Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/933783
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y W I N T E R 2 0 1 8 41 PA: We mixed in 5.1 on an S6 console at the sound studio Mainstream, which is based at Lars von Trier's production company, Zentropa. I like to do quite a lot of work in the box, and we worked in Pro Tools. However, I can't do sound without having faders. I played the piano for many years and I love playing the sounds with my fingers. For me, it's a way of making things more musical. I like having small fader movements all the time to make the soundscape come more alive. Having the same sound play at one set level can become very monotonous quickly, but having just small changes in level for backgrounds or music make the ear much more interested in what's happening. One thing I loved about the S6 on this project was using the finger touch for panning during the more abstract sequences; moving several elements around with the tip of my fingers made the movement of sound more musical, in a way. This movie was very much about finding the right sound and not so much about manipulating, processing, and making big flashy sound design effects. If I should highlight one plugin I really used a lot in this film, then it's a very, very basic plugin called TrueVerb. This contains a preset called "Drum Room" which, with tiny modifications, I use frequently for making Foley sound like it's from location. As any mixer will tell you, making sounds feel natural can be the biggest challenge. Of course, I also use much more advanced reverbs like Altiverb and other IR reverbs but TrueVerb has this lo-fi feeling that makes the sound feel very real—like it's actually recorded in the room. That's extremely important for a documentary like this. I then like to AudioSuite the sounds so that I have the actual sound file and a processed, reverbed sound file on top of each other. I can then pan them a little differently so it feels like there's a reflection in the room and the sound doesn't just come from one source. It was a very enjoyable mix. We did about six weeks of sound editing and one week of mixing. It was a short schedule but we were able to work very effectively because we knew what we were aiming for from the very beginning. HK: From my side, nothing special. Just Pro Tools. We used a D-Command console and S6 controllers with a relatively normal package of plugins. As Peter said, the final mix happened at Mainstream, Copenhagen. (mainstream.dk/mainstreamaps-uk.html) I hope this film gets a wide distribution because it is a very moving portrait of a family in crisis, beautifully shot with a fantastic soundtrack. Many thanks to Peter and Heikki for their time and talent. And thanks to producers Monica Hällström (Denmark), Sami Jahnukainen (Finland), and Tobias Janson (Sweden) who made all this possible.• Heikki Kossi in his Foley studio Oleg