Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545202
after production that I began feeding final archival music cues to the picture editor early. A lot of picture decisions were revolving around how things were sounding. Can you tell me a little about how you sourced these original elements for the film? Nick: In a typical documentary scenario, there is a post supervisor helping to coordinate archival sources and such. But archival audio is so problematic these days that it often requires direct involvement from the director and producer to get access to what is needed. In other words, sources often become budget and political issues that can only be moved forward at the very top. As a result, sourcing audio elements was a priority led by Bernard and Allison. I could tell them I needed a specific source, and they would go to the ends of the earth, literally, to find it. The most extreme example would be the John Bonham tape. Drummer John Bonham gave very few interviews during his lifetime, and since the [new] interviews Nigel recorded sounded so great, we needed Bonham to be in the same space and of a reasonably similar quality. The most important Bonham interview came from a bootleg record copy that sounded horrible. It was in the temp picture edit early on, but we knew it had to be replaced to hold up to the new interviews. The bootleg contained an interview done by an unknown journalist, but Bernard was able to identify him and eventually identify the radio station and archive where they had a pile of thousands of uncatalogued tapes. These tapes were eventually sorted through. And almost three years after the initial search, the tape reel was flown from Australia to Endpoint to extract the highest possible quality out of it. Wow! That is some extremely impressive dedication to finding the best quality! Nick: Indeed! Another interesting thing I think not previously mentioned in earlier articles we've done discussing this project is that all the production audio in the film was from the boom. We did a number of audio tests early on in post and everyone was for the boom-only approach, especially the director. It not only provided a very "honest" aesthetic to the interviews, but it also allowed easier matching and cutting with the vintage John Bonham audio. However, even for us to consider this boom- only approach speaks to the quality of work done by Nigel. Nigel, you recorded the interviews in the UK. Can you share a bit about your experiences and philosophy? Nigel Albermaniche: In the field, I wanted to try and get it all on the pole [boom] as much as possible. I used an old- school Sennheiser 816 mic into a Sonosax SX-R4+ with the Sonosax SX-ST mixing desk to give it that authentic mono feel. The 816, it's a massive mic, but the idea in the field is that it would be part of the storytelling aspect. Nick Bergh flanked by award presenters Kevin Nealon and scoring mixer Kirsty Whalley CAS