Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1515786
40 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E CineMontage: That meant you had to record the sounds of the real cars — not the replicas seen on-camera, but the actual cars they represent, right? Lamberti: Specif ically, the engines. The cars that were the replicas had little four-cylinder turbo engines in them, so we could run them all day long and beat them up, but the sound was not the real sound. The way that Michael's attention to detail plays out is: "We've got to have the authentic sounds," so that when a real racing driver watches this movie, they'll be transported back. We started chasing down cars, and we had many, many avenues we were chasing down. The big challenge for me was: "How do you convince collectors and museums to allow you to record their highly valued cars"? CineMontage: Once you managed to line up the real cars, how did you mic them? Lamberti: So now we had all the cars wrangled. I had a shot list of everything that needed to get shot, and then the cutting room sent clips of the racing scenes so they could actually see on-screen what action needed to be shot. We had all the pieces in place. And then it's just taking out the driver and performing those things. We were very, very specific: "We need starts, idles, aways." All of these things needed to be done at at least 5,000 RPMs and above. We had all these stipulations; we need to have these cars revving their highest revs and doing these different actions. Then it was up to the guys to go out in the field and record it. Michael has done enough amateur rac- ing to really know what's going on, and he's been a Ferrari guy forever. Not only did we have to get the sound of the engines right, but we had to get the performances right, and what we liked to call racecraft. So all of those downshifts, all of the upshifts, all of the accelerations and decelerations — they all had to be absolutely spot-on to not only what we were seeing on-camera but when we're not seeing things on-camera. CineMontage: Lee, the recording of the dialogue scenes came under your purview. Lee Orlo: It's always about authenticity with Michael. As far back as anything I've ever done with him, he doesn't build sets. If there's a real location that we can go to, where the event takes place, we'll be in Chicago for "Ali"; we'll be down in Pasca- goula, Mississippi, for "The Insider" in the courtroom. Once you realize that that's his approach, you read the script and you know: "OK, so we're going to be there." When it comes to racecraft, there's no way that he's going to allow anything on the soundtrack to be anything short of absolutely authentic. And this is stu that's sometimes barely in the picture, but it's happening in the background. We're having a conversation between Enzo and a driver on a racetrack, and the Maserati and the Ferraris are doing the time trials. He creat- ed that so that each one of those shifts, and everything in the track, supports that whole sense that you're in the place. This is the way it would be if you were there. CineMontage: Bernard, you had previously worked with Mann and with Tony on "Blackhat." What was the setup like on "Ferrari"? B e r n a r d We i s e r : To n y a n d I k n e w that, for Michael, having the two of us be supervisors was the way to go. We knew the demands that we were walking into. I'd say this show proved us correct with that view of it. Michael likes to have direct contact. As a result, I was the one that, when I started, was immediately embedded with the picture department, starting at the very end of January or beginning of February. My cutting room was right next to Pietro and right in the middle of it all. That way, Michael could walk from room to room and discuss what he was thinking. A n d y N e l s o n : M y e x p e r i e n c e w i t h Michael is that everything's evolving. In other words, he doesn't finish a cut, come to the stage, and start mixing the sound. He's finishing the movie in all these areas at the same time. We'll put up a sequence on the screen and we'll work on it with him, but it's informing him, as we're doing something, of what he thinks he should do pictorially. It literally comes alive on the big screen at that moment in time. He'll move the picture editing department over to the dub stage, right next to where I am, and he'll be back and forward because the cut will change. You have to be ready to work in a very fluid style with him. Weiser: The first thing Michael said to me the first day I was there was that his biggest concern was the understandability of the dialogue. This was a twofold problem: You had the Italian actors speaking English, many with a very heavy accent, and then you had the English-speaking actors trying to speak English but with an Italian accent. CineMontage: How did you address the issue? Andy Nelson. Bernard Weiser.