Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1525212
38 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E started coming in, of course, we just had to start figuring out how to tear these B-17s apart, because that's literally what hap- pened to them: 77% of the B-17s that went up in the air did not come back. So when people ask, "What does that sound like?", all the bullets rifling through the fuselage and things blowing up onboard — oxygen tanks and gear — and then the flak that's exploding around them or tearing them apart, we just had to use our imagi- nation. But our imagination came from a very good place, a foundation that was built through very descriptive books — "Masters of the Air," by Donald L. Miller and "A Wing and a Prayer: The "Bloody 100th," by Harry Crosby — who was one of our featured characters in the film. We had the books to lean back on for their descriptive accounts and also had technical advisors at our dis- posal at all times for the whole two years that we were involved, so there was always somebody to answer a question. Q: What role did the music score play in this series to evoke the sounds of the era as well as the emotions of the on-screen action? Minkler: The music is really im- portant. Gary [Goetzman] loves his music. He loved Blake Neely, our com- poser, and that was his first word: heroic. These men, even when they may be failing at what they're doing at a particular time, they're still heroic. How can they keep their composure? How can they crash land on their first mission and then get up the next morning and go up and do it again? And that's what the music was. Some- times a certain scene was taken in a certain direction and the elements didn't quite match. We'd just make adjustments. We had many, many things that we could do: We could go back in and re-record something, change instrumentation, write a new line on a particular cut, or change an emphasis on someone's face or reaction. The music, the dialogue, and the sound effects depart- ments were all fluid. Q: What scene stands out to you most from an emotional perspective? Minkler: In Episode 6, when our guys are being loaded into trains, they're in a train yard, and another train is leaving loaded with hundreds or thousands of women that are being taken off to a work or extermination camp. The women are screaming to the Americans in different accents — there's Polish, there's French: "Do something! Do something!" The wom- en took over the scene — there is no train sound effect. We would experiment with doing things like that, and then if it worked, we left it alone. If it didn't work, we kept going at it and would try something else. So, that really stands out to me. Hopefully there's a lot that stands out to other people. Q: CineMontage: What advice do you have for the next generation of sound editors and mixers as technology continues to evolve? Minkler: When I started off in 1970, obviously things were very different. They were, by today's standards, very crude. There was a lot of manual labor that we had to do. Mixing was actually a very physical job. You'd have a rehearsal to listen to the track for the very first time, and if you made good notes, you could go along with those notes, but if you didn't, you'd mess it up, and then you'd have to back up and jump in to continue recording. Your fellow mixers didn't like you very much if they were constantly having to back up because you screwed up what they were doing. It was at that time when I just started thinking, "There's got to be a better way to do this." I would try any technique I could come up with to increase our capa- bilities, doing a sweeter, softer thing, and something that's more manageable. Lots of people didn't pre-mix prior to 1977, and all of that stuff is so common today, but it was invented. We invented the way we used to have to do things. We w e n t f ro m m o n o t o f o u r - t r a c k stereo, six-track stereo, Baby Boom (two low-frequency effects channels on Dolby six-track)... and then there were all these hybrid systems of stereo. There was just so much of that going on in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. It was a time of trial and error, and we really learned a lot. Everything was changing because it had to get better. Post "Star Wars," ever y thing w a s b i g ge r a n d b e t t e r — c l e a n , softer, more manageable. Then along comes the digital age, and it allowed us to do things cheaper, because it meant less manpower. You could do things instantly, whether it's picture editing or sound editing or sound mixing, you could just change it al- most instantly, but that didn't make anything cheaper. It made things more expensive, because if you give somebody a chance to change their mind, they will. Now you can do it all a thousand times faster, but think about what you're doing. That's what I say to people today: commit. Don't just leave all of your doors open be- cause you're afraid to commit to anything because somebody may change their mind. Options are good, but come to the point where you've got to commit. Commit to your good idea. ■ This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 'You can do it all a thousand times faster these days, but think about what you're doing.'