Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1382552
44 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E decisions, and we've even made tem- porary sound and music decisions." By contrast, Stateman and his team — in- cluding re-recording mixers Eric Hirsch and Eric Hoehn and supervising sound editor Gregg Swiatlowski — work on the heels of Tesoro and her team. "We try ideally to be 24 hours behind her cut," Stateman said. "So when she's jumping around, we're jumping around." Instead of making provisional sound choices, Stateman accelerates the pro- cess by generating material intended to be final and ready for approval. "Creating a temp track is like saying to a filmmaker, 'I'm going to give you something, but you can't have it,' or, 'It's not my best work, but here it is anyway,'" Stateman said. "We want to build, from the very beginning, something that we own creatively, and that we can polish and complete through the post-produc- tion process." Stateman added: "Post-production in the rolling mix is literally about removing the proxy process and saying, 'We're going to put our best foot forward every time we move forward'" . . . Prioritizing the approval process is a wonderful way to rapidly prototype the project." For Tesoro, baking sound decisions into the edit has distinct advantages over using temp effects or music. "You get to live with these sounds for much longer than four weeks or whatever they decide they're going to give you in a mix," Tesoro said. "It really has an effect on how the picture plays, how your cuts play, what works when the sound is all nice and pretty, and what really actually doesn't work and won't get fixed." The results please Frank, who de- scribes himself as always having been dissatisfied with pushing sound work until the end of the filmmaking process. "It was a terrible feeling to get into the final mix and watch/listen to a film and regret cutting patterns or choices now that I could really hear it all," Frank said. By contrast, on projects with Stateman, "We're constantly experimenting and trying things with picture," Frank added. "The music editor and the designer are also working closely from the beginning of post." And when Frank says "the beginning," he means the very beginning. "Wylie is right there," Tesoro said. "He's on the same email chain when Scott sends his first draft of a script that he's ready for us to read. We talk about the film in pre-pro- duction. We talk about what we might need while we're shooting." SQUARED: Anya Taylor-Joy in "Queen's Gambit." P H O T O : N E T F L I X