Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546135
40 FA L L 2 0 2 6 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y b y D e n n i s D e m b e c k C A S M P S E Music in the Mix: SCORE AND SONG IN DOLBY ATMOS Dolby Atmos is now the standard for theatrical film sound. But while the format has transformed the way sound designers and re-recording mixers approach their craft, the workflow for music—for scores, songs, and the full orchestral palette of a studio film—has its own practices and disciplines. How do you plan a music mix when dialogue and effects need their share of a finite pool of objects? How does a scoring mixer prepare stems that give a re-recording mixer real creative options in the final mix? Where does the orchestra actually live in an immersive sound field—and when should it move? How do you build reverbs for a format with so many possibilities? There's no single answer, but there is a single thread. The mixers who do this well share one habit: They plan the music long before anyone touches a fader. To see how that discipline plays out across the pipeline, we spoke with three of them—a re-recording mixer, a scoring mixer, and a composer-mixer who does both. In addition to being a former CAS president, David E. Fluhr CAS is the Supervising Re-recording Mixer at Walt Disney Animation Studios, an Atmos practitioner since the format's earliest days, and the architect of the studio's native Atmos workflow. CAS Career Achievement Award recipient Dennis Sands CAS is one of Hollywood's most accomplished scoring mixers, with more than 400 scores to his credit who, in 2013, opened the first film music mix room in the world outfitted with Dolby Atmos. Michael Phillips Keeley CAS is a re-recording mixer and composer who built one of the earliest certified Dolby Home Atmos studios where, occasionally, he handles both the writing and the mixing himself. Three vantage points on the same craft—and a shared conviction that the format should serve the music, never the other way around. How do you think about what Atmos brings to music—your overall philosophy with the format? David Fluhr CAS: For me, it's about supporting and enhancing the story using sonic imaging. When I started working with objects, I realized you could give the orchestra a presence in the room that we've never had before without disembodying what the score mixer has done. It's not about taking the strings and flying them around. It's about creating elevation and using objects to create "custom arrays," so the orchestra is no longer competing for the same sonic screen real estate as the dialogue and effects. You can actually hear more of the music, with more definition, because you've given it space. And for source music, you can place specifically pinpointed on the wall, or right in the space—we couldn't do that as accurately before. Dennis Sands CAS