Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545202
32 S U M M E R 2 0 2 6 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y M E E T T H E W I N N E R S This year's winning documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin, shares the origin story of one of rock's most iconic bands. Containing unreleased footage and interviews, the band's story is told from their own perspective, tracing their involvement in the 1960's music scene to their official formation in 1968, and culminating in 1970 as they were launching into superstardom. Production sound mixer Nigel Albermaniche and re-recording mixer Nick Bergh shared their experiences working on the CAS Award-winning project. I hope you enjoy hearing their perspectives, philosophies, and a funny traffic hack as much as I did. Nick, I know there have already been a couple of articles discussing your experiences on this film, and my main understanding was that this film was much less about restoration, but rather more getting the sound right before restoration. Along with documentary sound, your company Endpoint Audio Labs specializes in restoring classic films. Can you share how you used your experience to bring this film to life? Nick Bergh: There is often a misunderstanding about sound restoration in that many people think extensive digital MOTION PICTURES – DOCUMENTARY BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN by CAS Associate Sam Casas manipulation is needed for good sound. However, more often the best sound is obtained by avoiding digital tools as much as possible. Of course, I have them, and often use many high- tech tools in my work, but the pinnacle of restoration is to get things so right on the analog side that the tools are barely needed at all. This is actually the more difficult approach, though. Instead of half a day to restore a music cue, it might take weeks, months, or even years to track down the original master and set up the proper transfer process so that you don't have to restore it. It's a much more complicated and rarely done way to do these things because of time and budget restraints. Especially by the [time materials get to the] re-recording stage of a documentary, you usually just get what you get. "Fix it in the mix" and all of that. Luckily on this project, director Bernard MacMahon, editor Dan Gitlin, producer Allison McGourty, and I had worked together previously on American Epic, and all of them understood the power of old recordings when done well. Trust was there so that when I would tell Bernard, "You know, we can get another 10% improvement if we do it this way," he would say, "Do it." For Bernard, sound was always just as much of a priority as picture. The entire core team was critical to the final audio. We were all working closely together early on so shortly