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These features join a growing list of films mixed in either Auro-3D or the Atmos format. By Jennifer Walden Insidious: Chapter 2 Joe Dzuban, supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer, and Craig Mann, dialog supervisor and re-recording mixer, recently completed the sound design and Dolby Atmos mix for Insidious: Chapter 2, a Blumhouse Productions film that opened in theaters on September 13. The final Dolby Atmos mix was completed at Technicolor Sound on Stage 1 at Paramount in Hollywood (www.technicolor.com). Insidious: Chapter 2 is the first film mixed in Dolby Atmos at Technicolor. Technicolor recently installed Dolby Atmos systems on both mix Stage 1 and Stage 2, outfitting each room with 23 new speakers, including several JBL 5212s, JBL 7212s, and three dual 18-inch subwoofers, according to a July news update on the Technicolor site. Mann explains, "With Atmos, we have five channels across the front, six subs, eight channels on each wall, six on the back wall, and two rows of eight in the ceiling. So, we basically have a total of 52 channels." Stage 1 and Stage 2 at Technicolor are twins — they have the same setup, so projects can seamlessly move between the rooms. Dzuban feels the Atmos format was a key player in the film's sound. He describes Insidious: Chapter 2 as a "haunted house film" that's more spooky than blood and guts. As the characters are exploring a haunted house, and looking around and reacting, Dzuban uses the Atmos format to add creaks and other sounds in the exact spots the characters are looking. He credits director James Wan for creating so many opportunities on-set for the Atmos format to come into play during post. "On-set, the director had the sound track in his mind, and so he had the actors respond and look up, and look around, and look back," says Dzuban. "We were able to place creaks of the house wherever they looked.The soundscape really stands out from other films where you might just have a bed of sounds or, if you use the surrounds, you have the entire wall playing the same creak, so the creak is a 100-feet wide as opposed to being pinpointed to a single speaker." Dzuban points out that Insidious: Chapter 2, like many other horror films, requires the audience to be a participant. With Atmos, he was able to create, and place, sounds in an environment where the audience feels more like a participant instead of just a viewer. Having so many independent channels, as well as overhead speakers, allowed Dzuban to build a convincing haunted house. In particular, Dzuban notes that there are scenes where the possessed father is upstairs making a commotion, banging on doors and trying to get downstairs. He was able to place the banging in the overheads, giving the audience the sense that it was in the theater. "It was very valuable being able to have sounds pounding over peoples' heads and really behind them more so than in a traditional 5.1 mix. It suited the genre really perfectly," says Mann. Dzuban adds, "With Atmos, you can really put sound effects into the audience's laps." Another important sound design element is "The Further," which was part of the first Insidious film. The Further was described as being a place where tormented souls are trapped. Dzuban and Mann worked with the dialog treatment they created for the first Insidious, and built on that using the Atmos format. Dzuban says, "When someone talks, we have this reverse echo that drifts in and out of The Further and envelopes us. When a ghost comes out of The Further, we start with a reverb tail first, then the ghost comes out, and then you have the reverb melt back into The Further." Mixing The Further in Atmos allowed Mann to experiment with the placement of the dialog treatment, effectively surrounding the audience in the experience. "With Atmos, a lot of the reverb in The Further was in the roof and panning around you at all times," says Mann. "It definitely added something to The Further experience. The Atmos mix made that effect a few clicks more intense than with a traditional 5.1 presentation." Mann notes another interesting scene for dialog treatment. "We created a delay and distortion sequence in a scene when Patrick's character is hearing voices. That treatment gets really over the top, with the voices swimming all around and over you. The Atmos format here, again, was very effective in stepping up the intensity of the moment compared to a traditional mix." Mann and Dzuban mixed Insidious: Chapter 2 from a native standpoint. From the go, they had total control and flexibility, being able to choose the scenes in which they wanted to really immerse the audience. Dzuban notes they could map out what sound effects they wanted to steer into the Atmos mix, but they didn't know Insidious: Chapter 2 had its Dolby Atmos mix completed at Technicolor Sound. The format allowed the mix team to highlight different sounds throughout the haunted house. how the music was going to play out. Mann, who handled the dialog and music aspects of the mix, was able to experiment with the non-traditional score, composed by Joseph Bishara, by putting music in the ceiling and moving the track around the theater. "Bishara's track has a lot of plucky piano and string elements, so I was able to give the score a lot of movement," Mann says. "With a traditional orchestral score, it may have sounded too weird." Mann worked closely with the composer and his engineer Chris Spilfogel to try different iterations for the placement of the music. "We wanted to see if a particular piece was going to work or not if we moved it around or placed it over us," Mann explains. "Doing that also gave them some idea of how to prep the tracks for us on their end. This insight was especially useful given how tight the schedule was." One of the biggest challenges the team faced on Insidious: Chapter 2 was time. Dzuban had five weeks to create the sound design. To save time, he created a lot of the atmospheric sounds on the fly while on the mix stage. Dzuban had 48 tracks of pre-built material, like drones, and rumbles, and textural spooky sounds, ready to go at the push of a fader. "It's funny because Atmos is a new technology, but I was using some old mixing techniques because of the time crunch," Dzuban says. "Like the old-school mixers, where they had their loops set up, I had all these faders for pre-built tracks that I was able to play with the entire time. If we needed a little rumble to transition into the next scene, then I'd go to the rumble track, and push the fader. So, it was funny in the sense that we were able to cross the old and the new." Insidious: Chapter 2 was mixed in 10 days, with two additional days for the print master. With a time crunch already stacked against the film, there was some hesitation to go with Atmos on this project. "Some people were hesitant, since the format is really new, and working in Atmos natively is a challenge because it has hardly been done before, and we didn't www.postmagazine.com Post • October 2013 25