Assembling the Ingredients
An Interview with Production Mixer Jeff Wexler
Jeff Wexler is one of the top production sound mixers in Hollywood, with a long list of distinguished credits including 'Get Shorty', 'Strange Days', 'Being There' and '9 to 5'. The Newsletter asked him about his work and his relationships with editors.
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Producers and directors take the director of photography on location scouts and they discuss the look of the film and things like this, but they rarely if ever, take the sound people along. A lens is much more able to focus in on just what it wants to see. Microphones are much less discriminating. I think it's important that everyone in post-production - and some of my best allies have been the picture editors who have had to suffer because of this - have a discussion about sound before they start shooting. If the "look" of the picture is important, so should the "sound" be considered, and much of what a picture will sound like is really established well before the camera rolls.
"Our biggest job is to sustain the illusion that everything we're seeing happened once in real time not, say, in over two weeks of shooting in several different locations. This is where the craft of filmmaking comes in.
"My analogy is to a cook who assembles all the ingredients - gets the best produce, gets the best so and so - if you don't assemble all of those good materials, you won't make a good dish. You know, the picture editor will not be able to make a good movie. I've always said that my biggest allegiance is to editorial because we have an obligation to give them as much flexibility and as many options as is humanly possible. In the heat of battle, when you're shooting, when you're trying to make the schedule and you're dealing with all the personalities, the physical and monetary difficulties, it's very hard to make final decisions. The final decision should be, "I'm going to try and give the editor and the director as many good choices as possible", because the director later, when he gets into the editing room, is going to say, "Oh, I'm so glad that we did another take that way, I'm so glad we did this other shot."
"I learned a lot of this from Hal Ashby, in the editing room. Hal was a terrific editor before he became a director. I learned that, as production people, we are not making the whole movie in any given day of shooting - we're gathering the pieces.
"A big discussion I have with directors prior to going into production, if they even want to talk to me, is the relative value of miking off-camera actors. It's an unfortunate phenomenon that there are a lot of actors who are at their best off camera. It's not sufficient merely to mike everything as there also exists the likelihood of hurting the on-camera coverage which is really needed.
"Overlapping dialogue is another big discussion I need to have with directors before we start shooting. Sometimes word will come from the picture editor that you're not going to be able to stop them from overlapping so please mike all the overlaps, mike all the off-camera, mike everything. Basically the picture editors are just fighting for their lives. You know, what you're getting from the actor today, even if you tell him to just hold that up so that you don't overlap, will be a more authentic performance even with those constraints than four months later on a looping stage. And the good film actors -- they work all that out. They say, listen, it's your close-up now, we don't want to overlap so when I get to this word I'm just going to hold up here so that you can jump in. If the scene is a heated argument, have both people in the shot because then you can get one piece of film that really works. There are a lot of directors that are sensitive to that and they design the shot photographically so that it accommodates this problem of overlapping dialogue.
"The boom operator is probably the most important person in the production sound recording team because they're in the most creative position to make the critical decisions as to what things will really sound like. The boom operator's responsibilities are awesome. It's not just a guy with strong arms that keeps the mike out of the picture. He's the person that makes the decision how wide the sound is going to be. For example, the classic mistake that inexperienced boom operators and mixers make is when you're doing a scene that's going to have six different angles. For the close-up they will typically position the microphone as close as it can be to the person so it's just out of shot. When you're in a wide shot, obviously the microphone may be very far away. Now you would think that would be all right but the problem is that when all those angles are cut together the sound changes too drastically. It's a result of the angle of the microphone, the distance from the source, the distance from the interacting walls - things that are noticed by a person with a really good set of ears who understands and can remember what you're cutting from.
"A long time ago I asked a director what he thought about the dialogue recording in one of the scenes and he said, 'Well it was great, I heard them talking.' Now my assistant and I use that as a joke - if we do a scene and we're not really that pleased with how it turns out we say, 'Well, we heard them talking.' Because, unfortunately, a lot of directors and producers feel that that is all that's needed on the sound track."
"I had this old friend who does wardrobe actually ask me, before she was going off to do a movie, what would be a good choice for a shirt and a jacket for this kid who was going to be in the movie 90% of the time. She knew they would probably be putting wireless mikes on him because of the nature of where they were going to shoot and she said the director seems to really want this nylon windbreaker, which she suspected was going cause problems. Should she go to him and say wouldn't it be nicer if we had him in a flannel shirt and a cotton jacket? I said of course it would be better. I said by all means tell him that your friend the sound mixer says so... And they went with the flannel. That sort of wardrobe decision can actually have more of an impact on the quality of the production sound than the mixer's choice of recording devices.
"What I consider my best recommendation for doing somebody's movie, somebody I've never worked with before, comes from the editor, or the re-recording mixer or someone who's really had to deal with what we do. I'm not that interested in a recommendation coming from the production manager because their concerns are usually that you be quiet, you don't make waves, you work for very little money and finish everything on time. They don't really know what I may have done to help them make a better movie or save them a lot of time and money in post-production. Typically many production managers don't care what happens in post-production. So if you go over to a production manager and say, listen, can we get that generator moved - I know it's going to take them 25 minutes but if we can move it you're going to save $6,000 in ADR time later - the production manager (who is trying to cut your deal down, who won't give you that 50 cents more an hour which will amount to maybe $1,000 over the run of the picture, and will fight you to the end) won't do it. It's not their money. It's post-production money. They're going to have to bring the actors in anyway, so leave the generator there because if we stop to move it we might not get the shot before lunch."
Jeff was asked if there was something particular he wished to convey to editors...
"I would love to see, coming from the editors, some sort of effort to reinstate the collaborative nature of film making - to make sure that things are going to be done in a manner that makes it possible for everyone to do good work so that you can make a really good movie."
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter
Vol. 16, No. 6 - Nov/Dec 1995
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