Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524736
C I N E M A A U D I O S O C I E T Y. O R G 31 Perusing the streaming platforms for something to watch, I came across a film I mixed in 2014 that was available on Peacock and a flood of memories came back as I watched. These memories revolved around the many challenges this film had in production and post, and yet somehow still made it through to the end. What follows is the story of SOLD and the steady determination of a production mixer to see it across the finish line. Like many mixers, we started in the industry using digital hardware reverbs (and some physical plates!) in our mixes for film and television. It was a very creative process dialing in a short slap for a street scene or finding the right combination of "halls" for a scene requiring something special. Lexicon's 480L and PCM80 and Eventide's H3000 were some of the few hardware units to help us along the way. Then along came computing power with Pro Tools and multitrack DAW's and their very rudimentary early digital algorithmic reverbs. They were not great and mixers continued to use their hardware units. As we entered a new millennium (1999/2000), we were introduced to convolution reverb with the Sony DRE S777. That unit was out of reach for many, so a small company from The Netherlands came along and produced an affordable software plugin that utilized impulse responses, or IR's, to apply reverb from real spaces to one's mixes. Thank you Audio Ease for creating Altiverb! Fast-forward to 2013, when a local production mixer from Bombay (Mumbai), Vinod Subramanian, is called on to mix a feature coming in from the USA. SOLD, starring Gillian Anderson and David Arquette, was set to shoot in Nepal and Calcutta over a number weeks. Vinod assembled a sound crew and off he went. Vinod had been working in film for 13 years by then. He was trained in mathematics and physics and was on a path to take on a PhD in physics. Like many of us, he took a left turn once he was introduced to foreign cinema at a film school. One film in particular was Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie. He immediately signed up for a film course and found himself turning to sound, along with his physics training. He worked through school recording on Nagra's, cutting mag, and creating optical prints. Vinod then slowly established himself as very proactive (almost an activist, really) for improving production sound on shows and films in India. Some of his credits include The Curse of King Tut's Tomb and The Darjeeling Limited. The feature subject of this story, SOLD, is based upon a book of the same title by Patricia McCormick. It looks at trafficking young women into the dark world of sex work. It is a tough subject that would challenge any filmmaker, but Oscar winner Jeffrey Brown and producer Jane Charles took it on unflinchingly. The lead, Lakshmi, was to be played by a young actress and the casting call saw hundreds and hundreds of actresses in Nepal and India. They found Niyar Saikia and the production was on. International productions are odd at times. A foreign crew will fly in, friendships are made over grueling hours and coffee, and then they fly off back and proceed with post-production. Not every film shot in that foreign location will be released in that location. The crew can be forgotten and, at times, it feels a bit sad that a premiere cannot be attended by the local crew or that accolades are received for the great work on these films. The first challenge on SOLD came about when a frame rate discussion halted the first day. Pre-production meetings were a challenge or non-existent with a foreign crew just flown in,