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OSCAR PICKS the beginning of our post production process, I had to make the decision of,‘Do I get the sound depart- ment or do I get the music department? Do I get Hans Zimmer (who scored Nolan’s two Batman epics) to manipulate that track until it sounds as if you’re hearing it through the dream, where it slows down and gets massive and all the rest?’That was an interesting way to go.” Ultimately, Nolan decided to give it to Zimmer, “and let him run with it and see if in some way it might inform elements of the score, because we talked in early conversations about how toward the action climax of the film, there was going to be a need for the score to interweave seamlessly with this source cue, which is an extremely difficult tech- nical thing to do.” Supervising sound editor and sound designer — Tron:Legacyfeatures visual effects by lead house Digital Domain, along with work from Mr. X and Ollin Studio. [ cont. from 27 ] standing wave at the end of the film using proprietary software.” Iron Man 2 (the first was nominated in 2008) also features work by several houses, including ILM with visual effects supervisor Ben Snow, Double Negative, The Embassy, Hydraulx and Fuel VFX. Another likely contender, Tron: Legacy, showcases the work of Digital Domain, Digital Domain Vancouver, Mr. X and Ollin Studio, with Eric Barba (Benjamin Button, Zodiac) as the VFX supervisor. Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter probably used more visual effects shots than all his other films combined, with contributing companies including Scanline VFX, Giant Studios and The Base Studio, along with a huge team of digital compositors, rotoscope artists, motion capture technicians and data wranglers.To- gether they created a terrifying tsunami and glimpses of the hereafter. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows predictably used an army of digital artists and such houses as MPC, Framestore, Double Negative, Rising Sun Pic- tures, Cinesite, Gradient Effects and Baseblack to bring all the on-screen magic to life, and Unstoppable features effects by Asylum and Pixel Liberation Front. David Fincher has always used VFX quite subtly, and The Social Network’s tale of huge egos and mas- sive duplicity is helped along by shots from such houses as Eden FX, Lola VFX,Ollin Studio and Out- back Post. Lola’s VFX supervisor Edson Williams re- ports that the biggest challenge of the job was the fact that Fincher did not want to create a fully syn- thetic twin for Armie Hammer, who plays both Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. “He wanted to use the actual performance of Armie, and project Armie’s real face onto [body stand-in] Josh Pence’s body,” he reports.“This was an immense challenge because it had never been done before.We had to develop an entire new approach to face replacements in 60 days.” So how did they do it? “Lola created a lighting rig comprised of 12 com- and frequent Nolan collaborator — Richard King, along with Michael Mitchell, Bryan Watkins and Eric Potter, gave the film its haunting sound. Skywalker Sound also worked on such diverse puter controlled lights, that surrounded Armie,” he explains.“The timing and intensity of the lights were synced to the movements and lighting cues of Josh’s on-set performance, then we re-projected the ani- mated lights onto Armie’s face as he delivered the di- alogue seated in our lighting rig. It was like an ADR session at NASA.” Equipment used to do this in- cluded four Red cameras, a beam splitter, four Kino Flo 400s, eight Litepanel 1x1 bi-colors, a DMX con- troller and Qtake software. SOUND DESIGN & MIXING The Social Network’s rapid-fire dialogue, set mainly against noisy backdrops of college dorm rooms, par- ties and clubs, meant that Fincher’s team of sound guys — go-to supervising sound editor Ren Klyce, sound effects editors Larry Oatfield and David C. Hughes, and sound re-recording mixers David Parker and Michael Semanick — had their work cut out for them. Klyce reports that, “the biggest challenge was editing and mixing the dialogue.The rapid-fire pace of the picture made it tricky:We wanted to have all the words of Sorkin’s script be clearly understood, but also wanted the scenes to feel realistic. Blending the actors’ lines over the sound pressure of the music and background textures walked a fine line.We mixed the film on a Neve DFC at Skywalker Sound.The produc- tion was recorded digitally on a Zaxcom Deva and was edited on Pro Tools and Fairlight systems. Signal path never left digital domain, except in special in- stances where we needed to distort music (like the Ruby Skye club scene).” Inception also presented big challenges in terms of its sound design (via Skywalker’s Lora Hirschberg) and mixing (via Skywalker Sound’s Gary Rizzo), as Nolan explains. “I like films where the music and the sound design, at times, are almost indistinguishable. One of the interesting things that happened early on is the Edith Piaf song [“Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”], which was always in the script. And right at films as Iron Man 2 (sound editor Chris Boyes), Tron (sound editor Gwen Whittle), How To Train Your Dragon (sound editor Randy Thom) and Toy Story 3 (sound editor Tom Myers). Unstoppable had many creative challenges,“not the least of which was making the trains sound real and believable,” reports Mark Stoeckinger, supervising sound editor. “Tony spent months around big power- ful trains and wanted to recreate that awesome vis- ceral feel sonically. Conveying speed and power were key. It was quite challenging to capture and create the weight of a train moving fast.When trains are running at the speeds which they are in the film, they are quite dangerous to be too close to, plus they lose that definition of the clack of the rail joints that really signify speed. Capturing useful sound for Unstoppable was like shooting a documentary on trains, where it might take hours of footage to capture the small bits that were truly exciting.” All sound editing and creation work was done at Soundelux by Alan Rankin and Ann Scibelli. The soundtrack was mixed at Todd-AO Stage 1 by Kevin O’Connell and Beau Borders.The mix was done on a Euphonix console and edited on Pro Tools. Sound was recorded on Deva and Sound Devices recorders. “There were countless microphones used, but special mention is due to the DPA 5100 6-channel microphone, which helped us record true 5.1 recordings and help give that ‘you are there’ feel.” he adds. Finally, The King’s Speech, the drama about King George VI and how he overcame a dreaded stutter, features the work of supervising sound editor Lee Walpole and sound editors and mixers Jim Goddard, Paul Hamblin, Catherine Hodgson and John Midgley. Iain Canning, co-producer of The King’s Speech, says that the British drama was partly backed by UK post house Molinare.“They were equity investors, so we did a post production deal with them and were based there. All the sound was a key part of the film, maintaining all of those clicks and silences, as the film’s about the gaps as much as it is about the words.” www.postmagazine.com January 2011 • Post 41