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Even though home entertainment equipment has become more sophisticated, experiencing a movie in the the- ater is still unsurpassed. With the increase of digital cinemas, a greater offering of IMAX films, the improvement of 3D technology and the growing popularity of the 7.1 format, theaters are able to offer the audience a movie experience like no other. According to Robin Selden, senior VP, marketing at Dolby, Dolby Surround 7.1 is one of the fastest growing cinema audio formats in the history of their company.Their 7.1 format consists of eight chan- nels in the layout: Left, Center, Right, Low-Fre- quency Effects (LFE), Left Surround, Right Sur- round, Back Surround Left and Back Surround Right.With the addition of two surround speak- ers, mixers are able to more accurately pinpoint where a sound is placed.They also enhance the spatiality of the sound. REAL STEEL The DreamWorks film Real Steel, which will be released in IMAX this October, was recently mixed using the 7.1 format. Craig Henighan, su- pervising sound editor and sound designer, along with music and dialogue re-recording mixer Paul Massey, completed the mix in the Cary Grant Theater at Sony Studios (www.sonypicturespost.com). When creating the sound design, Henighan used the 7.1 format to add depth and dimension to build realistic crowds.The movie follows a father-and- son team as they take their fighting robot, Adam, through a series of competitions.A lot of scenes happen in arenas with crowds of 400 to 60,000."The main benefit, from a sound effects standpoint, is that 7.1 allowed us to build the crowds, and build the size and scope of the movie a little differently," he says. "There's an overall crescendo for the crowd sounds. In the beginning the fights are smaller, the crowds are fewer, but as the movie goes on, the fights get bigger and the arenas get larger.We were able to use the 7.1 to really enhance the depth and size of the crowds." While shooting the extras for the arena crowds, Henighan was able to get very specific crowd reactions and chants that were vital to building the crowd sounds."They had 1,200 extras come in for these arena scenes, and between takes I got Shawn Levy, our direc- tor, to direct the extras to give us these raw recordings of crazy cheering, booing and hissing and chanting of 'Adam,' 'Midas' and 'Zeus,' all the different types of robots we needed to give us a spe- cific flavor for all the different fights.That's what played the most in the 7.1 environments.That's where 7.1 was a real advantage. I could place something really specific. If I just want a sound on the back wall on the right, I can put a whistle, or cheer, or a yell, or a scream there.We did a lot of discrete sounds but at some points I wanted all the surrounds to be equal level of a full on cheer. So everything is boom, right to the wall with how loud a certain cheer would go. It would give you those peaks and valleys of how a real fight tran- spires.We were trying to get that sort of emotion." He made crowd tracks using layers."There would be a big layer, a medium layer and then a smaller, closer-up layer.Then, depending on where you are in the fight, we would choose what we wanted to hear from the crowds at any given time.With the boxing,we would go from the back wall of the grand stand, with these huge crowd shots of 50,000 to 60,000 people cheering, right down onto the ring, beside the robots.The idea is that you go really big for the cheer and then bam! — you cut right into the fighting scene.You want to get away from the crowds because you want to give room for all the boxing sounds and everything else that's going on in the ring. That's where the 7.1 allowed us to be really big when we needed to and then suck right back into the focus of what's going on in the ring. 7.1 gives you that ability to really feel like you're in the middle of the fight." Robots also play a central role in the sound design of Real Steel. Henighan spent over a year recording and creating sounds for the robots.This included the punches and impacts, and also sounds that the individual robots would make.To capture field recordings,"We used Sound Devices 722s and 744s.," he explains."We recorded Steve Pederson at work on a Warner Bros. stage. He and Brad Sherman mixed in 5.1 surround. See page 29. with Zoom recorders. Sometimes I put the Zoom on overload and crush the sound just for fun, to see what kind of distorted sounds I can get.We used a lot of different microphones. In particular, we used AKG C411 contact mics.They are really cool little contact mics that are under an inch long and you can put little stickies on them that allow them to stick anywhere. I have two of those that I record in stereo with. I just love the AKGs. I'd stick them on certain parts of whatever we were recording to get the resonant sounds the ob- jects were making.They gave us a different sort of feel.As you can imagine, we did so much with metal, and different types of metal, that resonance, or a lack of resonance, was what we tried to cap- ture the most.We also used Neumann 191 stereo shotgun mics, Sanken CSS5 shotgun mics, Shure SM57s and PZM microphones. It was dependent on the types of sounds we were going for." Henighan and his team went to various locations to capture metal sounds."We'd go to the Home Depots and record little hinges, little squeaks, little things that I could build into some of the earlier, junkier robots.And then we went to a place here in the val- ley in California called Acme Metal Surplus, and basically beat the crap out of different car parts and big brass hunks of metal.We got up on a ladder, and up on a forklift, and dropped big chunks of metal onto other metal.The robots basically beat each other up all the time in the ring, and some are very vicious, so you have to have a lot of different metal sounds, and a lot of different textures." Later in the studio, Henighan did a lot of electronic manipulation using plug-ins by Waves and SoundToys."Sometimes I would drive a sound into a certain plug-in and see what kind of sound it could make.We then built a library or kit out of that. I used the Melodyne for the Adam metal sounds especially.We used Melodyne a fair bit for pitch processing. I used the SoundToys EchoBoy plug-in. I drove certain punches through the McDSP Chrome Tone Amp plug-in to add distortion and depth. I love the reFuse Lowender plug-in to add bass synthesis. It works great to add some beef to anything. I usually www.postmagazine.com August 2011 • Post 25 Final Destination 5