Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/860302
www.postmagazine.com 17 POST AUGUST 2017 AUDIO to the exhaust in the rear. "Those were the raw sounds that I uploaded and sent to Julian, so he and his team could re- master them and put them into picture." To accomplish this, Wu relied on a mix of a Sound Devices 788T-SSD recorder, a Sound Devices 442 field mixer, and a combination of DPA lavaliere, DPA 4017 shotgun, Sanken CUB-01 bound- ary, Audio-Technica BP4025 XY stereo, Sennheiser MD421 II and Rode M1 and lavalier mics. Wu says one of his biggest challeng- es in capturing the raw sounds was the heat. "Those were super long days — 16 hour days — and Julian wanted clean sounding interiors. That meant, the windows were closed and the AC was turned off. In Atlanta, that's brutal. But it's worth it for the sound. You get good sound, you get a good feeling." A NOVEL SOUND After Wu transferred his files to Slater — 24p, 96Kh polywave files via compact flash cards — Slater's team went to work on remastering. "Watson sent something like 40 gigs worth of raw recordings," says Slater. "We would cherry pick the best bits of each recording." It was then up to Slater and his team to pull off Wright's unique audio "vision" for the film, which is introduced right within its opening moments when audi- ences see the studio logo. "The sound from it transforms into a tinnitus ringing, which in turn becomes the braking sound of a car," explains Slater. "It is in the same key as the first music cue ("Bellbottoms" by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion), so it all flows." Shortly following is a shot lasting more than three minutes, featuring Baby speeding down a downtown street to the sounds of "Harlem Shuffle," by Bob and Earl. "Edgar shot the scene in time to the music," Slater points out. "We added car alarms, jack hammers, traffic." According to Slater, when the audio crew first started on the film, "we tem- po-mapped each piece of music and all the sounds we wanted to work with the music, which is something I've never done before. We also pitch-corrected and mod- ulated the sound effect to make it work with the music. When you watch it, you'll see all the car chases or police sirens are all working in sync with the music." Slater says that he would then play back a scene to determine whether or not it worked both musically and cinemat- ically. "If we weren't able to check both of these boxes, we would throw out the scene and start again." Slater completed the sound work at Goldcrest Films in London. There, he spent months finessing and fine-tuning the sound effects and the mix. "There would be times when my sound crew and I would do a review of everything that we had done as we built the tracks, and quite frequently we would watch something and get goose- bumps," Slater says. "That doesn't really happen all that often — to get frequent goosebumps every week because you believe that you are doing something that is so unique and special." Slater says he relied on much of the "typical" tools that studios use, includ- ing Pro Tools, Nugen Audio Halo Upmix, Atmos to mix it natively, Serato's Pitch 'n Time, XForm to time stretch and correct the sound design and Izotope RX on the dialogue and some music cues. Slater says he wanted to ensure that what he was doing only supported the story and never distracted from it. "Things like playing the music from Baby's perspective, his tinnitus and the syncopation — we were constantly self-checking ourselves to make sure it was only supporting. We had great characters, a great storyline, amazing performances, and our job as storytell- ers is to support all that's going on on the screen. We didn't want to overstep the mark and take the audience out of the story." The result is a unique and original film soundtrack. "The credit goes to Edgar Wright," Slater stresses. "He had been developing this idea for years and he constructed the template that we followed. I'm extremely lucky to work with a filmmaker like Edgar who is committed to projects that are both bold and original!" Watson Wu Sound Devices gear and mics from DPA, Sanken, Audio-Technica and Sennheiser captured the sounds of the speeding vehicles in Baby Driver.