Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1529890
32 W I N T E R 2 0 2 5 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y enthusiasm toward the craft is infectious. Jason typically works with award-winning supervising sound editor Mark Stoeckinger and has recently worked on films such as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, John Wick: Chapter 4, and The Fall Guy. I met with Jason and asked him to break down his process and share what his goal is as a dialogue editor to get tracks ready for the mix. I began our conversation by asking Jason about the flow of his process. "Oftentimes, I'll get a reel or rough cut preview mix from the editor in the form of an AAF which includes music, sound effects, and dialogue. Next, I'll bring in the assembly and I'll use the [Sound Radix] plugin Auto-Align, which phase and time aligns the boom and lav tracks. If you're working as a dialogue editor, a mandatory plugin is Auto-Align. Cutting both the boom and lav is becoming more common now in features." "When it comes to using the boom versus wire, it's not really always a choice of ours. I love the sound of a good boom, but most oftentimes in action, for instance, the sets are so large that directors and cinematographers want to showcase that. If we had a great boom, we would certainly use it! But I'm finding the cinematography of the scenes now are so stepped back. In John Wick, for instance, the boom is often simply not there because it comes down to the choice of cinematography." Jason also elaborated on some of his new favorite plugins that are being driven by AI technology that are breaking the barriers of what's possible in the dialogue edit. He spoke about one particular plugin tool called "Hush" which can change the perspective of the boom by removing the reverb around it and also noise reduce simultaneously, emulating the sound of closer perspective when they need it. This really helps save the boom when it otherwise could be unusable. Jason spoke about the use of Auto-Align and some of his other favorite noise-reduction and dialogue clean-up tools. Jason's goal is to create the best possible representation of the usable ISO tracks to be used for the mix. If something is not working, it's simply discarded and the tracks that are usable are cleaned up and prepared for the dialogue mix. I asked Jason to elaborate on the use of Auto-Align to find out what kind of flexibility he is achieving for the re-recording mixer. "The boom is usually great, providing it has enough full sound in it. But what a lot of us like is the chestiness and low end you get out of a lav, and to get that chest resonance combined with the air of the boom sounds so good! If you have a decent boom and layer that lav underneath and they're both in phase, it sounds like you're listening to that person in real life and it gives you so much control of perspectives in the mix." I could relate because I also practice creating perspectives in a mix by combing the boom and wires to match picture in my production mixes. By changing the relationship of the two, you can create perspectives that otherwise would not be possible. Hearing that this is also commonly practiced in post was intriguing to me. I then asked Jason to elaborate on how he handles cuts where the boom is not present—such as a wide- and-tight—and how often he's having to lean on the wires only. "I was fortunate to beta test the Hush plugin tool on the feature film The Fall Guy. It literally saved a very emotional two-minute scene of Ryan Gosling which was captured on the boom on board an aluminum boat where the wires were simply not there. The boom would have been fine, but all we're hearing is lapping water smashing against the aluminum boat. The Hush plugin saved the performance which would have been seemingly impossible to recreate in ADR." The Re-Recording Mixer Finally, I was fortunate to have a conversation with re-recording mixer Tom Fleischman CAS. Tom started his mixing career in 1978 and has mixed nearly 200 features, documentaries, and television projects and is a CAS Career Achievement Award recipient. Tom won an Oscar for his work on Martin Scorsese's feature film Hugo, has another four nominations along with 18 wins for CAS Awards, BAFTA, and Primetime Emmys. Tom began our conversation with an overview of how the evolution of technology for capturing production sound played a role in what was used, relative to microphones and what tools were available for the final mix. I then asked Tom to discuss with me his current methodology and process. "I'm always looking at the picture, and I'm trying to see the movie as the audience is going to see it. So I'll use whatever combination of tracks works with the other elements in the mix. It's during the dialogue predub that I listen all the way through all of the mics. What's determined usable is what's kept and what's not is removed. Choosing track possibilities