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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 7 13 it didn't matter. And where it was a playback, we talked about maybe recording a little ADR prior on a similar mic to the one they were going to record her vocal on, or Ryan's vocal, and just use that as a transitional tool just to try and get across." The ADR mixer, David Betancourt, took extra care to address this common musical challenge for the dub stage. "The main thing to consider is what mic gives you the best match when bridging the dialogue to the musical sections. Then, mostly monitor that particular mic. Musicals have a tendency to do a big vocal shift when you go from dialogue to singing. So you want to stay on top of the transitions. But don't ignore any of the mics. This is such a subjective field, you never know what they might prefer on the dub stage. But it was just a matter of treating the ADR like regular ADR and the musical scenes like a vocal overdub. "Then selecting the mic that transitioned best," reveals Betancourt. He also used a three-mic setup for dialogue to musical sections. "We used a boom/lav setup to cover our basic ADR and a U87 for singing. This, I think, gave more flexibility when trying to match in and out of production or music." Steve Morrow also provided impulse responses from set that no doubt gave Andy Nelson another tool for handling this situa- tion. Nelson reveals that in the end, "Each one had a little sprinkling—there might be a live line in the middle or some- thing." Music playback in general, like what was used for the dance sequence and traffic number, can be a special challenge and opportunity in post. You are essentially shooting MOS from the post mixer's perspective. Foley mixer James Ashwill explains, "It was a normal Foley schedule. We weren't originally supposed to cover a lot of the musical sequences but, as it progressed, we were asked to cover more." Lee reveals, "For the duet scene, the actors did a fabulous job with the dancing, but we couldn't use the production because there was music playback. So we had to re-create it." Nelson adds, "The beauty of doing the feet later, of course, is that you could put any surface on." Nelson reveals that initially the duet scene was meant to be soft-shoe but later, tap was suggested by the director. So, Lee had the unusual and enviable task of directing a Foley session as the supervising sound editor with the choreographer. She said, "It took a couple sessions to find the right shoes and surface to create the feel of the classic Fred and Ginger tap sound." Decisions like fea- turing sound of the dancers' shoes during dance numbers, like in classics such as Singin' in the Rain and Holiday Inn, really helped com- plete the classic musi- cal movie feel. Lee explains that "by the time it came to the mix part of it … because the tap shoes were so percussive in nature, Damien wanted to make sure to empha- size certain steps or scuffs." Additionally, as the film was set all over Los Angeles, loca- tions such as Grand Central Market and the Colorado Street Bridge had to have post-production challenges. "There were a few little noisy areas, but nothing more than [normal]. The realness of the film was such an important part of this in terms of the romance and the story that it didn't hurt if it was a little noisy in places; that's LA. It didn't hurt. It wasn't meant to be [that] beautifully polished," explains Nelson. He continues, "And Steve Morrow [production mixer] on the other hand— I'm not blowing smoke—but he did an amazing job. Beautiful. So, it really helped me a lot." Morrow explains that many of what would be more troublesome scenes, like the opening traffic scene, were playback, but "when you work around town, out on the streets, you tend to lean on radio mics for the majority of sound recorded. We use the SSM's from Lectro and the COS- 11 for lavs." Morrow explains that maybe the most difficult scene for him was one of the visually simplest. "One of the hardest scenes for me and my crew was one of the simplest in the film. [They sing] on the pier. This seams easy, but Michael Kaleta, sound utility, had to run 6,000 feet of XLR and hide the run all the way down the pier. I had to stay on the shore to provide the proper Pro Tools playback tracks and the shot was a 360-degree turn with nowhere to hide. So we ran six 1,000 foot runs of XLR, one radio mic on Ryan, a Comtek of the director and Steadicam operator, an earwig feed for Ryan, a slate TC feed, a boom mic, and playback through a speaker. The scene came out perfectly. In the end, it was all playback, but we were always ready to go live when asked by Damien." Nicholai Baxter at work mixing at Sony Studios Steve Morrow and crew shooting the opening scene