Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1532181
overlapping each other — by far the most complicated dialogue recording on film that I've ever been a part of. On top of that, you have a score that was recorded on set. And then, on top of that, you have Jason's strong desire to make this world feel as au- thentically like Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1975 and all the texture that comes with it. Tom Ozanich: I went to an early screen- ing before any temp mixes had happened. It was just the Avid temp mix type of thing. I loved the movie. I thought it had great timing and pacing. But it was hard to un- derstand a lot of the dialogue. And that's because a lot of stuff was piled on top of each other; people kept talking even when they went off-camera, or they started talking before they got to the camera. In the produc- tion mix track, that's all married together. CineMontage: What did you propose to Jason? Ozanich: I said, "Would you be open to us starting to play around and pan some of the dialogue off?" I wanted to show him we could keep the "messiness" he wanted, but that's more about the density of activ- ity, not people talking over each other or our having difficulty understanding what they're saying. All these mics and tracks have different and opposing problems, and when they're married together in a mix, you can't do anything about it. But by keeping each mic and track separate from the others, I can adjust EQ to correct the problems individ- ually. Then when we start to move them around and track the movement; we're able to follow multiple events at the same time. Spatially, they pull apart and we can follow each event because, although they're simultaneously audible, they're not actually on top of each other. CineMontage: Will, you went to some lengths to make the studio itself come to life through reverbs. Files: I was thinking, what's the sound of "SNL" from the TV-viewing audience's point of view? What makes that show sound like that show? Everybody thinks of the music because there's such a long history of great performances on that show, but the other part of it is that they've shot that show since 1975 in the same studio space, which has essentially remained unchanged. If you listen to any episode of "SNL" going all the way back to the first one, they all have the same reverberation character because they've never changed the room. Studio 8H was designed originally as a small concert hall for recording radio orchestras or broadcasting them live to the air. It was not built as a soundstage per se. It was built as an auditorium, and as such, it's a pretty lively acoustic space. CineMontage: What tools did you use to recreate that space sonically? Files: We went to the original episodes and sampled the audio into a program called Accentize Chameleon. This plug-in uses machine learning to deconstruct the sound and create an acoustic sonic blueprint, then applies it to other sounds. It's also able to export that as an impulse response file that we loaded into another new piece of software called FabFilter Pro-R 2, which is a multi-channel reverberation plug-in that we can use to build the Atmos. We were mixing the film in Dolby Atmos because we wanted the opportunity to take full ad- vantage of all available audio channels. We were able to take this [stereo sample] from 1975, feed it into a very modern Dolby At- mos reverb plug-in in 2024, and create this beautiful, natural-sounding, multi-channel acoustic space that sounded remarkably like the actual TV show. Gilmore: You've got to give it up to Tom and Will for doing such a great job of point- ing your ears in the direction they needed to go. At times, the movie seems very much like a choose-your-own-adventure book. You have all these different stories going on: You can go over there because that story's still going, but now we're going to direct your ears over here to these characters. It was a masterclass in mixing. ■ some cool capabilities coming." FIXED COSTS T h e re i s a f i x e d c o s t to a c c e s s t h e platform and a secondary cost based on how much SyncDNA cloud storage and bandwidth is being used for a given project. Lower tiers start at $199/month for a single user; the next tier is $299/month, and it progresses upwards. Castro said, "It's like a gas meter. You have to pay for the gas as you move through p ro j e c ts. B u t t h e n i ce p a r t a b o u t t h at pricing model is that it allows companies to scale their use costs; some months they may not be using remote collaboration. We try to be flexible because we understand that projects are flexible. We don't want to price ourselves out of the market to the point where indie films or smaller projects are unable to use our software. We believe remote technology should be available at the highest level for all users." FACING THE FUTURE It's early days for SyncDNA; the tech is improving and capabilities are expanding. Working with sound and picture pros to build a rock-solid professional tool proves they're dedicated to making SyncDNA the industry standard for remote collaboration and hybrid collaboration — connecting showrunners and executives in one facility to mixers, editors, and talent in different, distant studios. Castro said, "This really allows for saving on travel and saving time by easily accessing a dub stage or other facilities in a matter of seconds. I see this being something that people want to use. We're excited to train users on this way of working and showing how this will benefit them and their clients." Wales agreed, "The other solutions out there for remote review are not asking what we need and want for audio workflows. They give us what we get and we figure out how to adapt the solution to fit our work- flow. The SyncDNA team wants to help; they listen to feedback and try to build what we need so that the actual process of accom- plishing the work is as easy as possible." ■ 53 S P R I N G Q 1 I S S U E TECH CONTINUED FROM PAGE 45