Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1351516
44 S P R I N G 2 0 2 1 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y Some streaming services will ask for theatrical Atmos, which is different from television Atmos. It will never play in a theater, but they still want a theatrical Atmos deliverable. I tell them that will cost more in the deliverables. You've got the theatrical deliverables but then you have to do the home theater Atmos deliverables, in which I generally find you need to bring the surrounds down a bit. And then you need to QC the 7.1 and the 5.1 because the 5.1 is what [most] viewers are going to listen to. So, we've got to do this on every level. You've been working in Atmos since it was introduced. What do you wish you had known back in the day? I wish I'd known that in Atmos, I didn't need to be in the uppers. When I started mixing in Atmos, I'd just make everything high. Nowadays, if you look at my renderer, there will be a lot more content mid to bottom. My first feeling was, "If I'm mixing it in Atmos, I've got to make it high. That's really cool!" But, it's just as cool to be low in Atmos. Can you talk about an Atmos mixing moment that really showed how powerful it was? One of my favorite things I did was in Black Sails. They were in a cave and the camera was trained on a stump. They had three characters walking from the back into the shot. One character had a peg leg and [was holding] a lantern. They walked into the shot and put the lantern on the stump and, I swear, I cried because of how cool and how fun that was. Because of Atmos, I could have every footstep in a different place and the lantern moved as it came over by our head and placed it on the stump. Those were bad-ass and those weren't high! Any words of caution for the new Atmos mixer? When you start making everything an object, it can take the cohesion out of the track. You and the other mixer have tried to make this glued piece. It's easy in Atmos to make it unglued if you try to get too tricky with it. What are some advantages you've found working in Atmos? I just think about how easy it is to be creative now whereas, just 10 or 15 years ago, you had so much more to worry about. One of the biggest benefits of Atmos is music in Atmos. I think it's amazing. Also, having the full-range speakers. If you're flying a plane overhead front to back in 5.1 or 7.1, it flies over your head and loses all of its low end. What happens is, it should get louder. When I'm in Atmos, that thing can rock the world! ADAM JENKINS CAS How do you approach a broadcast mix in Atmos? The misunderstanding a lot of people have is that mixing in Atmos is a totally different beast. Yes it is, but as far as the workflow goes, it can be the same old beast we're used to. We did the first season of Daredevil 5.1 mixes in four days and everyone was very happy with it. Atmos came along and Netflix wanted to do everything with the highest quality. They asked, "Can you do this? How much more is it going to cost? Can we still do this in four days?" Knowing that most people were going to be listening to this on their devices, they were going to hear this in 2-track. We assured the people at Marvel and Netflix that we could get this done in four days. So, I took my template and added 24, what we called drag tracks (object tracks). I would have 24 dedicated background tracks and 24 dedicated FX tracks that would be just below one of those sections and those would be our Atmos tracks. I'd spend the morning of the first day of the mix doing backgrounds. If a scene had four stereo traffics, a couple of winds, and city rumble, I could just go through and pull down what I wanted. I could even mix the scene first and then move elements down to the object tracks. We did run into things with printmastering. We had to tell our client that it was going to take another pass because there are times when going from Atmos to 5.1 that you can have issues. If a sound is off the screen, it's in the back of the room. So, a subtle move in Atmos suddenly becomes a mistake in 5.1. It's not so bad in 7.1, but in 5.1, as soon as it comes off the front speakers, it's in the rear of the room. So, we always did our playbacks in Atmos and then we would play back the 5.1 and the 2-track because the number of people who will be listening in 5.1 is much higher than those who will be listening in Atmos. And, a vast majority are listening to the 2-track because they're listening on their devices with headphones. What are some advantages you've found working in Atmos? Working in Atmos is great because you've got so many sound fields to work with. If I want to hear someone walk over my head, that's what Atmos is so good for. It's also great for music.