Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500716
34 S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y it's miked well, as was the case here," Paul recalls. Crowds were mixed by David and dialogue was mixed by Paul. There wasn't a traditional timeframe to work on the dialogue because of the huge amount of music and FX taking priority in the film. Dialogue came from all kinds of sources, including radio interviews, TV shows, and tape recorders with all kinds of issues such as noise, etc. They had to address these limitations as time would allow. Some of the archival footage was already processed, and although they managed to get the raw recordings of some of them, many others had to work as they were. Then they put everything together at the mix stage and used the room as much as possible beyond places they thought they could. They mixed it in the Ford Theater at Fox in LA, a room that David and Paul have used many times before. David mentions that "certain effects might have had some reverbs and delay as part of the sound design in editorial, but most of it was part of the mixing process. There was a huge amount of work done from the editorial with a myriad of unique and wonderful sounds. Sometimes you would scratch your head with sounds that seemed crazy or [had] a crazy placement. But after putting everything together, you realized that it is a crazy scene or sequence and it works great." Bowie is a unique artist and his music is unclassifiable, so FX and sound design that seemed aggressive and crazy worked very well with the music. In some parts, they even became part of it. The time allocated for the mix was slightly longer than usual for a documentary, however, for the scope of the film, it was tight or somehow limited. It was initially mixed in Dolby Atmos and then other formats followed through. Because so many boundaries were broken during the process, in order to downmix to 7.1, 5.1, and stereo and also provide a mix for IMAX, they ended up rebalancing and even remixing stems for each individual format to make sure the emotion and creative intent of each scene was preserved while adapting it to the characteristics of each format. David also highlights that there is a soundtrack album that accompanies the film. Because of the work they did with the mix of the music, along with FX, David and Paul delivered different options. Some tracks ended up being published with some of the FX as they were within the film because, for Brett, the FX and the music became one entity within the mix, and it is reflected as part of the soundtrack. Paul grew up in the UK with Bowie's music as part of the culture and, for him, listening to Bowie's isolated raw vocal tracks on live performances and mixing them was just magical. "He was a genius." Jens came to see, through working on the film, Bowie as a conceptual artist with music as one of his ways of expression. Music is part of his artistic work, taking creative risks and reinventing is something always present. The film was made in the spirit of Bowie's artistic legacy. Congratulations Paul, David, and Jens for the recognition and for your extraordinary work on Moonage Daydream. of a film. In fact, even if he's been credited as ADR mixer, there's not really individual ADR as it's Bowie's voice telling the story. However, crowds and group ADR were used throughout. Because the process happened during the pandemic, they had restrictions to perform traditional loop recordings with a single mic. They were not allowed to share mics or use the same mic for different people, so they had to use different mics, one for each member of the loop group. Jens mentions, "We always aim to make something that we can be really proud of and that feels authentic and true to the spirit of the film." They even tried to get into Earl's Court (a traditional venue in London) to record the crowds, but ended up recording them outdoors in a stadium. During these sessions, the team in London also "worldized" part of the music (to put the music or sounds into a real environment and re-recording them) by placing a PA system in the stadium and recording it back to Pro Tools to get the reflections and color of the sound through a place with such characteristics. Paul used the techniques that Jens employed for some sequences, which allowed him to get true acoustic depth, almost like a reverb return that became useful at some points during the mix to give dimension and different perspectives to camera movements around the stadium during the live performances. "It's very effective if