Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1531981
18 PRODUCTION SOUND & VIDEO – Spring 2025 Microphone choice and microphone technique was the first piece of the puzzle and would become a major factor to the success of the sound in the film. During the pre-shoot rehearsals, I watched the way Timmy held the guitar, similar to Bob, with the body of the guitar very high up, where a wireless lav would normally be placed. At that moment, I realized the only way to record his nonperformance music pieces would be by micing Timmy in his hair, putting a wireless mic inside his guitar and deploying a multitude of strategically placed ambience mics. For the performance pieces, we used more than forty-two period practical mics all chosen for specific venues to add a different texture and quality to each performance. Period mics from the early '60s had a specific sound, they were quite mid-rangey, they got warmer year by year. For the audiences, we had a robust speaker system with microphones dedicated to recording that amplified sound. We also had live monitor mixes on stage for the live performers. Add to that the standard boom mics, wireless lavs, ambient and effects mics and about five crowd mics and you had a creative potpourri of sound. Most of the time, we were mixing all the above all the time. Mixing A Complete Unknown From the moment Timmy Chalamet and Jim Mangold announced we were recording all the music in this film live, I felt the weight of what we were about to undertake without the safety net of prerecords, earwigs or even a click track. Every day, we were recording an album, and not just any album, a piece of history. This is a film about sound and music, in which 98% of it was recorded live, in a multitude of challenging locations and scenarios; sixty live pieces of music and one hundred and thirty cues. It's raw and real, I don't know of any film that's had more live music. by Tod A. Maitland CAS & Terence McCormack Maitland We mixed the entire film as if it were a live performance. Jim wanted the energy of the music happening all the time; during dialog, street scenes, phonographs playing, radio, TV. He wanted real sounds over everything so the actors would feel like they were truly in the environment, living it, and sound became a huge component in that. For example, with the Cuban Missile Crisis scene, we played sound from every TV we saw on the set. We added sirens, newscasters, anything to help add to the panic of the scene. For protest scenes, the protests were all happening over the dialog. For the Greenwich Village scenes, all the street musicians were fully live. We stashed speakers playing music in basement club doorways as you walked by, and of course, vintage cars. My team, Jerry Yuen and Terence McCormack Maitland, have a passion for finding sound elements to record. We keep four shotgun mics on armature wire and transmitters ready to deploy at any moment, and they go out all the time. We strive to give post as many sounds and perspectives as possible. The true challenge recording in this live environment style is to capture each element as cleanly as possible. You can imagine how difficult that was.