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www.postmagazine.com 38 POST MAY 2015 experimented with Avid's D-Fi plug-in suite, including Lo-Fi and Sci-Fi, as well as utilized Avid's EQ III, to create the ef- fect of interference while still maintaining intelligibility. "We were trying to get the right effect of a voice that was cracking up, coming in and out, but we had to do it in a way where you understood every word," says Nierenberg. In addition to processing the dialogue, Nierenberg ad- mits he used a commercial library effect of radio tuning. "The client was really in love with the radio tuning idea so I had little bits and pieces of radio interference and tuning to make sure that we were getting the sensation that the channel was changing." THE SEA OF TREES Independent re-recording mixer Beau Borders started his sound editorial career at Skywalker Sound. He feels an editorial background is a vital asset for re-recording mixers in today's cross- over workflow of audio post for feature film. "In the past, sound editors would design and assemble, and then pass their material on to the mixer and be done with it. The mixer would then take over and carry everything through the print-master. But now there is just so much back and forth between sound mixing and sound editing that it's huge- ly beneficial when the sound editors know how to mix and the sound mixers know how to edit," he says. Borders, who recently co-mixed director Gus Van Sant's film The Sea of Trees (premiering at Cannes this May), says he's often involved on a film from an early stage, cleaning and temp mixing Avid tracks and working with the sound editors as they're building tracks for the picture editor and director to preview against a cut. "It's great because I'm able to be in the cutting room with the sound editors, laying out the path for the rest of the mix. All the material is very familiar to me by the time we get to the pre-dub- bing and the final mix." During his sound editorial days at Sky- walker Sound, Borders says he had access to one of their most powerful tools — the Skywalker Sound Library. "Their library is phenomenal. It just gets better and better with every project they work on," Borders says. When Borders switched from sound editing to mixing independently, he no longer had access to that resource. "It was super scary to just not have that safety net of amazing ingredients at your fin- gertips at all times. But as a sound mixer, I'm relying on the sound editors to come to the table with all the goods." Though he was able to survive without a library, he recently got involved with Pro Sound Effects, which he says solved all his sound editing worries. "Pro Sound Effects can basically customize a library for you and it shows up on a hard drive with all the invaluable metadata, and it's organized, and it's everything that you need. My fear of living without the Skywalker Sound Library has ceased now that I found Pro Sound Effects." When he needs a certain sound, or set of sounds, Borders prefers to have a member of the film sound crew cap- ture custom field recordings, but with shrinking budgets and schedules, field recordings are the first thing to go. "It's a rarity that we can actually put somebody out in the field to record custom sound," says Borders. "That's sad. I prefer the organic quality of using the real, natural, raw sounds. If you just had the perfect recording to begin with, you wouldn't have to rely on all the processing and manipu- lation." In a pinch, Borders says, Pro Sound Effects comes through. "If I need a kit of World War II airplanes, for example, they're going to have it. It's kind of like having a sound designer on call at all times." Borders observes that film schedules that allowed for months of audio post can get condensed to merely weeks, and crews are constantly shifting from studio to studio. That's just the nature of the business changing. "Now we have to look at prerecorded libraries and places we can pull sounds from. Pro Sound Effects is great because they have well-orga- nized, searchable databases and it's all right there ready to cut. I feel like my safety net is back," states Borders. SOUND DESIGN Freelance sound designer Jay Nierenberg created "chilling" sound design for Jeep Wran- gler's Polar Vortex spot, managing various sound effects via Soundminer. Borders, who co-mixed The Sea of Trees, used Pro Sound Effects.