Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1487666
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I W I N T E R 2 0 2 3 79 there is far less important to me than successfully using our collective instruments to tell the story with the director's intent fully intact. The soundscape and the sound design are a full collaboration between the three distinct disciplines of production sound, sound editing, and re-recording mixing. Life on Titanic was a unique and unrepeatable journey. Other than a few short weeks at the beginning in daylight, the whole enterprise took place at night at the ocean's edge. It was literally like a village, as between the shooting crew at night and the rigging crew at day, almost 1,000 humans worked daily to tell the story. When I first arrived, I noticed a certain strange kind of look in the eyes of many of the crew. After a few weeks, I noticed the same look in my eyes in the mirror when getting ready for work. I described it at the time as building the Alaskan pipeline while under fire in Vietnam! There was no other life going on other than we were making our movie. Often, 18-hour days, several 13-day stretches without break and generally a massive undertaking in real time and real scale as CGI was nascent at best and only applied in very few sequences. So, the set was only 80 feet shorter than the original Titanic. Those long massive crane shots were done on giant Swedish construction cranes on railway tracks and the camera crane shots of falling stunt folks were done with enormous Russian Akela cranes mounted on the tops of 40-foot tractor trailers. The catering universe was incredible as they were serving hundreds at a time with both an American caterer and a Mexican one. Although, very often, we were not able to break for lunch and had food brought up to set. We lived in the night. Our families hardly saw us. We were on a tour of duty until completion. Did you watch the movie? Were you pleased with the final mix? MU: I have seen the film multiple times and still sit in wonder at how intimate such an epic enterprise remains. I think this is the key to Titanic's continuing resonance with audiences worldwide. It is a classic example of the best kind of storytelling possible with cinema. It makes the human connection, telling a story in an irresistible way. I don't second guess the minutia and think of it as a whole piece of cloth woven with many threads. My threshold in any movie as a whole and any shot within a movie is the safeguarding of that connection with the audience. Titanic is virtually flawless in this regard. If you think about it, everyone knows what happens in the end, yet viewers stay with the telling over and over. That was a key factor in its first-run success. People from 8 to 80 were broadly going back for second and third viewings while it was still in the theaters. I believe it was the first film to hit nearly $2 billion in box-office receipts during first run, and that's in 1998 dollars and ticket prices. GR: We watched the movie from the earliest cuts, which were very long, but showed the promise of the film. I remember Jim getting a bit mad at me after one early screening when I said the movie was "good." He was mad I didn't say "great." He was aiming for great. I think all of us on the sound team were proud of our work the moment Jim declared it "perfect." Who were we to argue? TB: I believe that by the time we finished the final mix, I was simply too exhausted to appreciate any of our work. Very late in the mix when the ship is very much vertical and slipping down to the ocean, we are in the lifeboat with Molly Brown. Jim asked us to add the sound of dishes crashing down from the interior of the ship. Although it was a great idea, sonically, it never worked for me. Tell the truth, were you surprised by all the Oscars or CAS Award? GR: Titanic was such a hit, such a phenomenon, so we should have seen awards coming, but they are always a pleasant surprise. The Oscars were special, but the CAS Award was a nice recognition from peers. What's more amazing is being part of a movie that became such an important part of the culture. TB: Yes, I did not expect to win. We were competing against Face/Off and The Fifth Element, which were wonderful sound jobs. Kate Winslet and Frances Fisher on set