Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/783510
18 This was all to be playback, and this normally simple task had become a big challenge on an overpass. The ac- tive set was a quarter-mile long, with nearly everything in frame and a ton of dancers at all times. With nothing for the sound to bounce off of and a center divide down the middle of the lanes, we were teamed up with the en- tire Electrical Department to help get the music to the dancers and bring this dream to life. Every other car had a speaker set behind the bumper on each side of the freeway. To keep on-screen actors in sync with the camera moves, Craig Dollinger pushed a cart with two speakers, a wireless receiver and a generator alongside the camera. We had a blast playing safely on the freeway. The opening shot ap- pears as one long take, but it was actually three different shots masterfully blended together to achieve the look of one continuous one. We had lots of fun working live recorded lines into play- back scenes. In order to capture the essence of a live mu- sical, we made sure to record all of the spoken lines and actor nuances whenever possible. We achieved this in several ways. Sometimes it was just dipping the playback down and catching the sighs or scripted lines with a boom and then popping the playback back up, and other times we'd do a full live vocal record with the music being heard through earwigs. It was all part of a choreographed dance. Recording the instruments was the easiest part. In my ex- perience, wireless microphones never sound quite right on musical instruments, so we ran hard-lines to every possible instrument. We also knew that at any moment, we could be asked to switch to live record, and we didn't want to hold ev- eryone up to accomplish this. Damien definitely has a very specific vision in mind, and truly believes that the crew he has can accomplish whatever he needs. We were constant- ly inspired to live up to that and needed to be ready at all times. Knowing what Damien wanted the scenes to feel like made it much easier for us. My team and I quickly figured out a shorthand for communicating the room acoustics for post by placing wireless mics around the set to create refer- ence points that could later be used to apply convolution reverb. In communication with Marius De Vries, Executive Music Producer, I was able to ensure that we all had what we needed from the production side to help achieve the feeling that Damien was looking for. Ryan Gosling spent months learning to play the piano for his role, so you could actually see him playing in each scene. In the piano scenes, we would hard-line two mics in stereo to match keys in post. Ryan is a fantastic piano player, however, they wanted to use the recorded studio tracks in the film. Every scene of him playing was shot as one long take, so any variation in his performance would potentially limit them in post. Having the live recorded piano in stereo, allowed them to shift the track as needed to match his playing on screen using the studio track. One of my favorite scenes to record was the duet of "City of Stars" by Ryan and Emma in his apartment. They both sang this live, and in order to get the vocals clean, the piano was John Legend and Ryan Gosling. Photo: Dale Robinette CAS member Steve Morrow's sound cart