Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1491451
26 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Spring 2023 dialog editors and mixers for word or syllable substitutions from alternate takes when there was a crash or clunk over the dialog. As they say, it takes a village! One of the big pleasures of the project for me was recording Mitzi's (Michelle Williams) piano performances. I don't often get the chance to record live music and I sometimes have a bit of a learning curve—which I really enjoy. We started the show with six or seven pre-recorded piano pieces. The word in the beginning was that the music scenes would all be shot to playback. But I knew from experience that we should also be prepared to record live. In the execution of the scenes, we recorded it all live. We would stay late the nights before and pre-wire the pianos and the rooms. Then while shooting the scenes, we would generally shoot the first take with a professional pianist hand double as a live record, and then use these recordings as playback for takes with Mitzi. In actuality, it would flip back-and-forth from take to take. The hand double might come back in for another live record, or it might be done to playback. Our department was pretty intensely focused to get the information as to what would be the protocol for the next take. But it went beautifully. Playback Operators Brandon Loulias and Jeff Zimmerman were always on their toes and always ready to go. As an aside regarding the music, prior to shooting there was some discussion among us in the department whether to record solely in Pro Tools or to double record the live-record music on a separate recorder at the same time. For safety, we made the decision to double record. We often had to push during the shooting to get complete recordings of the songs—knowing that complete versions could be crucial in post, and might help prevent our live recordings from being replaced. I was proud to learn later that a good deal of our piano recordings was actually used in the soundtrack. I have worked long enough to see a lot of changes both in the way that movies are made and how film sound is recorded. There has been the evolution from film to digital cinema (and sometimes back), the advent of digital sound recording, multitrack sound recording on sets, radio mics, timecode, multiple cameras, performance capture, hybrid productions combining performance capture and live action, video walls, and much more. At the studio level, there is an ever-increasing concern about budgets, leading to less prep time and compressed shooting schedules. I feel that some of these developments (especially the use of multiple cameras and radio mics), along with stylistic changes in the aesthetics of film sound, have contributed to the finished dialog becoming somewhat less intelligible. Multiple times in the last few years, friends and acquaintances have asked me why they can't understand the sound in movies anymore. My heart always sinks when I hear this. Many people turn on the English subtitles when viewing movies at home. A lot of these changes have also hastened the relegation of the production sound mixer from being a kind of artist to the lesser status of technician. I expect that most readers of this article are sound professionals working in this industry, so you may be familiar with what I am writing about. Talking about this recently with one of my well-known production sound peers, he mentioned that in his opinion, it is the shooting of dramas that is the worst, because in these films, the dialog is everything— extremely important to the comprehension of the story, but despite this, the production sound team gets little consideration on the set. With due respect, my take on it is a bit different. I really prefer working on dramas, as I feel like that's where I'm often able to do my best work—and dramas are in fact, the kinds of films that I most enjoy seeing. Michelle Williams as Mitzi Fabelman Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) and Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch)