Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1197261
52 Once we got up and running with the excellent commu- nication system that was so crucial to the smooth operation of the department that Tom Barrow put together, we all felt ready to go on set! My role was to foresee any issues that might come back at us in post and to stay close to our Director, Choreographer, and 1st AD making sure we always knew where we were going from in the music. Were we going to play back someone's vocal who wasn't on set that day? Do we need a vocal or dialect coach? I was employed to work on the film through post production, until final delivery. I knew I needed to work with my Co-supervising Sound Editor, Nina Hartstone. Her experience and work with dialog is second to none. Although Cats is a musical film and everyone is singing, the way we deal with the audio in a live-sung musical is identical to a dialog film. It's like dialog editing in soprano, alto, tenor and bass! Nina Hartstone, Dialog Editor When John Warhurst first spoke to me about working on Cats, I knew it would be great to work on a musical film with him again, employing some of the same techniques we brought to Bohemian Rhapsody in order to achieve the best possible finished soundtrack. One of the first steps of working on the vocals and dialog of Cats was to assemble the sound to the current picture edit and listen through Simon's on-set recordings. For the Avid, Simon supplied two mix tracks (12 + 12), and a track of the music, playback, and live. For sound editorial, we had the fantastic resource of all the ISO tracks. The use of multiple forehead-mounted lav mics, across two sound recorders, locked to the same time- code, provided a wealth of material for Sound Editorial. It allowed for a great deal of flexibility in the decisions of which tracks to favor for any one shot. It was a complex task de-multiplexing the source audio and conforming to the picture edit, but well worth it to have separate recordings, which maintain proximity throughout all the dance moves for every character. It was no small feat for Simon and his team to capture such good recordings for the multiple mics and avoid any kind of distortion, even across extremely dynamic performances. All their work is being used in the final vocal/dialog edit. Many hours have been spent listening through every mic recording across all takes, to compile libraries of breaths and movement from the dancers, clean of main vocal, allowing us to keep the ensemble presence alive during every scene. In addition to the forehead placement, mics were mount- ed on the shoes of the lead tap dancer for one of the songs, capturing close and detailed sound for every tap, scrape, and scuff, which really complements the close camerawork, and has been a fantastic resource throughout the scene. In Editorial, we have created a tap library from the original recordings, utilizing all tap moves clean of singing and enabling us to build a continuous tap-dancing track, per- fectly timed to the music, throughout the scene. With all the vocals, John and I worked very closely safe- guarding authenticity and musicality in the performances, ensuring both sync to the lips and the music is always very precise, constantly asking Picture Editorial to roll shot sync for us to achieve this. This movie has amazing danc- ers and singers performing live and our aim is to create a soundtrack that sounds hyper-real and intense, using all the great recordings from set. In areas of ensemble singing in Cats, it has been a time- consuming but rewarding task to meticulously edit the tracks for each character to make certain no undesirable noises are magnified across the bank of tracks and ensure they all play together without any phasing issues. For these chorus sections, we also had the benefit of additional Wild Track recordings that Simon and John acquired on set, allowing us to have both great-sounding singing, as well as the authenticity of the sync recordings, which gives us vocals with the movement of the dance. There will be very little ADR required for this film, but for storytelling reasons, lines need to be added in post produc- tion in addition to what was shot. We plan to employ the same techniques to record our ADR as those used on set. The same mics will be mounted on the forehead. Where it would be beneficial for the actor to move around to replicate their performance, they will be wireless and free to mimic their on-set dancing or movements. The most important element of recording lines or vocals in post is to allow as much freedom as possible for the artist to recreate their original performance effectively. There is still plenty of work to be done, as we are working toward our final mix. All the work by the Sound and Music team has been outstanding, employing innovative techniques and pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in a musical film to support Tom Hooper achieve his incredible directorial vision. It will be exceptionally rewarding to see and hear it all come together in these final stages!