Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1487730
JW: Looking at BBS's credits, you see the presence of the same producers and directors, e.g., George Miller, Bill Bennett, Baz Luhrmann, etc. What attributes do you think the BBS crew have which has maintained these creative relationships over so many years? LV: Well, I think the crew we use is the best in the business, and I mean worldwide. They are all incredible artists, every person is doing an "A" game job and I think the quality shows. BBS is also bespoke, we just do sound, and I think for any producer or director who doesn't have to settle for a package deal, we provide a boutique sound team who is dedicated only to them. We're not working on more than one project at a time, and a lot of them love that level of attention. WP: I think one of the big things is that we lead with passion, a passion for the project, and we inspire our team with that same passion. The filmmakers can feel it and they know they're in good hands. JW: I know you love working closely with the music department, but I'd like to talk about one project where there was no music. In 1997, the sound for Bill Bennett's Kiss or Kill won Best Artistic Contribution at the Montreal World Film Festival. Can you tell me how you approached working on that film? WP: That was an extraordinary experience. The first time I met Bill Bennett was on Kiss or Kill. I went into the editing room where Henry Dangar, the wonderful film editor, was cutting with Bill, and sitting in the room when I arrived was a composer. We screened the movie, with Bill telling us what the emotional driver was for each scene. I was making notes and the composer was making notes. At the end of the run through, the composer got up, shook everyone's hands and left. I was about to do the same and Bill asked me to sit back down. So, having said goodbye to the composer, Bill turned to me and said, "There will be no music in this film. Everything I have just said, I need you to do in sound only." So that was sort of terrifying. The film is primarily set in the Australian Outback, and we had to take elements from that environment to achieve the emotional impact, whether it was the desert winds, creaking corrugated iron, windmills, vehicles, anything we could use to create tension. We had to think like a composer. And because it was a thriller, you had to keep the story on the move. It had to be a constantly changing, aural experience, so you never sat on one sound for too long. You had to keep subtly changing the mood to underscore how the characters were emotionally delivering the story. So yeah, that was a really big ask because the film is 95 minutes long with no music. JW: And someone came out of the Montreal screening and hadn't noticed the absence of music. WP: Yeah, they said, "Who did the music on that film?" JW: They'd imagined hearing music? WP: Yeah. JW: After working on Babe and Babe: Pig in the City as a sound effects editor, you forged your supervising sound editor relationship with George Miller on Happy Feet (2005). But Happy Feet also paved the way for working with Barbara Harris and her loop group. Having seen how much energy you expire during those sessions, how did you develop your particular recording techniques? WP: A lot of people dismiss crowd work as an adjunct, but I perceive crowd work as music because of the emotional impact they can provide. So, working with a bunch of fantastic performers is an opportunity to give a film a huge emotional layer. When we used to do crowds as an all-in, it was great, but it didn't give you a lot of latitude in terms of the tracks you were producing. With 30 people around the microphone, you're sort of stuck with that. But during Happy Feet, we decided to break out the crowds into "pods." We had about seven pods, with four or five people in each pod and each was separated by a baffle. Having the loop group divided into these pod bays enables you to be efficient because you can do everything from wide, medium, close, and spots all in one setup. Then I jump out into the middle of the studio floor and wave my arms around like a conductor and rev the performers up. I think the results give us sound on a grand scale, whether it's Gatsby, Elvis, or Happy Feet. LV: Your style is that you don't treat them as crowd; they're actors who are performing, and the energy you give is the energy you get back. WP: I've worked with Barbara Harris since Lorenzo's Oil (1992) and she's as much a part of our team as anyone else, because she gives her extraordinary casting skills to the project, ensuring we get whatever's required. Whether it is language from another period or picking people who are musically well versed, she finds the right cast. I just love working with Barbara. LV: And she doesn't bat an eyelid when you say you need someone who can do a 1950's style radio broadcast AND be able to sing like a revival tent church-goer. She'll go, "I know just the person" and you just go "wow" at the result. JW: BBS has worked on some big films with long post-production periods, such as the Happy Feet films and Baz's films. Have you found that your work on the temp mixes influences the editor's cut? Is there an interplay between picture and sound? WP: I think so, without question. It happens all the time. When you look at a film like Elvis, we went