Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1353865
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 69 the mixer was back at the facility in Boston recording the takes and simultaneously connecting to me back in London through their hub in New York. It was a masterful example of cross-state, cross- Atlantic collaboration. When it came to crowd recording, we knew we wouldn't be able to get the amount of people we wanted together in one room too easily. We luckily came across a music recording studio, which had lots of separate booths. We had two voice actors in each, all with cans on so they could not only hear the guide but also each other. It worked surprisingly well as the enforced separation gave us four mono tracks that we had the freedom to either combine for walla or just take individual performances from. Can you break down the timeframes you had for editorial and mix? OT: A couple of our team started mid-Jan. to send some elements to the pic dept. There was a director's cut temp at the beginning of March, followed by a suspension of the job due to COVID, a week or two later. Everyone started up again a couple of weeks later—once we had all worked out how to proceed safely. Most of our crew were working from home. Billy Goldenberg had gone back to LA and was working from home as well. Most of the creative collaboration had to be done over Evercast, with bounces of our work being sent on a regular basis. We did two temp mixes from my cutting room as the theatres were all closed at that point in the year, but we final mixed at Goldcrest in July with Paul in attendance and Billy linking in from LA via TVIPS. We did open the film up to do a few tweaks a few months later once there was a way to preview with a test audience safely. We're all incredibly grateful to Universal and the producers for finding a way to keep the film going through a very challenging time. What were the most challenging scenes for the soundtrack in the film? I wanted to become fully emersed in that world and glean any little details I could that would influence what we recorded from the crowd artists. RT: For me, the scenes that presented the most challenges were any that involved the changing of dialogue content for on-shot mouths. This happened several times with Johanna's Kiowa lines. Two of which were to replace the words of the songs she sings, so the content is more connected to her experiences rather than being the traditional lyrics she sang on set. Thanks to our picture editor, Billy Goldenberg, some of the more noticeable issues with sync were helped by rolling the cut or changing angles but many could not be avoided. Lauren helped immensely here, by going through the scenes and working out the best choice of Kiowa-Tanoan words that would fit the meaning Paul was after and be sympathetic to existing mouth shapes. The rest was down to me, massaging these recordings into place so you believe they were always so. As much as I felt the pressure, this was so utterly rewarding to get right. –Rachael Tate Rachael Tate Twickenham Studios, UK