Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469840
22 S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y through and saving track presets to be able to bring in when it's the appropriate time on different cues. Otherwise, I'd still be mixing it! When you're mixing the music, Alan, are you mixing against picture as well, or are you purely just listening to the music? Alan: I am absolutely mixing against picture, and I'm mixing against dialogue and whatever the state of the effects are at; trying to be respectful and thinking about Doug's stuff. The concern is mostly low end and how can I get my low end to peacefully co-exist and have a good choreography with the sound effects' low end. I put a tremendous amount of time into thinking about that. Having said that, every single piece of music [in this film] was a set piece. I knew that Ron was gonna have to, at some point, get in there and do what he had to do, because I did need to mix it from front to back as a piece of music. Even though I'm taking dialogue and effects into account, the dialogue and sound effects are still being shaped. I do the best job I can, and then trust the guys who are going to put it all together to do the rest. Ron: Alan touches on a point that is very important; he turns the dialogue on while mixing. A lot of people have everything off, and they mix the score by itself, and it sounds beautiful. Then they give it to me, and I have to duck the music hits to clear lines of dialogue. Alan: I don't turn dialogue off. My saying is, "Dialogue is my lead vocal." Doug: I'll say this, because Alan did this, it made our job a lot easier. Period. Some of the dialogue scenes are incredibly quiet and clean. How did you achieve those results? Ron: I use iZotope for many things, but it has to be done right, you can't just stamp it with a preset and call it good. You have to use it gingerly and use certain plugins at certain times. You never use one plugin all the way; it's always three or four plugins a little bit. Dave Bach, our dialogue editor, is one of the best. He went after alternate takes, putting T's and D's and S's on things; to have that support means a lot. In the mix, Doug is a master at clearing lines or giving me a nice center fill when I need it. I never even have to ask him. I don't always get that, but the good ones know. Ron: Alan and I trade tips all the time. We'll say, "Hey, I found this cool plugin," or "Check out this trick I found," which is a very healthy relationship. A lot of people say, "No, no, no! This is my secret stuff," I disagree. I want to share it and learn from other people, too. Doug: What these guys did with music was extraordinary. We had an idea of what we were going to do with the dub, and then the music came in and we had to re-think the mix. Ron definitely had his hands full. Of course, we're all happy with the results, but that was a lot of work. Ron: We added three or four days of music premixing, which I never get. So we ended up going back to my house where I'd done all the dialogue pre-dubs. It was such a fun time and very special to me. It was me, Denis, and Joe. They're all sitting on my couch in my studio. Clint Bennet (music editor) and Ryan Rubin (music editor) were [also] there, and we're talking to Hans Zimmer on FaceTime, and we're just mixing the movie in my house, hanging out. We were away from everybody, having a good time, my wife made us lunch. I mean, that's the way to do it. Hans was so funny, he said, "Ahh Denis, this is so fantastic, this is 'the boudoir mix.'" Alan, the score, especially the vocals, had this other worldly and unique sound. I'm curious how much of that was coming inherently from Zimmer's score and how much tweaking and experimentation you had to do? Alan: The answer to both is yes. It came from Hans's score, and it was a massive amount of tweaking and examining. Every stem came to me in some version of stereo, and I had to figure out how to fill my space with it. Loire Cotler's voice had so much power and density. Figuring out how to get that across with the massiveness of the score was challenging. The rough mix was perfectly good, but kind of flat up against the screen. So, when you expand everything out to do what I did, and then what Ron took to the next level, nothing can stay exactly the way it is. It all has to sort of grow accordingly with everything else. The way it works for me is, when you get a sound that has [similar] parts in other cues, you can create settings, and then save the track data and go from there. There was quite a bit of time spent at the beginning coming up with all of the colors, all of the sounds, and then painstakingly going Music re-recording mixer Ron Bartlett CAS Sound effects re-recording mixer Doug Hemphill CAS