Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/455278
www.postmagazine.com 37 POST JANUARY 2015 Seattle. Feeling lost in a new city, they are desperate to find their first new friends. After a chance meeting with Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) at the neighborhood park, Kurt invites the family over for a 'playdate' with his wife Charlotte (Judith Godreche) and son Max that becomes increasingly more bizarre as the night goes on. For sound, director Brice wanted to maintain an intimate feel amongst the lead actors, keeping the soundtrack stripped-down when possible so the dialogue would take center stage. "Patrick [Brice] and I focused on making sure the humor came across, and that we got the right mo- ments in because there was a lot of cross- talk among the four actors," says Park. The dialogue is a combination of scripted and improvised lines. Location mixer Sean O'Malley used lav mics on all four actors to record their lines isolated, as well as had boom operator Glen Dietz captur- ing the conversations as a whole. The location dialogue was recorded on a Sound Devices 788T. With the actors interacting and occasionally deviating from the script during pe- riods of banter, it was challenging at times for the picture editor to make cuts while maintaining fluid conver- sations. "If one actor keeps talking, well you can't just cut them off in the middle of what they're saying," notes Park. "It was tricky to piece together trains of thoughts and making sure that certain lines got through the mix, and were heard, even if someone else is talking over them." Park cut in alternate takes to keep the conversation flowing through the picture edits, and when a line did get cut off he used other sounds to pull attention away from the edit. With the improvised timings and performances, ADR was essentially out of the question. Park used an array of noise reduction and EQ plug-ins to clean up and smooth out the dialogue track. "iZotope's RX 3 Advanced was a real godsend. I used that constantly to remove clicks, mouth and crew noise, as well as clothing rustles on the lavs." Park used the Dereverb feature in RX to reduce the ring-out on lines recorded in a large garage-like space. "One of the lav mics went out so we had to rely on the boom for Adam's lines. The Dereverb was able to suck out a bit of the tails and that helped a lot." Getting the lav mics to match was also a challenge. Park used DMG Audio's EQuality plug-in, particularly on scenes where the characters were wearing heavy robes, and scenes that happened around the swimming pool, where the boom mic was far away, and the lavs were up against the actors' skin. "I used EQuality to remove a lot of the low, chesty frequencies on the lavs, to get rid of that proximity effect, especially for wide shots." For noise reduction, the Waves WNS plug-in helped Park clean up hiss and reduce ambient wind noise on the exterior shots, ultimately making the dialogue clearer. The Overnight was mixed in 5.1 using Pro Tools 11 HD. Park, assisted by sound editor Sarah Streit, spent three weeks on the dialogue edit, and two weeks premixing in the music and effects. Director Brice and producer Naomi Scott flew to New York for the final mix, which Park did on a Euphonix System 5 console at New York post facility Prime Focus. "I loved working on the film. I feel it puts the audience on edge, but in a good way. There are many unexpected but ultimately refreshing plot twists, and it's super clever the way it's written," Park concludes. AUDIO FOR INDIE FILMS