Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/790371
44 CINEMONTAGE / Q1 2017 44 CINEMONTAGE / Q1 2017 She points to a similar development with what filmmakers called the "Elevator" scene, in which a sexual encounter takes place in an elevator — a fan favorite for readers of the books. Rubin says the scene was temped with Rihanna's "Work," which she calls "a playful, sexy, titillating production." But the music editors knew they were not going to stay with that. "Hundreds of songs came in that were generally sexy or playful — all sorts of new songs," she admits. "But, in the end, we went with a classic: Van Morrison's 'Moondance.' You just never know where a scene is going to wind up." Over the course of the first two movies, Rubin and Abbott say they typically managed and organized vast quantities of songs and data themselves in Pro Tools 12.5.2, only adding an assistant — Denise Okimoto — late in the process on Darker. "We had to do most of it ourselves; we knew each song, where each body was buried, intimately," Rubin explains. "It would have been tough for someone else to organize all that for us." "We were both working in Super Sessions in Pro Tools, which means we both had one big session going at all times," Abbott adds. "So whether it was temp music, Danny's demos or original songs, whatever was current was on top, but everything else was always there. In that sense, Pro Tools almost manages itself." In fact, the pair stresses that their infrastructure was somewhat low-tech on purpose, for security reasons anyway, with the music editors, sound editors, picture editors and other principals typically within walking distance of each other's workstation at Universal's post-production facilities. Therefore, Rubin jokes that rather than worrying about fancy networking and remote collaboration techniques, she and Abbott relied on the old "Sneaker-Net" approach. "There was lots of security, and great file-transfer tools, and we used the PIX [remote collaboration dailies system] to share with [executives and others who were not on site]," she says. "But mostly, people would bring us drives if they had to; I call it 'Sneaker- Net' because we would just walk room to room to watch something and talk about it, the old-fashioned way. I think we benefitted from that; it is the easiest and quickest way to be creative and make decisions, compared to sending files back and forth." And so, in dealing with picture editor Francis- Bruce, his assistant Jennifer Spenelli, supervising sound editors Dane Davis, MPSE, and Stephanie Flack, MPSE, re-recording mixers Jon Taylor, CAS, and Frank Montaño, or anyone else, the music editors say their collaboration was an easy one. Indeed, their biggest issue was creative, not technical, revolving around regular, but gentle, push-pulls over how to properly balance the needs of the film narrative and "A highly romantic or sexy song didn't always work for those scenes," Rubin reveals. "We were already getting sexual intensity from the imagery, so we wanted to get something else from the song." Fifty Shades Darker. Universal Pictures