Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1531981
The essence of Bob's (Timmy's) voice was another challenge and required every trick in the book. Not only for his forty live pieces of music, but for Bob's complicated voice. Bob had four different voices: He was a known mutterer (always fun for those of us trying to record them), there was his normal talking voice, which he rarely used, then his low-level twang and his over-the-top, sarcastic, ear-piercing twang. Both Timmy and Edward Norton used nasal plugs that restricted air giving them that folk twang. The idea of getting an actor's voice in your head as a Production Mixer is nothing new, I always explain it to people that it takes twelve weeks to shoot a film but you watch it in two hours. The voice quality has to remain the same no matter what the situation, acoustics, background noise, wardrobe, whatever. But to get four voices in your head for one actor is another thing. That's in addition to all the other actors. The most challenging and complicated part of the film for us was Newport '65. We filmed the master shots for the entire closing scenes end to end in one 23-minute take. Starting with The Railroad Gang, the MC's, Bob and his band going electric for the very first time, to the chaos offstage, and Bob's acoustic with the final farewell sing-along with everyone onstage. We had more than thirty mics and forty total channels for that 23-minute scene. Mixing this film was one of the most complicated, challenging, and rewarding experiences of my career. The level of quality and artistry that this film was built on at every level and every department required constant attention to detail and excellence. It is a movie about sound where sound is up front and never lets up. My hat is off to Timmy for his desire and courage to push the film to be live. At one point before we started doing performance scenes, Timmy said to me, "I worked 5½ years to become Bob Dylan, we're not doing playback!" And we never did. Timmy even played to all the other actors when he was off camera. When have you ever seen that? I would say that one of the greatest accomplishments of this film is how we established sound as a character in the film. It's real, raw, not polished. It's great when that happens, it doesn't happen often. I was so happy with the post mix on this film. The post team of Paul Massey, Don Sylvester, Ted Caplan, David Giammarco and Nick Baxter killed it. Director James Mangold describing the shot he would like. Photo by Macall Polay Photo by Macall Polay