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32 CINEMONTAGE / Q3 2017 Off (1992) and the second and third installments of Back to the Future (1989, 1990). Then, 12 years after first working with Frankenheimer, Alexander was reunited with the director when Rogers invited him to join Ronin. "I was thrilled to death," Alexander says. "John was really happy to see me, and I was happy to see him. He had such confidence in Mike Le Mare, the supervising sound editor, and Rich and me." Over the course of a five-week mix at 4MC in Burbank, Alexander (who was known for mixing dialogue) and Rogers (who was an expert at mixing effects) evenly divided their responsibilities. "I sat with Rich and helped him with the dialogue pre-dubs," Alexander recalls. "In turn, when we were doing all the sound effects mixing, Rich helped me. It was a win-win situation. Rich is equally important on the mix of that picture as I am. We both worked very, very hard." For the film's signature chase scenes — in which De Niro, Reno and company pursue (and are pursued) while exceeding the speed limits in Paris and Nice — the mixers turned to material recorded by Le Mare, MPSE, at Willow Springs International Raceway in Southern California. "Mike had rented a couple of different kinds of cars," Alexander says. "He went to a shop and had them take the exhausts off the cars and put on different exhausts. And they went out and raced these cars around the racetrack." Among the sounds available to Alexander and Rogers were the hums of engines, screeching tires, horns of oncoming cars and the occasional explosion. How to use a particular effect in the mix depended upon the shots selected by picture editor Antony Gibbs, ACE. Throughout the chases, Gibbs alternated between three main groups of shots: angles showing the inside of a car, angles taken from the front hood of a car, and angles surveying the chase from a distance. "The key thing I tried to do was to make the transitions from inside the car to outside the car not overly jarring, but different," Alexander recounts. "You want it to be fluid, so that's what Rich and I tried to do. When someone is jumping on the accelerator, and then it transitions to the outside cut, you want that acceleration sound also on the outside cut." Frankenheimer — who would review mixed scenes one reel at a time — deferred to the mixers' judgment on most matters. "About 60 percent of the time, he left us alone to do our MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM Ronin. United Artists/ Photofest