Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1399159
22 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Fall 2021 22 custom fitted to the individual ear canal) would potentially fall out of dancers' ears and get lost, slowing the shoot down and costing production. I decided to go old school with our large JBL PA rig, including a high-power subwoofer, and about 15kW at our disposal. I asked Cary if he was cool with me using a thumper track. Cary was really excited about this, as he felt keeping the sub bass going during the six pages of dialog at a table on the edge of the dance floor would really help to keep the energy up, not just amongst the dancers but also from the actors. We have all been in situations where we are recording a nightclub scene and the actors start the scene talking loudly above the music, but as the scene progresses, their dialog levels slowly reduce, as they feel quite exposed speaking very loudly when there is no music in the background during the shooting. The beauty of using the thumper track is that it can be played loudly throughout the scene without being recorded by the microphones, and if there is any low frequency spill picked up, it can easily be filtered out in post. I chose 35Hz to create the thumper, as I feel that is low enough not to have any harmonics that will interfere with the dialog on the mics, but high enough that everyone in the club can hear it. A really important point regarding the scene was Daniel Craig's support of this workflow. On Layer Cake, more than a decade earlier, after much discussion with the director and Daniel, we used a thumper track on a nightclub scene with excellent results. The actors kept their level up throughout, allowing the Re-recording Mixer and Director to really push the music cues in the mix without having to pull down the music for the dialog which, in my opinion, always sounds a bit wrong and weird. Daniel remembered that and was fully supportive of my decision to use a thumper again. On the rehearsals, he asked that we play the music tracks full range through the JBL's, so he and the rest of the cast could find their level Cary had chosen these, and they were extremely bass-heavy dancehall-style tracks. I suggested to Cary, Daniel, and Jon the 1st AD that as soon as Jon called, "Standby!" I would start playing the music very loud, full range through the PA, while Jon got the sound and cameras rolling, and leave the music playing during the clapper boards. We were shooting two cameras then on the "A" of "ACTION!" I would drop anything above 35Hz and just continue with the thumper. This really helped the cast keep fresh in their mind how loud the music would be in the club and the vocal level they would use. As I was recording the dialog, I knew it sounded completely real and that Paul, the Re-recording Mixer, and Cary would really be able to go to town with the Dolby Atmos mix. Keeping the music level high without the fear of swamping the really important plot line dialog. Cary and Linus's decision to shoot with the same lens sizes on both cameras meant that we could get the booms in nice and tight onto the edges of frame without being pushed wide due to a 'wide and tight' scenario. Cary would now allow the actors to overlap when they felt the script would benefit from it. Shooting cross mid-shots and then cross close-ups, always keeping everyone at the table in shot regardless of where they were sitting, gave Cary the ability to use direct action cuts on the overlaps. He spoke to me about this strategy and I wholeheartedly supported it. I always want to help and encourage anything that makes the performances more believable, and the scene really benefitted from the overlaps, bringing about an energy that can be difficult to find again in the edit. What was fantastic by keeping the lens sizes the same, was Cary and Linus knowing exactly how to make this work for the production sound. This enabled me to prioritise the booms and record really rich dialog. Although the nightclub was Jamaica bar, Daniel Craig and Jeffrey Wright.