Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1436283
96 I m ps e . o rg the voices but actually track the characters' voices and movements on the screen for the entire scene. This was only possible because of the choices that Robert made in how it was shot and edited. This was the only scene I pre-mixed this way and was the first scene that I played to them when we got together for the final. I said, "OK, this is not standard, but what do you guys think?" And they said, "Love it! Let's do it this way for the whole film." That became a new challenge. But because separating the dialogue and locating it with the characters on screen really worked with the storyline of this fragmented, separated family, it was definitely worth the pursuit and doing it wherever the story, and the materials, allowed us to. The rocket scene was probably one of the most challenging ones because there was only one mic source location. There were two mics used for the scene but both were located on the left side of the screen with David— his lav and a plant mic in the bag on the ground by the rocket launcher. So it was now a matter of going in and extracting the boys' voices, so we could pan them off when they chased the rocket but keeping David's breathing and actions on the left side of the screen with his daughter. Between those two mics, there was just enough to be able to pull that off. PA: The thing about panning like this works for ambiences too. Instead of just having left, right signals, I love having something that's playing in the left and something that's playing in the right so that we constantly have things that are different on each side but can somehow communicate with each other so that you have some sound in the left that is like there's a crow in the left side and then there's a bird on the right side. The left and right almost are commenting on each other. So that's also how I love to build up the ambiences. So that also really helps when you then do that kind of separation of dialogue and panning, then having everything be very alive and vivid and not just a still left, right thing, but something that is constantly developing in all speakers. DB: Yeah. In the rocket scene, when the characters are huddled on the left side of the screen and Robert slowly pulls the camera back so they get farther and farther from you, they become a small part of the visual. When you have the dialogue in the center, it is the focal point. And like Peter is saying, your left, right ambiences and your surrounds are all supplemental to the focal point. In this example, the world you perceive is in the middle or center channel. But by turning the dialogue down and panning it off to the lower left of the screen where the characters are, it opened up the entire right side of the theater and surrounds for all of those ambiences, and it just makes the world sound soooo much bigger. That was another fun discovery as we went through. MA: Are there any other members of the crew you'd like to mention that helped with the soundtrack, Peter and David? DB: Ryan Cota was the dialogue editor and Peter…? PA: I've got Mikkel Nielsen, who recorded those car sounds that I mentioned, but he's also an effects editor and he is constantly recording sounds just like me. A lot of these sounds were with windy stuff, things happening in the distance, and stuff like that. It's also just because Mikkel is such an amazing sound effects recordist that just constantly comes up with lots of material. He's definitely a big part of this. And then I had another effects editor working on it. Andreas Kongsgaard, who also did a lot of really great work. I think it was just this amazing team spirit where everyone really delivers the best. And I feel that everyone did something really extraordinary on this film. And you can really tell that the result is not something that any of us do individually. It sounds this way because we did it as a team. DB: One hundred percent. MA: Can you give us a breakdown of the sort of time frames you had from pre-production work, time on set, editorial time, and time in the mix? PA: Yeah. When Robert had finished the script, he sent it to me and then he wrote, "I don't think I can do this film if you're not doing the sound." So yeah, I got the script, and then I had this pressure on me [laughs]. But yeah, then Robert went and shot the film. We had some very early conversations but then major parts of the design happened while Robert was picture editing. We started being more like, "Okay, how should we do this?" You can feel that the whole film was shot in a way where Robert knew that a lot of sound was going to come in and was going to be a big part of the storytelling. But I think you shot very quickly, Robert. For how many days?