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AUDIO FOR 3D SURROUND [ Cont.from 38 ] IMAX specs have a much wider EQ range than the Dolby X-Curve. Zsifkovits, who handled the Foley in the mix, says, "Because we started off with a 3D movie, we really used the surrounds. When we converted to the IMAX format by using the stems, we had to manage each stem meticulously." One advantage to mixing the IMAX version in The- ater One at Deluxe Toronto was at Deluxe for exactly this reason, so he and the excel- lent music editor, Kevin Banks, could keep feeding me any tweaks that were requested by director Paul Anderson and the producers." Stirk also handled the dialogue in the film. For the voice of The Red Queen, a holographic representation of an AI supercomputer that monitors the laboratory BITS Max Post cleans up with reality audio post B that the mix stage was equipped with a software-based switcher that could switch between the 5.1 monitoring system and the IMAX monitoring system almost instantaneously. "Theatre One at Deluxe Toronto is one of the few stages in North America with such a set-up," explains Tay. "The switching capability made it more efficient to translate the IMAX mix as close to the 5.1 as possible. Even so, there are certain aspects to the IMAX system that seem to make it sound deeper and richer. The full-range surrounds definitely help to elevate the depth of the sound field." For Retribution, Tay, Zsifkovits and Stirk used the sur- rounds aggressively. Tay created asymmetry in the sound design by purposely making a sound effect right heavy, or left heavy, or louder in one surround speaker. He used the surrounds to play the sound design in order to free up the front wall for music and dialogue. "If every stereo pair of sound I had was equally spread across the sound field, you tend not to notice it, but if you take one pair and make it slightly left heavy, and another pair you make slightly right heavy, then you create all sorts of interesting dimension," says Tay. During a fight scene between Alice and a Japanese pop star inside a hallway in the Umbrella complex, Tay and Zsifkovits used panning to enhance the 3D visuals of a bike lock being swung around on the end of a chain. The sound of the bike chain was a combination of sound effects and Foley. "Andrew Tay was panning the chain dead on. It was going all over the room, in the surrounds, then left, center, and right, then left sur- round, and so on," says Zsifkovits. "It was swooshing around everywhere." For Stirk, spreading the music stems into the sur- rounds allowed him create a dynamic and enveloping music mix. The music production company, Toman- dandy, provided Stirk with two sets of 12 stereo stems so he had the ability to weave separate elements in and out of the mix, creating room for dialogue and sound effects without having to dip the whole music track. This allowed the music to drive the action scenes without losing any energy. "One half of the duo, Andy Milburn, was on hand throughout the mix to address notes on the fly," explains Stirk. "He had the back room URBANK — The reality is, reality audio is a challenge. It's hard to capture clean, clear sounds in a non-scripted environment. To help solve that problem, Emmy-winning sound designer and re-recording mixer Bob Bronow of Max Post Original Productions (www.orig- prod.com) has been calling on iZotope's RX 2 while posting audio for cable programs such as Deadliest Catch, The Wrecking Crew, Ax Men and The Colony. The sound of Evil: (L-R) Deluxe Toronto's Retribution team of Andrew Stirk, Mark Zsifkovits and Andrew Tay. complex, Stirk used the Waves Z-Noise plug-in to make the little girl's voice even more menacing. He heavily processed a copy of the dialogue lines, and then added those back under the clean dialogue. "By having the processed line separate I had exact control so if Paul wanted to make her more processed, it was a very easy adjustment," he says. Stirk used a combination of the Audio Ease Speaker- phone plug-in, the Harrison console EQs, and a TC Electronic 6000 to create a scene in which the antago- nist, Wesker, appears on various screens in a control room. He changed the processing settings to make the voice sound slightly different for each screen. "During one point of Wesker's explanation his image splits from a central screen onto screens on the left and right," he describes. "For the separation I used a phasey sounding chorus plug-in. Then when he was on the left and right, I created a stereo version of the mono speakerphone and EQ'ed dialogue using the Waves PS22 and further delaying one leg very slightly to widen the sound fur- ther still. When Wesker is interrupted by The Red Queen, the speakerphone moves onto an extreme set- ting to create the signal breakup." The opening scene was a favorite for the mixers. The visuals start by being played in reverse, with primarily music and a whisper of reversed effects and Foley to match the images. Then, the scene is played forward, with full-on sound effects, Foley and music. According to Tay, "Some effects didn't actually sound that good reversed, so we would blend the forward and the backward sound to make it sound a little more natu- ral." Zsifkovits adds, "When played forward in realtime, you hear big flybys and big explosions, and the music is doing more of a duck-and-weave rather than playing flat out. I think that scene was very interesting and something that we had never experienced before. " www.postmagazine.com Post • October 2012 47 Deadliest Catch, on Discovery, shoots aboard a half-dozen Alaskan fishing vessels in the Bering Sea, which is known for it's horrible weather conditions. Aggressive winds, mighty surf, and an assortment of life-threatening situations chal- lenge the fishing crews. Bronow is fortunate in that he can search for intelligible dialogue from the safety of his warm, dry studio. For every episode, he's presented with 700 pieces of fixed dialogue, recorded solely from camera mics, lavs and a pair of static mics located on deck. "I knew very early on that to tell these stories, it was going to be all about hearing this stuff," he recalls. After trying the RX 2 audio repair software, Bronow knew he found a way to give the show the dialogue quality it needed for air. "Depending on the situation," he says, "the characters could be in the engine room, near the hydraulics, or have their one lav mic stuck underneath all their protective gear." After evalu- ating all of the show's recorded audio, he goes through every piece of dialogue and removes as much noise as he can. "That's where the RX 2 comes in. I go through mixes looking for stuff to fix now, things that I wouldn't necessarily have been able to help before. I couldn't get through an episode without it." To eliminate isolated booms and bangs, Bronow uses the Denoiser, Declicker and Spec- tral Repair modules. Spectral Repair also comes into play for removing the common, unwanted rumbling sound caused by wind. "The first thing I'll do is pull up the Spectral Repair module and the spectrogram shows all of the wind blusters. The neat thing about RX is that it doesn't just remove the noise like an EQ would. It washes it, like a watercolor." Ax Men is another reality series that challenges Max Post and Bronow. He calls on the RX 2 to remove sudden, loud noises caused by logging machinery and safety equipment. And in The Colony, where the show's subjects were building a machine out of an old alternator and bike parts, he also used Spectral Repair.