Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1487730
overnight being a six-week tracklay, and they expected the same amount of creativity. I remember many times lamenting the fact we had lost our thinking time. Working with film gave you a certain amount of mulling-things-over-in-your- head creative time and that was immediately lost. WP: We also lost other roles like sound assistants. You didn't need someone to do the legwork of going to transfer suite or organising the trim bins. So employment for people was starting to reduce and it impacted the training opportunities. LV: And if you did manage to have an assistant, they were expected to carry the burden of technical knowledge. It used to be they would learn the job of sound editing from the ground up, learning how tracks went together, and some of that's gone because it became a totally different job, in both sound and picture. JW: I know from working with you that dialogue is the anchor. You take a great interest in the dialogue edit and in directing the ADR and crowds. How did this start? Was there a particular film or director? LV: It does come a little from working with great filmmakers like Peter Weir and Bruce Beresford. They are all about the story, the characters, and the emotion. They are filmmakers of great heart, and that heart is in their scripts. If you can't hear the words the actors are saying, the performance and the emotion, then you're losing so much of the story. WP: If you're going to approach someone like Gerard Depardieu (Green Card) or Robin Williams (Happy Feet) to sign on to your film, there's a good reason, and that is the words. So, the words are absolutely paramount in my view. With music, sound effects, and sound design, these are obviously very powerful tools, whether it is the spaceship at the beginning of Star Wars or the Flight of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now, they obviously have their place, but for me, it's always the dialogues that are the main game. And the crowds are an emotional bed—they are the human interaction with the story—and audiences respond to those emotions. Dialogues are the one area that filmmakers are always very protective of and so working with a filmmaker on the dialogue can give me clues which then feed into the sound design and effects. JW: You lead your team with very clear instructions on what a film needs from sound, how sound can support the story. How does this start for you on each film? WP: It's the script. Firstly, Libby and I take the script and start to break it down into its obvious storytelling parts. What are the most necessary items that we need to record, the "must haves"? Secondly, is the script more dialogue-driven or more effects- driven? Or is it equal measure? And we begin to determine the makeup of the sound team. Then, we ask who the composer is and have a conversation with them to understand the emotional subtext they're aiming for. Next, we start looking at the locations and the time period. So, the ideas come in several strands and we look for thematic avenues for sound to enhance. With this information, we have enough firepower to start offering up our thoughts to the filmmaker on the creative opportunities that sound is going to give them and the story. That's how we start. Sound post crew for Happy Feet Two. Deluxe Mix Facility, Sydney (2011). Photo by J. Ward