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C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 29 entire Pixar group. We really did have the A+ sound team as well, which makes all the difference in the world—whether inside your head or out! Tom Johnson: Re-recording Mixer (Dialogue & Foley) How did you get into film mixing? I graduated from USC Film School with a master's in film production. This was after studying English and American lit- erature at UC San Diego (UCSD). It was at UCSD that I took my first film class and fell in love with cinema. I've been working in the film business for the past 35 years, mostly in San Francisco, but often in London, Dublin, New York and even Paris and Rome. For the past 11 years or so, I've called Ireland my home. You've mixed a lot of live-action films. How does animation differ for you technically and creatively? Do you have a preference for animation or live action? I mix dialogue mostly, so the biggest difference between anima- tion and live action is that a large amount of my work in live action can be spent cleaning up production tracks, matching ADR, and solving problems. Animation is more flexible in many ways since characters are usually recorded separately, so they can be treated differently if need be. Like one character could be panned left, the other right, and a third to the center. They can be treated spatially in different ways, as well. One person can be set back in the frame, while another can be brought more for- ward. On Inside Out, I also mixed the Foley and, in animation, Foley is really important. It is often the glue that anchors the charac- ters to a reality the filmmakers are trying to create. I don't really prefer one genre over the other. Both are fun and creatively interesting in their own ways. What is your process for mixing the dialogue and how does it differ from live action? In animation, I separate each character onto its own track or tracks. I also record a mono reverb on an adjacent track for each character. The idea is to create the feel of production dialogue, adding the mono room reverb that would be recorded if each character were in an actual space. I like mono reverb because it marries itself to the mono dialogue track. I often find that if I add a dry signal to a left/right or multitrack reverb, the dry signal hangs out by itself. In the final, I will add another layer of multitrack reverb to all the characters so as to put them in the same space. This I would also do in live action. For some animated films (Inside Out being one of them), I often pan each character to the location they exist on the screen. Other than that, the process is pretty much the same for animation and live action. I treat dialogue with EQ, filters and de-easing or dynamic EQ. Trying to smooth out the rough edges and achieve a rounded, analog-like quality. How much involvement do you have with the film before the mix and before they reach post audio? It all depends. Pixar often includes us early on with temp mixes and rough-cut screenings so that we work with the filmmakers and prepare different approaches, ideas, and solutions to help make the film as enjoyable and clear as possible. Were you working with pre-dubs or the source material? It seems like many mixes are going wider on the track count, since we have the ability now with newer versions of Pro Tools. Was there a pre-dub process or does it seem to be continually mixing and updating as the film evolves? In the case of Inside Out, we premixed. I usually prefer working this way as I can work out any problems before we reach the final. Plus, I mix against existing effects pre-dubs as well, bal- ancing the dialogue against those so that, when we reach the final, most things work together and there are no surprises. I like working this way because it then allows me to focus on the entire mix in the final rather than one aspect of it that I'm still trying to work out. Was there a specific type of reverb or approach to using reverb especially on the dialogue that was unique to this film? Not really a specific type, but perhaps an unusual approach. Inside headquarters I used mostly multitrack reverbs to make the space feel more three-dimensional. And in the outer world, I used narrow or sometimes only mono reverbs to tighten the space. This really helped us feel the contrast between the two worlds. I also did an unusual thing with the memory balls. I used Speakerphone to create a glass-like feeling for the ball and then I put the dialogue through a Cedar DNS box, aggressively clamping down on the higher frequencies. In this way, I was able to create a sound that felt removed and distant, while still intel- ligible. The futzed sounds of the outside world from the screen in headquarters felt exactly what I would imagine someone inside my head watching the world around me to sound like. What was the approach to that? I'm glad you caught that. With the dialogue in headquarters, I panned the characters so that their voices were always moving with their bodies. And in the outer world, they were almost always in the center speaker. This helped make headquarters feel more alive and energetic. With the futzed sounds from the outer world, I panned them mostly above or behind us. The idea being that you are hearing that world as if it were in your head. This also helped make headquarters feel more three-dimensional and interesting. Occasionally, the outer world sounds were put on the screen channels. I did this purely for emotional reasons where we wanted to be totally connected with the action we were seeing. Working on Inside Out was a really great experience. Pete Docter is one of the most gentle and yet highly creative direc- tors I've ever worked with. His ideas were always clear. And his enthusiasm and encouragement were always inspiring.