — thanks to Jay Leno's Stanley Steamer — and the chase to sound very threatening. Mixer Michael Keller brought my design work to another level; he really made that scene scarier than I had initially designed. So another nod to the team for making the whole bigger than the sum of its parts." Eugene Gearty. Mary Poppins Returns. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures