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www.postmagazine.com 44 POST OCTOBER 2014 live a quiet life, but when he meets a young girl under the control of ultra-vi- olent Russian gangsters, he decides to serve vengeance against those who brutalize the helpless. The Equalizer opened in theaters September 26th. Having worked with director Fuqua on previous fi lms (Training Day, Tears of the Sun), dialogue and music re-recording mixer Steve Pederson and sound ef- fects re-recording mixer Daniel Leahy at Sony Pictures Post (www.sonypictures. com/studios) in Culver City, CA, knew his fi lms focus on more than just the ac- tion. Fuqua explores the mood and thoughts of the characters. Pederson feels composer Harry Gregson Williams's score on The Equalizer was very eff ective in communicating the tension and unease that McCall experiences. "The score was a real contributor to the overall impression of this fi lm," says Pederson. "A lot of it is mood and contemplation. The music really guided the audience to feel the anxiety and then the resolve of Denzel's character," Utilizing the 7.1 sur- round setup, Pederson was able to position and move some instrumentation to the side surrounds for emphasis. "For example, if a strong guitar riff accented a cut or action, I might pull some of it to the side surrounds to get it off the screen and the dense competition of material that's there," he says. "This shift accents the guitar without just making it louder, it pulls the audience in as it pans out, without going all the way into the rear speakers." Pederson pre-mixes dialogue entirely in Pro Tools, which allows him to work in smaller rooms, in closer proximity to the speakers. "If you're in larger rooms, often there is a certain reverb and coloring that, in a smaller, tighter room, you don't get. It can really help when matching ADR, cleaning up noise, and hearing frequencies that might be slightly obscured in a big room," he says. Pederson prefers to do the majority of the processing in-the-box, keeping everything virtual, so he can easily make adjustments on the dub stage. He often chooses McDSP plug-ins for dialogue processing, such as the G-console in the Channel G plug-in for dynamics and EQ, the NF575 Noise Filter, and the McDSP Futz- Box. For reverb on dialogue and ADR, Pederson is a fan of Audio Ease's Alti- verb. "One plug-in I do render is Magic Spectrum by DUY. It's an EQ-matching device. I will sample a production line in a scene and match the ADR to it. When I fi nd an EQ I like, I render the ADR lines out of Magic Spectrum and work with the rendered fi les," he explains. As examples of creative dialogue treatments in The Equalizer, Pederson describes a scene where the camera POV is from a dying man talking to McCall. As the man fades in and out of consciousness, Pederson uses delays, reverb, and volume attenuation to enhance the visuals. In another scene, McCall is contemplating whether or not to help out the brutalized girl Teri. "As Denzel's character is debating with himself, we hear multiple voices overlapping and panning around the room as if the voices were swirling around in his head as he's struggling with this decision," says Pederson. Supervising sound editor Mandell Winter and sound designer David Esparza created a world that goes to extremes, from being very quiet, inside the main character's head, to a world vibrant with action-specifi c sounds, atmospheres, and texture layers. Leahy uses these elements, in conjunction with the score, to craft a very dynamic soundtrack. Leahy says, "We bring the soundtrack down to the bare bones in certain scenes where there is nothing but confrontational dialogue, then back up to intense fi ght scenes." Leahy notes that director Fuqua is very sound saavy, and often has ideas for the mix. For example, there is a scene where McCall is being followed by the Russians, and though the audience never see trains, Leahy explains, "Antoine [Fuqua] had an idea that we should hear trains over head. I put them in the rear surrounds and I'm sweeping them around. I thought that was a really eff ective sound moment." The fi lm was mixed in 7.1 on a Harrison MPC console in the stunning Cary Grant Theatre at Sony Pictures Post. The Equalizer was recently shown as part of the Immersive Sound event at Sony Pictures. Pederson and Leahy had a chance to re-experience their mix in the Cary Grant Theatre. Leahy says, "Play- ing it back in the same theater we mixed it in, after not having heard the mix for a few months, I felt it was a really great dynamic soundtrack and one I think the whole sound team is very proud of." CONTINUED FROM PG 34 AUDIO FOR FILMS CONTINUED FROM PG 28 TUNING IN TO FALL TV sphere: 99 percent was CG fi re with particles, smoke, dust and sparks from our elements library," Hunt explains. "The only real plate photography was the mountains and lakes where it crashes." Post-apocalyptic Earth is now overgrown as nature reclaims the terrain. Mutations have also been created. In the fi rst episode of the new season, the castaways encounter a deer in a meadow. It appears normal in profi le but when it turns to face them the other half of its face "is scarred and weird," Hunt says. "It's all fully animated: You can't direct a deer and get a character performance." In a more beautiful mutation shot, Zoic fi lled a forest grove with thousands of glowing butterfl ies. In another sequence, damaging, poisonous, yellow ground fog rolls through the forest. "It was a challenge having the fl uid dynamics of the fog roll across the ground and integrate with plate photography of the forest," says Hunt. "We had to trace out each individual tree in the plates and inte- grate our fog with it. It was very tricky and labor intensive." CG eff ects also involve the surviving humans. Zoic applied "digital blood and guts" to scenes where The 100 suff er a horrifi c virus that causes bleed- ing from the eyes and mouth, Hunt says. For safety issues, CG is also used for sequences featuring their primitive weapons, like bows and arrows, and the wounding that results from the skirmishes with the Grounders. In one dramatic attack shot, The 100's Drop Ship rocket engines vaporize a band of Grounders, incinerating them and turning actors into CG charred bodies and skeletal remains. Zoic's tools include Autodesk's Maya for 3D, The Foundry's Nuke for com- positing and V-Ray from Chaos Group for rendering. The dynamics team relied heavily on Chaos Group's Phoenix FD plug-in for fl uid simulations, including fi re, smoke and explosions. Fracture FX demolition tool and Maya's nParticles created the incinerated Grounders. Zoic's own suite of tools and pipeline "make life easier" for artists, and enable them to react swiftly to clients' needs, notes Hunt. "We have render farms here and in our Culver City, CA, headquarters to share the load of all the complex imagery. It's as easy as if [Culver City was] in another room." Hunt observes that, "20 years ago, VFX for TV were rare. Ten years ago, the lines between features and TV were very broad, but they have continued to narrow and so have timelines. Producers, writers and audiences all expect to see higher-quality eff ects on TV. But creating entire worlds doesn't hap- pen in a day. It's a huge challenge, but part of the fun at the same time." At Zoic, Michael Cliett was VFX supervisor for The 100, Tyler Weiss the producer, Kornel Farkas the lead compositor and Andrew Bain the lead CG artist. Robert Smith was the main modeler for The Ark and Mike Rhone served as dynamics lead. Zoic's CG supervisor Peter Hunt (inset) says the team is "expanding" the look for Season 2 of The 100.