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29 Maitland has traveled the sound block since the '70s, earning his Los Angeles union card working on the TV series MASH as a Boom Operator. He eventually found steady work on the mixing board and since has worked with some of the biggest titans in the industry. In 1990, he snagged his first Oscar nomination for Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July and followed that up with two more noms for JFK (1991) and Seabiscuit, from Director Gary Ross. One of the films Maitland worked on that featured plenty of music—The Doors (1991)—initiated many of the techniques he uses today. The Greatest Showman is a rags-to-riches tale about America's original pop culture promoter P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) and how he turned his family's life around in the most peculiar way. Before shooting began, there were eight weeks of rehearsals in Brooklyn which the actors used to become familiar with their lines and songs. As actors gained traction, it provided an opportunity for sound to record those songs in their own voice at the rehearsal space to use for playback. "We began by already having prerecorded music and temp vocals sung by professional singers. This is what we played back when rehearsals began for dance and music," explains Maitland. "We built a small recording booth there and once the actors started to get the movements and feeling comfortable singing to the prerecorded temp vocals, we began to record temp vocals with the actors. Together with the music editor, we recorded using the booth in the rehearsal space. This is advantageous for two reasons. First, it allows the actor to bring in their inflection and have an idea of how it works with dance. The other, being that you want them to be comfortable with their own voice." During rehearsals, sound also implemented earwigs and thumper so actors were comfortable using them when production began. Once an actor had the performance down, they went to the recording studio to record the final track. There the studio would use three different microphones to record. One being the studio mic, the other two being Maitland's boom and wireless mic. "Recording the tracks this way allows for a smooth transition in editing the dialog on set to the prerecorded singing. By using the same microphones I use on set, the transition from studio mic to set mic sounds more real," Maitland notes. Re-recording Mixer Paul Massey couldn't agree more. "The songs fall into a few categories. They're either an all-out performance inside the circus or an auditorium or one that is more reflective. When we transitioned from dialog to song, it had to be seamless. The challenge is in the vocals and to make sure the environment around it doesn't disappear coming in and out of song. Matching pitch, timbre, quality, voice and reverb all needed to be addressed. Having the studio recordings use the same production microphones helps this tremendously so you can dirty up the studio vocals to match the grit and voice of the production dialog." Rounding Maitland's sound team were Boom Operator Mike Scott, Sound Recordist Jerry Yuen and Playback Mixer Jason Stasium. Production shot in New York, using historic locations like the Woolworth mansion, the Prospect Park boathouse, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Tweed Courthouse, among others. To bring to life Barnum's museum of wonders, an extensive set was built at Capsys, an old brick factory owned by Steiner Studios. The script is laced with dialog and more than ten original songs from Academy Award winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land) of which sound needed to track. When actors were required to lip sync, they were wired with a microphone so production could listen to the sync. "We set up a dual monitoring system for the sound supervisors and music editors so they can hear the playback in one ear and the live actor singing in the other. This way, they can hear if the actor is on or off sync. We also have them use binoculars to watch live, not off video monitors, which has a two-frame delay. It's all about keeping it as real as possible," states Maitland.