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for Films 's sound design features a combination of real-world and electronic elements. start with the Thunder preset and just tweak that. I used the Waves MondoMod, MetaFlange, Doubler and Doubler 4, and Enigma plug-ins to give us some different sounds for the fights at the end so that the punches weren't always the same sounding punches. Overall, it was a good marriage of real-world and electronic sounds. Shawn was always interested in keeping it real, keeping it regular sounds that are somehow twisted and manipulated in a way to be- come something that the robots are versus it being purely synthetic.We were always looking for those natural type sounds, those real-world sounds that we could use." The biggest challenge in mixing Real Steel was using all the individual elements to cre- ate a build throughout the movie."The chal- lenge became how to get this build to feel really big and dynamic at the beginning, with- out going too big and dynamic because you want the pay off of the bigger fights at the end," says Henighan."We have all this really loud, heavy hip-hop, a lot of heavy bass and drum type music, and then we get into Danny Elfman's score, which is obviously big and lush. How the robots interacted with the music was a challenge on some levels. We had done a lot of mixes early on.We did a lot of back and forth with the music side of things to get the kinks worked out in terms of frequencies and where the music was sitting and how I could fit sounds around it.We did the obvious thing of pitch- song, so we had a lot of fun being able to put the claps all around us," he explains. "That's where the biggest challenges were, taking all these huge elements and still making it feel like a dynamic mix. It's a loud and powerful mix, but at the same point, it's not overpow- ering you to such a degree that you're com- ing out of the theater with your ears ringing. This is ultimately a kids film, so we were al- ways conscious of making it energetic and dynamic, but at the same time making sure the punches and the big metal impacts didn't hurt your ears.The movie is over two hours and there are a lot of fights, so we had to pick our moments when we could go really, really big and pull back from there. And thankfully Shawn and Dean Zimmerman, the picture editor, did a lot of great editing where we'd be really big and loud from a fighting standpoint, and then in the next scene we'd be nice and quiet.The quiet gives you a break from all the loud chaos of the fights." When it came to the music mix, the 7.1 format was a big advantage, says Henighan. "For the music, Paul Massey was able to put a lot more in the back wall than on the sides.That made the arenas feel — from a musical standpoint — a little more front to back. It gave a dimensionality to the sound that we were able to gain with the 7.1. It's not a huge difference from the standard 5.1, but it made a huge difference in this movie because of all the crowds and the scope of what we were going for." The film featured a lot of music. "All the fights were ac- tually source songs.There is a left surround and your right surround, but when you have two more discrete channels in the back you can actually pin-point a little bit more. It's more of a circular sound." When it came to the final fights, 7.1 was a real advantage for the mixers. It gave them more space to fit all the elements. "The biggest difference between the 7.1 mix and a 5.1 mix is that there is space. In the final fights we had production dialogue, music, ESPN announcers, all the boxing sound ef- fects, all the robot sound effects, and then all the crowds," reports Henighan."We had five or six layers of all these things that are all overlapping.The ESPN announcers are con- stantly talking through the fights, and we need to figure out where to place those in the soundscape. If you just try to jam it all in on the front wall, it gets really cloudy, and re- ally difficult to understand or to discern any- thing. So just allowing the crowds to sit in the surrounds a little more with those extra two speakers there, we were able to play with where things sat in the mix. In some re- spects it was easier because you had those extra two speakers to play with." Henighan and Massey completed the mix on a Harrison MPC4 at Sony Studios in the Cary Grant Theater.The final mix was com- pleted over the course of three weeks."We did our mix in 7.1 and then made it fit into the IMAX format as best as possible. And it sounds great.When I go see it in the theater, I'll definitely go see it in IMAX because I just feel the low-end and the way the bass man- agement works on an IMAX system, with the full range surrounds and the full range speak- ers all the way through, the bass is much more warm, much more full. It just sounds great. It's a really great sounding format." Beastie Boys song, there's Em- inem, there's Crystal Method, there's Limp Bizkit.There are all these specific bands that lent songs to the movie and they're all during the fights so was mixed in 7.1 at Todd-AO Hollywood. Mike Minkler says the format allowed him to spread the music differently than he'd ever done before. 26 ing certain sounds and adjusting certain sounds to either fit it into the key of the music or against it depending on how we wanted it to be played.The same goes for the crowd sounds and the chanting sounds." They used a Timberland song for Adam's main entry to some of the fights. "There were 40,000 people clapping in-sync with the Post • August 2011 you can imagine each fight has a lot of music going on too. So you're looking for space, and that's the great thing about 7.1. The extra couple speakers allow you to get off the front wall, to get off the side a little bit, so you can still get all your sound through so to speak.When you're dealing with just a regular 5.1 mix you basically just have your www.postmagazine.com FRIGHT NIGHT DreamWorks' Fright Night is being shown in RealD 3D, and the Dolby 7.1 mix was completed by Mike Minkler and Tony Lam- berti at Todd-AO Hollywood Stage 1 (www.todd-ao.com). Fright Night is a remake of the original 1985 film, but this version uses all the latest bells and whistles available."Compared to what they were doing with the original back then, this new version is like night and day," says Minkler."We really go for it.We really fill the screen.We have hundreds of tracks playing." Fright Night is a blend of comedy and hor- ror, and the comedic aspect gave the mixers an opportunity to try some unconventional techniques, such as splitting the music stems to fill different channels of the 7.1 set-up. "Being that it was in 3D, and being that it was Real Steel Fright Night