Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535806
24 S U M M E R 2 0 2 5 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y LL: It started off very robotic, and the idea was that as she would shift and grow, her voice would change with her emotional growth. That's where we started two years before we mixed. You know this is something where I would defer to Gary. When he got a hold of it, he started very minimalistic. GR: It took plenty of experimentation in creation and choice of layers to feel the essence. Turns out less was more, as the natural voice and performance of Lupita was undeniably magic, and we merely needed to subtly supplement the character arc within Act 1. But we didn't actually land on the final Roz treatment until we had taken a pass at the Rummage scene in Act 2. Rummage (also performed by Lupita) needed to sound and feel similar but with a technical contrast to Roz; more treated, almost dysfunctional. The goal was, of course, to get the audience to connect to the dynamic of the scene and understand the emotional differences between Roz and Rummage through sound and treatment. Once this contrast was dialed in, we could circle back to Act 1 and apply a similar treatment to Roz, alas to whatever degree we felt was right. Ken, did you have to deal with the recording any differently for these processes, or was it solely focusing on getting good quality and performance? KG: No, it was just getting good stuff. We had a couple versions of our own that we would use for scratch. Even before Lupita started coming in to record while they were still in development, we had something to give to editorial so they had something to play with. But, no, we are not doing any pre-futzing or anything during the records. Was most of this in-house at DreamWorks or was it a lot of remote? KG: It was a lot of remote. Lupita was [recorded] mostly in Santa Monica. We didn't need to have her make the trip all the way to Glendale. We all get that—a no-brainer there! Richard, there are so many characters in this, and at points in time, there are many on camera at the same time. How did you cue footsteps and keep it manageable? RD: The first thing we do is concentrate on the actual characters that are in the script. And most of the time, after we do all of them, we only have to do a little bit of support here and there. You don't necessarily need to be wall-to- wall, and you don't want things to get repetitive, and then tiring. We didn't do too many backgrounds. We did all the mains and then filled in a little on the edges if we needed to. Otherwise, it would have been too much. The density of footsteps has me thinking about the density of the forest. Gary, how did you deal with forest ambiences/reverbs? It's a different animal, in my mind, mixing something that is almost always outdoors yet has no singular set location and no production audio to listen to. How did you get it to feel like a forest? GR: For me, it's all about playing the perspective. The louder sounds will have a greater acoustic reverberant quality, whereas the subtle sounds need to feel more intimate. We often needed to exaggerate to get that feeling to communicate, especially if it's scored with music, but it's really a choice of focus. I ask myself 500 times a day what's the sonic focus of any given moment in the film. And the answer might not be literally visible in the image, but the answer is ALWAYS up on the screen. And, Alan, where did you record and mix the score?