Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/756468
52 CINEMONTAGE / Q4 2016 lines of dialogue but not between the third and fourth. So a lot of our process was going through that meticulously, with Kenny having a total awareness of his script, characters and dialogue. It was an absolute sense of the music of the environment. However you could set that up, that's what determined the aesthetic and what the movie would sound like. CM: Do you start by defining a pallette from which to work or is it largely trial and error? JR: I approach being a sound designer/supervising sound editor like an actor does a role, with the director as my guide. I want to get into the director's head and fully understand how he sees the world and story he wants to tell. It doesn't matter what I think personally, it matters what I can bring to the director. Certain directors might ask for my input and then I'm happy to get creative. With this film, my input came from Kenny's very specific ideas. I saw the movie first on my own before talking to him and had ideas for how to make the environment. The movie itself dictated a lot in the way it was shot. There aren't a lot of wild camera moves or avant-garde elements onto which you would start to pin a more impressionistic type sound design. The movie is more straightforward. When I finally started talking to Kenny, he said, "You've got to go up to the area where we shot — Gloucester, Beverly and Manchester by the Sea in Massachusetts — and record in the exact spots where the movie was shot. I spent a few days recording the boat sounds, the great fishing bar, Pratty's, with fisherman in there. They were great about letting us record ambience with people telling stories and laughing at the bar, wondering out loud who we were with our microphones. At night, we recorded the air, the wind, dogs barking in front of the different locations, including the high school and hospital to get people's accents from up in that part of the country. I think the movie shares its authenticity with Margaret. That was important to him. CM: How do you juggle these different roles of sound designer, sound editor and re-recording mixer in this more indie film world? JR: It works very well, but it's key to get help; I had a good dialogue and Foley editor, Roland Vajs, who pre-mixed the Foley. He did a great job with that, and even did some dialogue leveling, which was helpful by the time I got into mixing it. In terms of how you approach it, you just make it work. It's obviously a short schedule when it's indie and low- budget, so you're looking for people who can work quickly and effectively within a short period of time. It's always a wrestling match between the budget and everybody's resourcefulness and creativity. When my dialogue editor, Alexa Zimmerman, was no longer available while I was mixing, my ADR editor, Dan Edelstein, stepped up to help with dialogue and Foley. CM: So you're really a jack-of-all-trades in sound? JR: I've done all the disciplines in sound editing between Foley, dialogue and music editing, but what I love most is sound design, which is really an alchemy of creating something from nothing to evoke something new. All of that comes into play when you're a re-recording mixer/ sound designer/supervisor. It got to a point where I was the only one on stage, so if Kenny said we need to do some music editing here, that was me. Or if he said the voices aren't working and we need to find some others, that was me also. Everything was happening in the one room we were mixing in, and Michelle Williams came in to do her ADR. For that I used a portable zoom recorder with a good microphone, the Neumann RSM-191; it's a Mid-Side microphone they don't make anymore, and you can use it as a shotgun mic. It has a great, clean, warm sound. I think what Kenny really liked was knowing that everything was happening in that one room. You gather your sound, you have your crew do their thing, maybe some pre-mixing; the dialogue editor does some noise reduction; you have everyone pitching in, doing what was traditionally only a mixer's domain. CM: Is that usual? JR: In New York, we have editors who also work to a certain degree as mixers on a routine basis. Definitely in an indie scenario, you're looking for help wherever you can get it. So getting help from the other sound editors is part of the process. f Manchester by the Sea. Photo by Claire Folger/Amazon Studios