Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/246736
ing it feel deliberately unreal," recalls Choy. "Musa wanted everything to feel real. All of our Foley work is subdued and mixed into the ambience. The music is pretty subdued. We are just focused on the sound of the boy himself, and when we go to his POV, we lose the sounds of him and accentuate the sounds of the house." The Big House is set in rural Yemen. All the walla and natural sounds in the sound design came from production recordings that Choy had captured for a documentary he'd done in Yemen. Often when dealing with foreign languages, it's easy for sound designers to use things that aren't in the same language, but may have a similar sound. If the audience isn't from the area, then chances are they won't know the difference. "What's nice about this film is that it will actually play pretty well in Yemen if we wanted it to because I was able to take the production sound, from the places in Yemen that I had actually gone to, and layer them into the sound design," Choy says. Instead of replacing all the noisy production sounds with Foley, Choy cleaned up the tracks using a combination of the iZotope RX3 plug-in and the EQuality plug-in by DMG Audio. Choy cleaned and mixed the film in Reaper, a DAW created by Cockos. He says, "We wanted to have that natural feel so we didn't want to have Foley where it wasn't necessary. Often we were cleaning up things in production that were a little dirty and then manipulating them instead of doing straight up Foley." Silver Sound did the production sound, sound design, and mix on another short film, Send, directed by Peter Vack. Send tells the story of young lovers separated for the summer. The girl uses social media to see what the boy is doing at summer camp. She decides to send him a selfie, which he then forwards to his friends. It shows just how fast things can move around the world via the Internet and how kids and teenagers are dealing with that today. For sound design, director Vack wanted to use a palette of sounds that were less contemporary. Choy built a library of sounds using cathode ray tubes, televisions, the mechanics of a DVD player, and other sounds of electronics from the late '80s and early '90s. Choy gives an example of a scene where the girl decides to take a picture of herself to send to the boy. "When the girl drops her pants onto the floor, when it hits, instead of it being a normal Foley, we use the sound of a cathode ray tube adjusting itself. When she decides to actually hit send on the phone, it's not what you'd normally hear from an iPhone, but more like the mechanics of a DVD player." Recording the production sound for the film was a huge benefit during the audio post process. First, the sound was really well recorded, so there wasn't much work needed on the dialog in post. Second, Choy was able to work closely with the production sound mixer to find alternate takes or other production sounds quickly. The biggest challenge for the mix on Send was deciding what to take out of the soundtrack. "Part of the design is that not every noise the girl makes can be heard," says Choy. "It's about this girl being alienated, so when she doesn't have a presence sonically, it kind of makes her more removed from the scene emotionally. It was fun deciding with Peter where and what to emphasize." You don't always have control over the production recording, as Choy had with Send, and sometimes you have to make the best of the dialog you're given. While audio tools are really powerful, and there are things you can quite easily do with spectral editing that you wouldn't have thought possible before, Choy feels that audio tools can often do more damage than good. "There has been an abuse of those tools, where people take the de-noise and crank it to 11," says Choy. "There is a tendency now to over process the dialog." There may be more audio tools available, but Choy cautions against using a tool just because it's there. Instead, he says, audio tools should only be used when it's necessary. "Traditional cutting, editing, and leveling can really solve a problem. Sometimes I even find myself going for a tool. I noticed that people usually jump to a large hammer denoise, or try to spectral edit the problem, when really they should be looking for an alternate take." In the indie film world, with low budgets and less time for post production, Choy believes that technology won't save a film that's poorly made. "More than anything else, you have to ask yourself if a project is doomed to be a big mess for you because the client is asking for too much," he says. "If you're going to put your name on it, you want to be proud of the work you are doing, so I think a lot of it comes down to project selection." Low Down Keith Reynaud, partner at Heard City, and re-recording mixer Cory Melious recently mixed the independent film Low Down. Heard City (www.heardcity.com) is an audio post facility in New York City. They offer audio services for the advertising, film, and television industries. Their work includes top spots for McDonald's, IBM, Dewar's, HBO and Google. Low Down follows the life of bebop pianist Joe Albany, as told through the eyes of his daughter Amy Jo Albany. Pianist Albany struggles with addiction, relationships, and his career. The film is in competition at the Sundance Film Festival this month. According to managing director Gloria Pitagorsky, Heard City mixed four films for this year's Sundance festival, three of which are in competition. Reynaud, who typically mixes broadcast commercials, was chosen by picture editor Michael Saia and director Jeff Preiss to mix Low Down. Reynaud has a long history with Saia and Preiss. He says, "My very first job in advertising, 14 years ago, was with Michael and Jeff. Michael cut the spot and Jeff directed the spot." Mixing a feature film is an entirely different process from mixing commercials, notes Reynaud. "I learned so much about myself as a person, and what I do for a living while working on this film. The process is entirely different. There are more people involved. You are more allowed to be part of the creative process. As for the amount of work, it's like hundreds of :30 commercials all packed into one." Heard City did the majority of the audio post work on Low Down. Though they did www.postmagazine.com Silver Sound's sound design for Send is used to alienate characters and emotions. continued on page 47 Post • January 2014 31