Production Sound & Video

Fall 2020

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Fall 2020 – LOCAL695.ORG 17 The release date of Christopher Nolan's was delayed three times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and finally reached screen audiences in the United Kingdom on August 26 and the United States on September 3, in IMAX, 35mm, and 75mm. opened in over fifty territories worldwide and was available to about eighty percent of the screens in the U.S., among the forty- five states that permitted indoor viewing. Unfortunately, moviegoers in both New York City and Los Angeles were denied the opportunity. To date, the film has grossed three hundred and forty-one million dollars, which demonstrates the enthusiasm audiences have for a Christopher Nolan film. A Conversation with Willie Burton, Douglas Shamburger, and Rene Defrancesch TENET | A JOURNEY I had the privilege of speaking with Production Sound Mixer Willie Burton, his longtime Boom Operator Doug Shamburger, and Utility Rene Defrancesch in Atlanta, New Mexico, and Glendale respectively. Willie, Doug, and Rene began to describe the nearly five- month shooting schedule with the seven countries they filmed in. It went like this: Rene: We started in Estonia. We went from Estonia to the Amalfi Coast in Italy, then to London, from London to Oslo, Norway, and from there to... Do you remember the name of the city in Denmark? I can't remember the name of that city. Doug: Copenhagen. Willie: We were in Southampton right before London. Doug: Yeah, the Isle of Wight. We were shooting off the coast. And we forgot Mumbai, India, that was another... Rene: And then, of course, Indio, California, and Victorville. I counted over forty-three locations in all, basically it was Tenet—the World Tour. The initial interview with Chris Nolan went well for Willie as he explains, "I did say one thing, that I'm a little old school/new school, and I think he liked that because he likes the old school way." Doug picks up the conversation, "It was really bizarre. We were doing a scene on stage and I come out with the wireless boom, 'cause it's a dolly. We're dollying backward in the corridor with two actors walking and talking, and Chris looks down at me and doesn't see a cable, and says, "You're not hardline? I like to do hardline sound, I don't like the compression from wireless." From that point onward, their department had microphone by Richard Lightstone CAS AMPS cables, lots of cable. Rene explains, "It's easy to get a cable in there, you're not worried about it too much. But there were a couple of takes in a couple different countries where we're in a big open space, and a ton of background, and crew members working, and we got hundreds of feet of cable out there, and just people dodging it." Doug Shamburger continues, "While I'm back-pedaling, Rene is pulling my cable with two or three other PA's all trying to help, as we're doing a Steadicam shot. It was quite a feat." Willie adds, "Also there were times in long dolly shots that I had to dolly my sound cart, pulling the sound cart and mixing. Rene and a couple of other people are helping him out pulling cables, and I'm dollying at the same time. Chris Nolan looks around at me and he says, "That wheel on your dolly's makin' more noise than anything." "We did what we had to do, and there were times that I had to go portable, while doing three sixty shots. Doug and I, we're dancing around, I'm running with the recorder on my shoulder and Doug is getting the boom in there. We made it work because that's how we used to do that old school style. It was great, it sounded good." Willie and his team often had to wrap the gear at the end of a long shooting day and get it ready to ship to the next location, usually another country. "We worked a lot of hours," says Willie, "we would be in one location sometimes just three days. I think, in Oslo, we were only there for a couple of days, we would finish shooting and we would have to wrap the equipment, and get it ready to ship that night. Then we would go out the next morning. It was a lot of hours spent packing, and unpacking equipment, getting ready to ship." The entire schedule was not always like this. They spent

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