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www.postmagazine.com 27 POST JANUARY 2015 mmediately following her phone conversation with actress/direc- tor Angelina Jolie, Becky Sullivan started researching B-24 bombers. Jolie had just asked Sullivan to serve as the supervising sound editor (along with Andrew De- Cristofaro) on her next project, Unbro- ken, Jolie's Hollywood adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name by author Lauren Hillenbrand (Sea Biscuit). Sullivan knew that a B-24 from the film's era, and a key piece of the story, would be hard to find. Universal Pictures' Unbroken tells the real-life story of Olympian turned WWII hero Louis "Louie" Zamperini who, having a troubled youth, was encouraged by his older brother Pete to channel his energy into track & field. Zamperini became a champion runner and later a US Olympian. During World War II, Zamperini enlisted and became an Army Air Corps bombar- dier on a B-24, flying numerous missions across the Pacific. In April 1943, his defec- tive B-24 "Green Hornet" crashed into the sea. He survived in a raft for 47 days, only to become a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp where he was beaten, starved and nearly died. Zamperini, whose life was long and storied, penned his autobiography and sold the rights to Universal Studios, waiting patiently for Hollywood to tell his story for more than 50 years. He was well into his 90s by the time Jolie came around, eager and willing to bring his story to audiences around the world. According to Jolie, in a recent NBC television interview that aired prior to the film's release, "We tried to then expand on this already very impressive life that Laura [Hillenbrand] so beautifully detailed in her book and tried to carry it forward and do nothing to hurt it. [It's] such a huge responsibility to get it right, because I love [Louie] so much and because he's helped me so much in my life." Sullivan, who worked with Jolie on her first go-round as director for 2011's In The Land of Blood and Honey, explains, "You can see how passionate she was about the story, and her passion just spread to all of us; our whole crew. I was thrilled for her to call me, and then I knew we would have our hands full with Unbroken be- cause I read the book and knew that it's such a vast story; it's an epic story. It's a guy's life, and it's an amazing life and I feel like my role was to bring Angie's vision to life, and her vision became our vision, which was that this film be true to Louie, true to the time period, and be an authen- tic film. The sound needed to be that way and not be a flashy Hollywood film." This meant keeping as much of the sites and sounds of the film as accurate and true to life as possible. Sullivan began her search for a B-24 bomber because, as she puts it, "where are you going to find a B24? In the movies that have been done in the past, Pearl Harbor or Memphis Belle, well, Memphis Belle is a movie about a B-17 and a B-17 sounds very different from a B-24." Sullivan and her audio crew (including DeCristofaro, who Sullivan says she worked side-by-side with through- out the entire film) struck gold in Florida when they located a B-24 that had not been modified. The team had their chance to ride the B-24, and place microphones — which included DPA 5100 mobile surround 5.1 mics, DPA 4062 compact mics, Senn- heiser MKH-418 and MKH-416 mics, and Neumann's 190i — in every nook and cran- ny, recording on Sound Devices' 788, 744 and 702. "It was very dramatic. Loud. Awesome. It was one of the best days of my life, because I was in a piece of history where young men flew those planes. When I climbed into the bombardier hull, where Louis Zamperini would have sat as a bombardier, it was inspiring and I kind of caught my breath. It's a vulnerable spot; it's in the nose of the plane, and it's this claus- trophobic little spot. We used what we recorded and it was all B-24, and it's amaz- ing. We were able to record the doors opening and closing, every little toggle switch, that's what we put in the film. You get to really go from the tail gunner to the pilot to the belly gunner — those spaces are real and encompass you and puts the audience on the plane with Louie." While capturing the authentic, correct sounds of the B-24 proved challenging, Sullivan points to another scene that tested her years of experience as a sound editor: taking audiences from the loud, thunderous sounds of a bomber in battle and crashing to the stillness of three men stranded on a raft in the ocean for 47 days. "It was complete silence and isolation," describes Sullivan. "We had challeng- es with the production dialogue due to those scenes being filmed on a live ocean, as well as a tank — all the differ- ent things that happen with production dialogue. So, we did use a large amount of ADR in the raft scenes and I definitely took a lead with that with the actors. I got them on the floor and kind of built a little raft around them with couches and miked them low. I would not allow any water on the stage because as they go along, through their 47 days on the raft, of course, they don't have any water and their throats get dryer and dryer. I think that the performances that Angie got out of those guys is tremendous." The sound editing and mixing was done on Pro Tools and Dolby Atmos at NBC Universal Studio Post at Universal Studios. Throughout the production and post stages, Sullivan says she worked closely with her sound team, which included DeCristofaro, Jon Taylor and Frank Montano, as well as with Academy Award-winning co-editors William (Billy) Goldenberg (Argo) and Tim Squyres (Life of Pi). "We all worked very closely together," says Sullivan. "[Billy and Tim] were very BY LINDA ROMANELLO I Left: The sound team of (standing) Jon Taylor, Andrew DeCristofaro, (seated) Frank Monta- no and Becky Sullivan. Right: Editors William Goldenberg (top) and Tim Squyres (bottom). EDITING UNBROKEN