Production Sound & Video

Fall 2019

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20 As I drove into Leavesden Studios in London, UK, to meet Tom Hooper to discuss his next project Cats, I knew that the film was going to be a huge challenge having seen the stage show. I hoped the conversation we were about to have would present possibilities to deliver a first-class soundtrack. I was aware that Tom wanted to record the vocals live but I'd also had conversations with various people involved in the project who thought it just wouldn't be possible to go completely live due to the frenetic choreography and the difficulty our performers would have singing and dancing for the length of a film industry day. The first question I asked Tom was, "Is it your intention to shoot the film with completely live sound?" He looked at me quizzically and with a wry smile he replied, "Of course, that's why you're here." He moved swiftly into explaining his vision and how we were going to shoot the film, and the details of what he wanted to achieve visually and sonically. It was early on in the proceedings, and at this point the DP had not been chosen. As I listened intently, Tom told me about the VFX tests he had been doing which involved a new process that hadn't been used before. We would shoot completely live action on the set, with actors who could sing and dance, and then in post, the actors would have fur added to them and become cats, whilst completely retaining their body move- ments and, most importantly, their facial expressions. Tom and I spoke about the audience and how cinemago- ers judge performance and the leap of faith they must have Mixing Live Singing Vocals on Singing Vocals on Singing Vocals on Singing Part 1 by Simon Hayes AMPS CAS to trust what they are seeing and hearing on screen. Tom's position in filmmaking has always been that audiences instinctively believe performances if the dialog is original and recorded on set. We spoke about how this is deeply rooted in human subconscious and is instinctively part of our fight or flight mechanism that has been one of the keys to our species survival. When we were hunter-gatherers, human beings had to assess every interaction by reading facial expressions and listening to the tone of voices; did a stranger want to steal from us, kill us, or collaborate in a helpful manner? We do not switch off this subconscious assessment when we walk into a movie theatre to watch a film. We look at the actor's facial expressions and listen to the tone of dialog and we instinctively wonder whether we trust what we are expe- riencing. Is the lip sync perfect? Does the dialog inflection match the facial expression? Is there an acoustic in the vocal

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