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www.postmagazine.com 18 POST JULY 2014 IN THE MIX ne of this summer's most antic- ipated productions is the latest directorial contribution from Hollywood veteran Clint Eastwood, in the film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Jersey Boys. Like the play, the film is a musical biography that traces the success of the 50's-70's singing group, the Four Seasons, lead by front man Frankie Valli. It follows the friends from their early days in New Jersey and how the bonds they formed early in their career helped them through a number of challenges, as they continued their rise to fame. At the center of the film, and key to telling the Four Seasons' story on-screen are the performances of the group's sig- nature songs by the film's stars. Alan Murray, supervising sound editor; John Reitz, re-recording mixer (dialogue and music) and Gregg Rudloff, re-record- ing mixer (effects) discuss how essential the music was to the film's plotline and how they managed to capture the accu- rate sounds of the group's era. How much did the fact that this film was a musical, and that it takes place from the 1950s through the 1970s, factor into the audio editing/mixing process? RUDLOFF: "Actually it factored in a lot. Being a musical, there were a lot of different ways to approach it. So, they recorded all the music live on the set — all the vocals were live; even the band was live. And all of this material was mic'd individually. So, it's a deli- cate balance between keeping it period proper, as to how they were recorded originally, and you also need to factor in the various locations, because this movie took place obviously in a lot of different locations. You've got a cappella singing on the street, small night clubs, recording studios, larger night clubs, an outdoor county fair. So, each of those locations have a different sound to them. "But the one thing you want to make sure that you don't do, because Clint [Eastwood] is really into accuracy and the period of when it was all happening, you don't want to over produce the music. "We've been listening to this music for a long time, so everybody has a feeling about what the sound is for this group. We were trying to remain true to that. At the same time, we were trying to make sure that the sound was accurate for each of the locations that we were in. So, the music was a huge consideration for this film for us." How important is the music to the overall storytelling and to the plot? RUDLOFF: "Well, it is the story. It's different from a traditional musical that most of us are used to where the songs are there to help tell the story. In this particular film, the songs are the story. So, where this differs from the stage play, is that the film delves much more deeply into their backstory and what was going on in their lives at the time." I would imagine that the recording process was important and affected what you had to work with once the material got into post — how import- ant was how it was recorded? RUDLOFF: "We're not heavily involved at that stage, but it all ends up filtering down through us, and so we were in- volved in discussions from the beginning to see how they were going to do it and how we were going to work with it. "But I do believe that once they were out on the set, Walt Martin, the produc- MAKING THE AUDIO SING FOR JERSEY BOYS BY LINDA ROMANELLO MANAGING EDITOR LROMANELLO@ POSTMAGAZINE.COM SOUND PROS KEEP MUSIC 'PERIOD PROPER' FOR THIS 50S-70S BIO FILM. O