Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1076412
19 Mission Critical SOUND MIXES AN EMOTIONAL JOURNEY FOR DAMIEN CHAZELLE'S FIRST MAN On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center carrying three astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins—their destination; the moon, a mere 240,000 miles away. Four days later at 10:56 PM ET, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface uttering his now famous words to a billion people listening at home. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." In First Man, Director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, La La Land) viscerally explores the story behind the mission to the moon, immersing us in the life of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling)—his marriage to Janet (Claire Foy), being a father of three, and the tribulations leading up to the historic event. Visually, Chazelle and Cinematographer Linus Sandgren leaned on a dynamic style tapping three different film formats to distinguish story elements. 16mm emphasized Armstrong's early life and spacecraft interiors. 35mm captured their El Lago, Texas, home, NASA, and shuttle exteriors. When the Apollo 11 door opens up the moon, it shifts from 16mm to 70mm IMAX. "The film was broken into two halves," says Production Sound Mixer Mary H. Ellis CAS, known her work on Prisoners and Baby Driver. "The first half was Armstrong's life on the ground and the second half was the spacecraft work and moon landing." Along with Ellis were Boom Operator James Peterson, Sound Utility Nikki Dengel and Sound Playback Alexander Lowe and Raegan Wexler. An early rehearsal before production introduced the shooting style to the sound crew. Chazelle, wanting a realistic portrayal, proposed that all camera movement— except when on the moon—be handheld, cinéma vérité style. One rehearsed scene intimately placed Armstrong's two- year-old daughter Karen (Lucy Stafford) in his arms, hugging her as he circled. Only the two actors, director, cinematographer and Peterson were allowed in the room. To record audio, Peterson was given a Sound Devices 788T to place around his neck to track the rehearsal, which ended up in the final version of the film. "We put a lav pretty much on everyone all day every day, but we never wired Lucy. Damien didn't want her being aware of any of us," notes Ellis. "The rehearsal helped a lot. It allowed James to get used to Linus's body language operating the camera as he would spin 180° and widen out the lens often." Shot primarily in Atlanta, Georgia, on practical locations and stages, production did travel to Edwards Air Force Base in California to recreate Armstrong's X-15 flight take- off and landing that opens the film and another day at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The busiest days for sound took place on the mission control set, a vast replica of the Johnson Space Center by Production Designer Nathan Crawley. The complex scene brought us inside the command center as the cosmonauts rocket toward the moon. As many as twenty-three actors needed to be wired at once in order to cover the dialog. Ellis brought in Production Sound Mixer Michael P. Clark (Stranger Things, The Walking Dead) to help head the task. "I insisted on a rehearsal two days prior to shooting as there would be a limited amount of time on production days," says Ellis. "We wanted to just slap the mic on the actors and find out how everything was." It allowed the sound mixer to create a seating chart of the actors where Ellis mixed the top eight and Clark took the other fifteen. "I knew once Damien got going, he would upgrade non- speaking parts to speaking ones, so I warned everyone about it. We had to be careful when stealing a microphone by Daron James