Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469840
32 S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y 32 S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y MOTION PICTURE – DOCUMENTARY SUMMER OF SOUL by G. JOHN GARRETT CAS Summer of Soul is a fantastic telling of six weekend concerts that took place in Harlem during the summer of 1969. Billed by some as "The Black Woodstock," due to the concurrent rock festival in Bethel, NY, it never got off the ground as a film. Footage sitting in the vault for 50 years on one-inch video was found by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and company, who retold the story of an inflection point in history through the music and interviews with prominent contributors. From the first sound of the film, I was blown away by the quality of what I heard. There must have been a 24-track truck there to supplement the live-switched video production. But no, what you hear is a stereo mix off the one-inch videotape, preserved, polished, and finished by Jimmy Douglass (music), Paul Hsu (re-recording mixer), Rob Fernandez CAS (additional re-recording), Paul Massey CAS (re-recording mixer), and Emily Strong (production sound mixer). I reached out to the team to share their experiences working on the project. [Unfortunately, Jimmy Douglass was unable to participate due to scheduling conflicts and turnaround time.] Re-recording mixer Paul Hsu shared this when asked about his thoughts on the project. "Jimmy Douglass, the music mixer, did an incredible job, but most of the credit goes to the unnamed people [who mixed the two-track] board mix that we got. Jimmy did a pass with some EQ and stuff and passed it to me. Then, it was the usual documentary process where it's about weaving it all together. But that board mix is just priceless. For us, it was about putting the stuff in surround, adding some reverb, you know, making it feel more 'cinematic.'" I asked Paul about the production audio he received. "Because it comes back to the production sound mixers, and I can't stress enough, production mixers are so unsung in this process. There's nothing we can do [on the post side] unless the material is solid. And this is a textbook example of that at a time when that stuff was actually more valued. They really recorded some incredible footage and some incredible audio tracks." Paul Hsu did the final stereo mix and a 5.1 mix. With 35 producers in total, they realized they had something special and wanted to do more tweaking, which is where Rob Fernandez CAS came in, as Paul was already on another project. Rob shared this about his experience. "I spent about a week on it. Paul did a great job, [but] he ran out of time and they brought it to me. I never got a chance to speak to him directly. So, I was doing some transitions and worked on the 5.1 mix. Once creatives were in the mixing environment, they realized what they had. So, they were [thinking] it's going to be seen by a lot of people, it's going to be very well-received, so we need Atmos versions, we need 5.1, we need stereo. [Because of this], they probably decided to spend more money on it." I was curious about working with all the great music from the film. "As for the music, working with those tracks, and listening to those tracks, I couldn't help but wonder, like, MEET THE WINNERS Re-recording mixer Paul Hsu