Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530210
Winter 2025 – LOCAL695.COM 37 SILENT WIND SILENT WIND I contacted our Special Effects Supervisor, Paul Corbould. He knew exactly what I wanted to talk about having collaborated with me in the past: Silent Wind. He invited to me to the huge workshop where his team was based on the studio lot. I met Paul at his office, and he asked me to follow him down to the manufacturing floor. When we walked in there were about ten of his team with a collection of different devices lined up for a show-and-tell. Paul explained to me that as soon as he knew it was a musical and I was mixing it, he suspected we would be recording live. He told me that for SFX, there were a number of very challenging sequences that required wind and for that reason, he had asked his team to build about five different-sized Silent Wind systems based on his designs. The basic premise of Silent Wind is to keep the motorised fans away from the set and pipe in the wind though ducts that could be aimed and operated by the SFX team. Paul had taken different strategies based on previous designs and built some systems which were bigger and placed the huge squirrel fans outside the studio walls, with large diameter ducts coming in through the elephant doors or cable holes in the studio wall. If the elephant doors were used, he was PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY also having construction fabricate soundproofed "bungs" which sealed around the door and the ducts to recreate an acoustic seal. He also had his team build smaller units where the squirrel fans would actually be inside the studio walls but outside the sets themselves. These devices used smaller diameter ducts, but were extremely mobile and did not require much pre-planning or pre-rigging. The fans were placed in soundproofed ply boxes on castor wheels so they could be moved incredibly fast by his team and get to areas that needed Silent Wind when a last- minute request from Jon Chu or Alice Brooks, our fantastic DP, decided a shot would benefit from wind that had not been originally planned. The five different systems were all variations of this theme that gave the SFX team the correct tool for any requirement, including those last-minute requests for wind that can so often have a negative effect on the production sound tracks. Paul and his team had thought of everything, and I realised just how fortunate I have been in the relationships I have built up over the years with our fantastic UK SFX Supervisors. They have completely embraced the Silent Wind workflow and have made incredible progress on every movie. PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY Onto the shoot and one of the huge collaborations filling me with gratitude was with Costume Designer Paul Tazewell and his team. On a film of the scale of Wicked, we have to plan for flawless lavalier tracks at all times. Although I love the booms and have the ability and staff to run three booms at all times, there isn't always going to be the ability to get the booms close enough on a 3-camera shoot. It is never my intention to try Ariana's Sennheiser EW IEM pack which provided her personal IEM with a music and live vocal mix. Pro Tools rig at work