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Sound Mixing |
Two Teams
Of Mixers
On A Mix Of Topics
by Karen
Kalish, NT Audio Video Film Labs
Chris Carpenter and Rick Kline recently joined Universal as a team. They have received a total of 10 Academy Award nominations for Best Sound. Rick received a BAFTA award for Best Sound for Missisippi Burning and Chris received a BAFTA nomination for Independence Day. Gregg Landaker and Steve Maslow have been at Universal since 1994. They've worked together since 1983; as a twosome they have Oscars for Best Sound on Speed, as a threesome in the 80's at Warner
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Describing The Craft
Gregg: Sound mixing is like painting on canvas...sometimes it's abstract, sometimes it's like a still-life, but there's always ever-changing emotions to it.
Chris & Rick: Our job as mixers is to help the director give the film a voice, which will tell the story, whatever that is, on the screen.
The Challenge Of Learning
Chris & Rick: There's no formal training. The positions available are limited to hands on training, which would be in a room that's actually mixing a feature film. Consequently, few people are exposed to the craft.
Gregg & Steve: We've had 20 years of experience to get up to this speed; we cut our chops on units that were not as sound intensive, consoles which didn't have automation. Today, for someone to walk in fresh to this industry and try to learn the craft would be very difficult.
Starting Out
Rick began by playing in bands as a musician; Steve's roots are in the record industry as a recording engineer; Chris and Gregg came from the machine room.
Gregg: I worked in the machine room as a loader, then in the transfer department shooting opticals at night with the shows coming off the stage and driving them over to the lab. Eventually, I broke into Foley mixing, ADR mixing, TV and stage mixing and finally, feature mixing.
Chris: I also started as a machine room loader, then recordist; got the opportunity after a few years to mix ADR and Foley. I had a couple of TV seasons on the mixing stage and then settled into feature mixing.
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Teaming Up
Chris & Rick: We've known each other for 16 years. Recently, we had the opportunity to renovate the Hitchcock Theatre at Universal Studios together and team up in that facility.
Gregg: I hooked up with Bill Varney and Steve Maslow at Warner Hollywood. We three were a team until 1983 when [Bill] Varney went to Universal. Steve and I carried on there as a two-man team until George Lucas started Skywalker Sound South in 1990 (a satellite to Skywalker Ranch). Skywalker preferred independent mixers, and at that point we decided to go independent. In 1994 Universal approached us, and built stage 3 for us. Now they are building us another room, which will have a 32 foot Harrison MPC Console, (same model as in the Hitchcock Theatre), which is one of the largest consoles in the world. It's been a major transition, trying to segue out of 35 mag, into the digital world.
Temp Dubs
Chris & Rick: Temp dubs have changed - they are more like full-blown final mixes, because the studios want the best presentation they can have for previewing. Multiple digital workstations such as Pro Tools are brought to the session, so that everybody has their library of the entire film available. It's a big mix, 3 - 4 days. Earlier temp dubs were mono - now temp dubs have 6-channel discreet, digital sound..
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Gregg Landaker "Putting together a soundtrack for a feature film is like painting a canvas with sound. We have a blank canvas with a celluloid image... it's silent to us. I go about this by: 1. Painting the backgrounds in first... balancing them absolutely perfectly for this envelope of sound. 2. Then I start Foley work. The images you see now become alive with these kind of abstract footsteps. ( i.e. the pick up of a glass.) 3. I then paint in key effects... stuff that moves around the screen and flies off the screen. Dialogue is then added. That's your story... your main character, this kind of transparent surface. Your dialogue here stays out front and this stuff comes through the screen and back out." |
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Gregg & Steve: One of the reasons they've become so intense is that the field seems to be driven by computer and special effects items on the screen - everything is blue screen and all the shots are MOS. For the director/producer to show this film to an audience, or for the studio to get an idea of what the film feels like, you have to put a pretty intense sound track to it to make it look real.
The Frustration
Gregg & Steve: You put all of this effort into a temp dub, and then you have to start from scratch, hoping you create a better sounding track. Everything has been taken out to the preview audiences, who have reacted to a certain click, a certain feel in the temp dub and have marked it on their preview cards. They (producers/directors/studio people) always refer back to the temp dub - sometimes you have to drag sound bits out of the temp dub, even though the sound house built new tracks to make the sound quality better. (Gregg calls this situation "Tempitis.")
Merging Of The Unions
Chris & Rick: This is a result of the work being interchangeable with workstations. The roles used to be very clear and defined; who cut, who actually did manipulations of one kind or another. Now, with the sophistication of equipment, many independent sound editorial houses (and sound editors) are doing their own combining of pre-mixes... by the time it gets to the stage, it has actually been worked on.
Gregg & Steve: Since the technology is so interwoven with Pro Tools and Waveframe - it all overlays.
A Message For Editors & Assistant Editors
Gregg & Steve: Wd'd like to see more involvement of the editors coming on the stage to understand the process we go through. Computer-skilled assistants also need to spend time on a dub stage - they shouldn't take offense when work they've created is cut out. In an orchestra, there are the notes, we (as mixers) are the players... we need to have the notes in order to play. It's a real team effort.
Chris & Rick: As digital M/O recorders become more of a reality and a practical alternative to magnetic film recorders, hopefully we'll do away entirely with DA-88's as our recording media. What's practical for an editor to use as media isn't always the most efficient reproducer for the mixer to rock and roll with over the course of a project. We understand the editors' problems today, as well as their budget and time constraints, so it's something we'll all welcome and evolve with in the days ahead.
The Universal Facility:
The Universal Sound facility operates as an audio post production facility located on the Universal Studios lot. The facility has five mixing rooms, a sixth is in process. Director of Engineering David "Doc" Goldstein and his engineering staff designed the facility so that, as Bill Varney affirms, "Every digital piece of equipment talks to oneanother."
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter
Vol. 19, No. 4 - July/August 1998
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