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www.postmagazine.com 36 POST JANUARY 2015 in 5.1 using Pro Tools 10 HD, with all the automation transferred from the cutting rooms to Ardmore's Dolby-approved Centre Stage 2 for the fi nal mix on an ICON with re-recording mixer Ken Galvin. Time and budget hurdles have not hindered director Barrett's ability to create a powerful fi lm, says Fanagan. He feels they crafted a soundtrack for Glassland that was true to the fi lm — a soundtrack that doesn't impede on the actors' performances. CRONIES Neil Benezra at Brooklyn Sound Society in Brooklyn, NY (www.brooklynsound- society.com), is the sound designer/ re-recording mixer on director Michael Larnell's fi lm Cronies, listed in the Next category at Sundance. Benezra, known for his work with Abel Ferrara and James Franco, fi nds time to also work on NYU and Columbia thesis fi lms. "Many interesting projects come out of their fi lm programs, and I like to work with the next generation of fi lmmakers who are serious about their craft," he says. When Benezra fi rst watched Cronies, executive produced by Spike Lee, he was wowed. "I can't say I've ever come across a student fi lm I've felt so strongly about. Larnell has defi nite style and vision." Cronies tells the story of Louis and Jack, childhood best friends whose present-day relationship is challenged by Louis' new friendships and family priorities, which collide with Jack's loud and aggressive behavior. The black and white fi lm is a hybrid of documentary and dramatic styles. Filmed on location in St. Louis, MO, the production track posed complex continuity issues due to excess loca- tion-based noise. In particular, Benezra had to deal with crickets bleeding over the dialogue. "There was no ADR for the fi lm so I had to reduce the cricket sounds, and in some cases, fi xed the con- tinuity by adding more crickets to level things out," says Benezra. He cleaned the production dialogue tracks in Pro Tools 11 HD using iZotope RX 4 Advanced for hums, clicks, pops, and mic bumps. For broadband noise reduction, Benezra says he always uses the Cedar DNS One. Benezra looked for sound design op- portunities to take the story to another depth, out of reality and into the char- acter's head. "Michael [Larnell] has an appreciation for how sound can infl uence the narrative. He would add insights that would take my ideas a step further, mak- ing for a very strong collaboration." Working with Native Instruments Kontakt 5, Benezra built the surreal eff ects from organic sounds he reversed, pitched, time expanded, and reverbed. "I prefer distorting natural sound, fi nding something interesting inherent in a sound and exaggerating it, rather than process- ing a sound too heavily with eff ects. I tend to gently manipulate sound, using plug-ins like the built-in Pro Tools Pitch II, and the Avid Time Shift, to create some- thing new that still retains its acoustic reality," explains Benezra. Director Larnell wanted the fi lm's music to sound diegetic, as though it was coming from inside the scene, for exam- ple, through a boom box on the street, or playing inside a basement. "We were creating these realistic music ambiences and occasionally morphing them into a full-on soundtrack," says Benezra. Anoth- er interesting transition happens when a song on the lo-fi Jeep radio eventually switches to a woman standing on the street singing the song. "The director has a really good ear and knew what he was after. We fi ne-tuned the music to get it to what he was hearing in his head," explains Benezra. For fi ltering, Benezra used Audio Ease's Altiverb to add reverb to one track. He then processed a separate track using a low-pass EQ fi lter in Pro Tools Channel strip. These two tracks were layered with a third unprocessed music track giving Benezra control over diff erent parts of the sound to cover diff erent camera angles and conceptual ideas. Though Cronies is not in competition at Sundance, Benezra feels it will get a lot of attention. Director Larnell tells an interesting story and the actors give strong performances, he says. "Everything about it just works" says Benezra, who likens Cronies to an old blues song. "You feel the emotion in it. The emotion and timelessness comes across. Some fi lms rely on technological tricks but Cronies is very bare bones yet it has that magical art to it." THE OVERNIGHT Gene Park of Toneburst Audio in New York (www.toneburstaudio.com) is the dialogue editor/re-recording mixer on writer/director Patrick Brice's fi lm The Overnight, which is in US Dramatic competition at Sundance. Park and Brice worked together previously on Creep, Brice's well-received debut fi lm that premiered at SXSW earlier this year and will be released by TWC/Radius in 2015. Park has also worked with The Over- night's executive producer Mark Duplass on several feature fi lms, including the award-winning The One I Love. "I already knew the team and what they were after aesthetically. That also made it a lot eas- ier for us to work together over a long distance. They're all in LA and I'm in New York," says Park. In The Overnight, Alex (Adam Scott), Emily (Taylor Schilling), and their son RJ move to Los Angeles' eastside from Neil Benezra (left), sound designer/ re-recording mixer on Cronies (right), faced lots of location noise. Niall Brady (top) and Steve Fanagan (bottom) worked on Glassland at Ireland's Ardmore Sound. AUDIO FOR INDIE FILMS