CineMontage

Summer 2015

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5 SUMMER 2015 / CINEMONTAGE by Tomm Carroll T he love-hate relationship between the American film industry and the Chinese box office has made for some strange bedfellows. As the Chinese market for films increases exponentially — it is second only to the US market — Hollywood studios are vying for a bigger piece of that pie. But China had instituted a strict quota on the number of American movies that could be shown in its cinemas; only about three-dozen foreign films a year are allowed to screen in China. And Hollywood product already dominates the country's foreign-film releases. Chinese film production too has stepped up its game. This has led to co-productions between the film industries of the world powers, including American movies filmed partially in China and featuring Chinese actors, such as Paramount's Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) and Disney/Marvel's Iron Man 3 (2013). And while Hollywood is incorporating Chinese location and cast members, China's film industry has been doing some cross-continental-collaboration of its own — with American post-production sound. For Sony Pictures and Beijing-based New Classics Media's Chinese-made, Mandarin- language Monk Comes Down the Mountain, based on the best-selling novel Dao Shi Xia Shan (A Monk Comes Down the Mountain) by Xu Haofengand, the producers came to Hollywood to produce its soundtrack — chiefly, to the Formosa Group, one of LA's leading sound houses. "[I was] advised that director Kaige Chen was looking to elevate the soundtrack to the Hollywood standard of creativity and detail," Formosa's award-winning supervising sound editor Lon Bender, MPSE, tells our writer Mel Lambert in this issue's cover story. "After meeting Kaige, it was clear to me that he was very detail- oriented and would always ask, 'What would we hear here?'" Together with re-recording mixer Doug Hemphill, CAS, and others, Bender created a Dolby Atmos immersive surround soundtrack and mix to accompany the martial arts film, which was shown in IMAX 3D. Monk earned US $38.25 million in its four- day opening weekend in China in early July, topping the Chinese box office and placing fourth at the worldwide box office. So utilizing American post sound know-how was a wise decision. Curiously, there are no current plans for a US release. From international to indie: IFC Films's Time Out of Mind, which won the International Critics' Award at the Toronto Film Festival a year ago and is opening in theatres September 9, marks the second collaboration between director Oren Moverman and picture editor Alex Hall. Their relationship in the edit suite is characterized by pushing each other, throwing out rules and trying new things, they tell writer Rob Feld. Aside from their chemistry, the filmmakers also discuss the film's unique editorial approach and unconventional structure. The New York metropolitan area has always been a hotbed for documentary filmmaking, and remains so today. Tom White, a writer who specializes in covering the doc-making scene, interviews three picture editors based in the city — Deborah Peretz, Philip Schopper and David Tedeschi — about why that is. Also, while bemoaning the fact that there are not more union-made docs, the three also work on fiction feature films, which they say share a lot of commonality with documentaries. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Science and Technology Council recently unveiled a new color management standard that should prove a boon to the workflows of colorists and picture editors in the industry. Called ACES (Academy Color Encoding System), it was designed and built as a suite of standards and best practices, providing for a standardized production infrastructure. Writer Michael Goldman explains the system, and talks to colorist Trent Johnson and picture editor Shelly Westerman about their recent work utilizing the ACES workflow. f Sino-Cinema Sound, Made in the USA POST SCRIPT

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