Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/790371
25 Q1 2017 / CINEMONTAGE Hotel Nacional de Cuba, the following December. I wholeheartedly agreed to join him. We invited Ric Schnupp — with whom I work closely as mix tech and assistant, and who is also a re-recording mixer and sound editor at Soundtrack Film & Television in New York — to come with us for tech support. With the help of AMPAS, we were able to gather the materials that we needed to do the presentation, which consisted of digital picture and the separate dialogue, music and sound effects stems from the final mixes of each scene. EICTV is an international film school that attracts students from all over Latin America, and some from as far away as Australia. Courses in all aspects of film production, including sound, cinematography, screenwriting, directing and acting are offered. The school was founded in 1986 by the noted Colombian author and screenwriter Gabriel García Márquez on a former plantation outside the town of San Antonio de Los Baños 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) southwest of Havana. One thing that struck me when I saw the school were the slogans and sayings painted on the walls in many different languages — by all of the visiting filmmakers who had come to teach there. It seemed like hundreds of them, and was very impressive. Chris, Ric and I took off from JFK on a direct flight to Havana and arrived on the afternoon of Sunday, December 4. We were met at the airport by the head of the school, Jerónimo Labrada, and one of the English-speaking students, Homer Mora, who would serve as our technical liaison and also help with translation. One of the biggest challenges we faced on the visit was the language barrier. Some of the students spoke some English, but for the most part, outside of Havana, the people of Cuba speak only Spanish; translators were essential. Our presentations used scenes from movies that Chris and I have worked on together as production and re-recording mixers, respectively. For the Cuba trip, we chose three scenes — two from The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and one from Philadelphia (1993). From Lambs we used the scene of the initial meeting between Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), as well as the final confrontation between Clarice and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). From Philadelphia we chose the well-known "Opera Scene" wherein Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) describes the Maria Callas aria "La mamma morta" from the opera Andrea Chénier to Joe Miller (Denzel Washington). In each of these, the focus was on a different aspect of the track. In the first Lambs scene, we focused on how the dialogue was treated to create differing perspectives in Lecter's jail cell. In the second, we dealt with how Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) and sound effects were used, and how the music was structured to make the Ric Schnupp, left, Tom Fleischman, Chris Newman and student translator Homer Mora, in San Antonio de los Baños. Tom Fleischman in Studio 1 EICTV, playing back stems before the presentation.