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Audio for Independent Films Wildfire's Leslie Shatz handled a range of services for 12 Years A Slave. they need to be to really go all the way with the movie." Shatz was also the re-recording mixer for the music and dialog in the film. He gave his sound design to re-recording mixer Ryan Collins, who was his collaborator on the mix. Shatz says, "If the other mixer feels something in the sound design is lousy, then they'll get rid of it and I won't have to feel like I'm killing my child. I let somebody else do that." The presence of non-period sounds, more specifically, traffic noise, was one challenge during the mix. Shatz made sure that no traffic noise or horn honks could be heard in the soundtrack, because those would pull the audience out of the experience. "There's a lot of traffic, and sounds that you'd definitely identify as being from modern day," says Shatz. "Traffic noise is broadband. It goes throughout the whole audio spectrum and it's really hard to get rid of. Sometimes the way you have to get rid of it can really mar the soundtrack and mar the dialog. You can make it sound really gated or pinched or ugly. You have to be very mindful of going too far." Whenever Shatz processes the dialog, or any sound, he goes to a point where he thinks it sounds good and then he backs off a bit. He says, "The point at which it sounds good at that moment, I know I'll come back to later and feel that I've gone too far." That's also how Shatz approaches the sound design. 28 Post • January 2014 He forces himself to take off at least one layer of sound. "That's my discipline," he says. "Even though I don't believe it at that moment, the next time I see it I'll know that I've gone too far." Shatz has a general suspicion of too much technology. He says, "It's like MSG. When you eat food with MSG, it tastes really good while you're eating it but then you regret it afterwards. I have the same suspicion of too much technology in the process. It all has its place, but there [are] no miracles. You can't just push a button and then all of a sudden the soundtrack is beautiful." To clean up the dialog tracks, Shatz starts with the volume control. He finds that to be the most reliable, and essential tool. Next, Shatz likes to use EQ to notch out the problem areas. For example, he used the EQ III 7-band EQ in Pro Tools to notch out cicadas that were recorded on the dialog track. He found the cicadas were usually in the 8k to 10k range. "We had a particular problem with cicadas," he notes. "Even though we added them as part of the soundtrack, in some places they were insanely loud and changing from cut to cut." Shatz found the cicadas were very faithful to certain frequencies, but it was never only one frequency. After notching out a narrow frequency band, the cicada problem would be better, but not completely gone, so he'd find another one. "You just keep going and [all of a] www.postmagazine.com sudden there wouldn't be any high-end left in the dialog, but you'll have gotten rid of all the cicadas. You have to compromise." Another tool Shatz found useful is Clip Gain, found in Pro Tools 10 and higher. He feels that nowadays the vogue on-set is to record really low, around -25dB. Before Clip Gain, you could get to +12dB with automation, after that you'd need to process the tracks with an Audio Suite plug-in like Normalize, for example. With Clip Gain, you can quickly raise the overall level into a range where it can be mixed using faders. "You can use Clip Gain for the first 90 percent, but the final 10 percent to one percent, you need something very connected to the human expression. I always feel like it's the final one percent that really transforms the mix and makes it shine." Shatz mixes on a Harrison MPC 4D console, a tool he finds amazing. "There's so much visual feedback," he says. "It's all right there, every channel at your fingertips. You don't have to call things up to a certain section. It's a big console. It's a real console. I may be one of the few people left who prefers a real mixing console." While Shatz may be wary of technology at times, he does feel that it can be a benefit for indie films. "I feel that, in the past, independent films were marked by bad sound. Like, in order to make an independent film, you had to have bad sound."