Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/936570
23 Top: Rosalie (Rosamund Pike) and Living Woman (Tanaya Beatty) make one last stand in Montana Below: José Antonio García staying out of the sun complete with apple box and mixing bag Crew photos courtesy of José Antonio García/Jonathan Fuh. Hostiles photos by Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc. riding them. You almost have to be like a ninja so you're not seen or heard." Cooper went to great lengths to create accurate depictions of Native people. A team was on set to help actors with gestures, rituals and language. A significant amount of the dialog was spoken in the Northern Cheyenne dialect to firm the cultural and historical integrity of the film. The multilingual García had to pick up the language quickly to decipher when actors would stop and start talking. "I have a natural way with lan- guage and it really boiled down to needing to learn the first and last few words or sounds to mix accordingly." When the story reaches Fort Winslow, a resting stop for the travelers, Blocker is asked to take a prisoner to a nearby city to face sentencing. The confined is Sgt. Charles Wills (Ben Foster), who knows Blocker's grim history well. Expected to face certain death, Wills tries to persuade Blocker to release him and questions why he's escorting Yellow Hawk instead of killing the family as they ride toward Montana. One rainy night, Wills is tied to a tree pleading his case. Water-resistant mics were able to cut through the weather and capture the dialog. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for another scene when Master Sgt. Thomas Metz (Rory Cochrane) spoke to Blocker about leaving the convoy. "What we didn't expect was how soft- spoken this movie would be," says García. "We were able to get through it all except this particular scene with Rory. They had so much rain coming down on set and there was a canopy overhead creating this drum sound. It was too much." The production mixer made Cooper aware of the situation, but because of the visual demand of the scene, it would require looping in post—something every sound mixer tries to avoid but happens in nearly every film. A scene that took sound in a new direction was a song accompanied by guitar around a nighttime campfire. It was meant to be playback with lip sync, but since the actor had a decent voice, they recorded it live. The lav was placed on the outside of his shirt behind the button and caught the instrument and voice perfectly. For this shoot, and the many others García and Fuh have done together, they approach each scene like water. Whatever the shape of the production, they flow into the open spaces they are given. García admits this project had an astounding group of people. "It really starts with Scott. We enjoyed working with him. His energy is contagious and he's enthusiastic. He has a way of conveying his message that makes our job and everyone else's life easier."