CAS Quarterly

C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I S U M M E R 2 0 2 1 21 when we won the CAS, oh, well, at that moment, I said, "Well, it doesn't matter if we don't win anything else." Carlos Cortés Navarrete: I thought it was a special movie, but in a lot of different ways, in the sense that it could impact. But I never thought about the awards or anything like that. I thought that it was very special in the sense that it made a different statement overall, and not only [for] the inclusion of disabled people. For me, it's a statement of redemption and how we're running all the time [in] life. To me, it was a really special thing to consider, that this was something special, but I never thought it would get to this point. Kari Vähäkuopus: Well, I sat down and watched the movie for the first time. I thought it was a fantastic movie. I really loved the actors. [But it was] just like an ordinary job for me. Same thing. Michelle Couttolenc: I didn't think about the Oscars or the other awards; only the film within it. Because of its sound approach, yes, I think it was very special. And because that is what's so crazy and [the narrative is] telling us, "I want this to be really, really, big and inventive." [It says] "Do whatever you want." It was special in the sense of being able to explore and create all of these things. I continue to hear how Sound of Metal was this little film that just impacted so many. Who else comprised your teams, and what were you responsible for individually? PB: The movie was so small—it was just two of us. It was me and a boom operator named Jeremy Eisener, who had been the sound utility on Castle Rock. They shot a lot of stuff nonconsecutive. I think our actual shoot was probably something around 18 to 20 days. Nico [Becker, sound supervisor] was there at the beginning to bounce ideas off of us to make sure we're kind of on the right path. Nicolas Becker was on the movie, like, almost two years before they even rolled camera. We had all these kinds of ideas as to, okay, he's going deaf, how can we record this on set so that it has life and energy to it instead of just something that we're going to have to just fully recreate in post? That was something we wanted to do. [Jeremy and I] were doing things that I've never done before. "All right, so he's playing the drums. Should we stick a mic in the drums? What do you think? You think we should stick a mic in the kick drum?" He's like, "Yeah, let's stick a mic in the kick drum." "Do you think it's a contact mic we should stick or maybe like a gooseneck? Should we stick them on the outside?" "I think we should stick it on the inside, and maybe we should stick another one on the outside if we can." I was, "Okay, okay, let's do that, let's do that." And the really, really great thing about this was that Riz [Ahmed], our lead actor, he was so game for anything. If he would've responded, "Hey, I'm in the zone, don't touch me, don't talk to me," and kept us all at arm's length, this would've been a completely different-sounding production track. Darius Marder, our director, would come to me and say, "Can you come to talk to Riz with me because I want to put tape down his back and put a wired microphone … maybe under his (L-R): Re-recording mixers Jaime Baksht and Michelle Couttolenc armpit." We were experimenting. We'd do one take and decide, "That didn't work," and we'd move it and try another take. He [Riz] was beyond awesome. This movie, when we were shooting it, to me, it's almost similar to what it would be like if you were filming on a green screen stage. You might think, "Oh, I imagine what this will actually look like," when you actually see it. To me, this movie almost had me thinking, "Oh, I wonder what it's going to sound like when it's all cut together." Did this experimentation continue in Foley? Kari, were you also manipulating and playing with things in strange ways? What was your experience? KV: We experimented with a lot of things. We also used lots of contact microphones and stuff like that. We built up a stethoscope microphone, also. We got that idea from Nicolas Becker. We bought a good stethoscope and put a microphone on it, inside of the stethoscope. And then I recorded his body resonance through it. How many were on the Foley team? KV: Me and Heikki [Kossi] recorded Foleys here in Kokkola together, and we had [Pietu] Korhonen doing spotting and editing in Helsinki. We had 10 days for recording. How were the duties on the dub stage broken up and performed? CCN: Well, it was kind of a different method. For this film, I did the first pass of everything because when Nico, Darius, and Carolina [sound editor Maria Carolina Santana Caraballo-Gramcko] arrived at the studio, we had meetings before, and we had made a template as to how to approach the mix. I spent a weekend before with Jaime and Michelle trying to figure out how we were going to do it. And so, we received the material, they came, and I was like a bridge between what I would say [is] an "edi-mix," because there was still some editorial [to be] done when I got it. Also, when Michelle and Jaime got it, they realized they needed more. So, I spent the first three weeks with Nicolas and Carolina

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