Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1448505
"I still feel all these years later that both the picture and sound of Casino Royale could not have been bettered. I love it when you know it's right!" On the Tuesday apart from three screenings at the Soho Hotel, we were predubbing the dialogue at Liondubbs and the fx at DLL. The UK Post organisation had started holding an awards ceremony. This first year they were being held on 21st September at the Mayfair Hotel. I had been nominated as Supervising Sound Editor of the Year and Soundelux for Post Facility. Carol organised tickets for most of our team and we also asked Stuart Baird if he would like to be our guest. The evening itself was fun although the sound quality in the Cinema Room was not very good!. Nevertheless I won the award and stayed overnight at the Soho Hotel having an early start the next morning. The week of the 25th found us still premixing and David Arnold was recording the music. James Harrison was back on the promo for CR and Oliver, Sue and Stuart Morton were on Young Hannibal. Stuart Baird was wonderful to work with although he could (and did) get very hot under the collar if things didn't go exactly his way. He had lived with the project from the beginning and had definite ideas on how it should and would look and sound. There were a few explosive moments! The following weekend we set up for CR's final mix. On Wednesday 4th of October, we took the reel 1 mix to Vue Theatre 5 for a Cinema playback. Sounded fantastic! We knew that there were three key sequences that required the utmost precision. The Parkour, Airport and Venice areas. Those three took up over 30 minutes of the film and had to be as good if not better than any Bond sequences had ever been. Mike and Mark really earned their money in those few weeks. I still think that Casino Royale is one of the best sounding movies ever. While we were mixing in DLL1 we were also mixing promos and LtRt mixes for foreign versions in Theatre 3. On Monday 9th, we were also temping Young Hannibal at Goldcrest in Dean Street. Somewhere in this morass we moved our base from Wardour Street to Goldcrest in Dean Street. How Carol and Ceri Thomas managed I will never know. Our new premises were much more compact but state of the art and very private. We could all link our work with each other without having to transfer out. Saved so much time. My own room was tiny but I didn't intend on doing any more editing. I would concentrate on supervising without doing "hands on." We were finally in! On that Saturday we completed the Young Hannibal temp but continued mixing on the Bond. On Sunday the 15th, we played back for Martin Campbell and on the Monday started the fixes. There were so many versions of the film and because it was opening in many languages around the world at the same time it was almost as important to get the M&E finished