The Coffey Audio Files - Summer 2008

THECOFFEY AUDIO FILES

Production Sound Post Production Hardware Software Tech Tips Interviews News

The Beautiful Soundof Ugly Betty

Dirty Sexy Moneyby Richard Lightstone

Bob GravenorCareer Spotlight

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

VOLUME 20 | ISSUE 2 | 2008

Cinema Audio SocietyThe Inner Workings

Post Production Services

Walt Disney

Doc KaneDisneys legend-ary ADR Mixer sits down to discuss his unique niche in the film industry.

Lev J. SpiroConfessions of a Boom Op Turned Director. Featur-ing an Introduc-tion by John Coffey, C.A.S.

Wylie Stateman

www.coffeysound.com

Studios

An Exclusive Interview with the Supervising Sound Editor of Wanted

695 NewbieBoom Op Hanna Collins shares lessons learned during her start in the biz.

The Coffey Audio Files2008Volume 20, Issue 2

President: John Coffey, C.A.S.

Editor in Chief: Steven Wolstrup

Advertising Inquiries: Contact Steven Wolstrup at (323) 876-7525 or via email at [email protected]

Publishing: The Coffey AudioFiles is published with postage paid in the State of California. This publication may not be quoted, reproduced or reprinted in any form without the express written consent of Coffey Sound, LLC. Printed in the USA. All images are copyright of their respective owners.

Coffey Audio Files Online: Visit us online at coffeysound.com and download the free PDF copy of this and other issues of The Coffey Au-dio Files magazine. This PDF may be freely distributed, but may not be quoted, reproduced or reprinted in any form without the express written consent of Coffey Sound, LLC.

Interested in Contributing? Please contact us via email at [email protected] or by telephone at (323) 876-7525.

03 Coffeys Brew A Message from the President.

04 Whats New at Coffey Sound Our 20th Anniversary!

06 The Beautiful Sound of Ugly Betty By Devendra Damon Cleary.

09 695 Newbie By Hanna Collins.

15 Lev J. Spiro 15 Lev, I Always Knew Youd Make it Big By John Coffey, C.A.S. 17 Confessions of a Boom Op Turned Director By Lev J. Spiro

39 Tech Zone 39 RED Camera with Cheat Sheet 41 Sound Devices 788T with Cheat Sheet 43 Audio Glossary (J-L)

46 Product Highlight Camlynx Camera-Hop

06Devendra Damon Cleary

The Beautiful Soundof Ugly Betty

09Hanna Collins

695 Newbie

47Bob Gravenor

Career Spotlight

11Richard LightstoneDirty Sexy Money

37Cinema Audio Society

by John Coffey, C.A.S.

28Wylie Stateman Interview

by Bryan Golder & John Coffey C.A.S.

21Walt Disney Studios

Post Production Services Cover Story!

24Doc Kane Interviewby Steven Wolstrup

THE COFFEY AUDIO FILESPhone: (323) 876-7525 | Fax: (323) 876-4775

3325 Cahuenga Blvd W | Los Angeles, CA 90068

IN THISISSUE

Table of Contents

news is that our industry is very resilient and we have come back from this kind of adversity many times in our past. Before you know it, things will be back to normal, and we will all be working on our place on the assembly line again, making our products for viewer enjoyment. This is a special issue that has some articles we really think you will enjoy. Many of these stories are about friends of mine. I have known some, like Wiley Stateman, Richard Lightstone, Lev Spiro and Bob Gravenor for many years. I es-pecially related to Levs article because I watched his meteoric climb. Now he gives us an insiders view of how a director thinks about sound on their projects. Our next issue will con-tinue this theme with the Open Letter To The Directors. It is an ever-changing document that has found a home in film schools everywhere. It evolved as a pet project of mine with some input from the late departed Stu Fox and many others. Bobs article touches briefly on the taboo subject of hearing loss. Sound technicians need good ears to make a liv-ing. When our acoustic perception begins to fail, it endangers our careers. What do we do at that point? I know some mixers who have quit the business and others who are getting by on experience as long as possible. The bottom line is that there is no question that our job accelerates the loss of hearing. Luckily, I can still hear well enough to mix or boom, but I have to admit that I now find myself saying what? more often and my wife is telling me to turn down the television. Regardless, I dont expect to mix anymore because, after a long and exceptionally non-illustrious mixing career, I recently changed my union card to a 3rd person classification. Its a good way to still bank some union hours and an even better way to stay current with the changing gear that everyone is using. Besides,this way, everyone can get an equal shot at me to clean their cables. I am honored that a few producers still remember to call me, but Im done. Of course, we cant blame all our hearing loss to on set recording, but I am sure it certainly contributes to it by wearing headphones all day. When I mixed, I would feel like I was fail-ing at my job if someone else on the set would hear an incom-ing plane or background noise before I did. So I would set my earphone levels high enough to try to hear the background before anyone else. Riding my phone levels high was a terrible idea and something I would advise you not to do. I also would caution you to be particularly careful around loud sounds, explosions and gunfire. I know for sure that my ears absorbed too much decibel level in scenes where there were effects being mixed with dialogue interspersed. I was so proud to have recorded usable dialogue during a heli-copter scene or firefight, that I would ignore the ringing in my ears at the end of day. I did this for many years. I remember way back to when I was booming TJ Hooker, over 25 years ago, and there were always shots fired between dialogue of freeze

W and hold it. Inevitably, props and I crossed signals and there were unexpected surprises of full loads instead of quarter loads or Shatner fired three shots instead of two. Years of those kinds of inevitable mistakes take their toll. After all those years, I can say now that it wasnt worth compromising any of my hearing. I strongly urge you to change any habits that will inevitably lead to your own long term hearing loss. First, whenever loud noise is predicable, insist your boom operators boom by sight only, with their phones over their ears, but unplugged. Dont let them imperil their hearing too. Mixers should let their ears take a breather whenever possible. We all know we could mix some easy scenes by just watching the meters and taking the level way down. Better yet, use your external speakers when possible. Keep-ing your phone levels as low as possible should extend your career. More importantly, it will enhance the long term quality of your life. There is life after work that includes enjoying hearing fine music and conversation. Phil Palmer said in the CAS Journal, resist that temptation to turn up that knob. As Bob said here, use your crew to help you identify background sounds and learn to trust them more. Forewarned is forearmed.

Now I want to take this opportunity to give my respect and congratu-lations to all of the 2008 Emmy Nominees:

bered as the lost year. Clashes between studios and labor took center stage. The actor and writer negotiations have touched all of us and it is going to take awhile to recover from them. The good

ow! What a time we are going through. 2008 might be remem-

3 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 02 2008

COFFEYS BREW: A Message From The President

20th Anniver

sary!Ben PatrickBill JacksonBill MarinoBob BeemerBob BronowBob La MasneyBruce LeonardBruce PetersCharlie McDanielChris PhilpChristian SchraderClark KingConner MooreDarryl L. FrankDaryl PowellDave RawlinsonDavid RainesDavid WinslowDean GaveauDennis KirkDominick TavellaEd GreeneElmo PonsdomenechEric JohnstonEric LamontagneFrank MorroneFred TatorGary LongGlenn ArberGraeme HughesGriffin RichardsonIain PattisonJamie SantosJason KingJay MeagherJerry ChabaneJim UrsulakJoe AebigJoe EarleJohn Harris

John W. Cook IIKathy OldhamKeith RogersKenneth KobettMarc FishmanMichael OlmanMikael StewartMike MinklerMike ParkerPablo MunguiaPatrick BaltzellPatrick HansonPeter J. NusbaumPeter R. KelseyRandy FaustinoRich RogersRick AlexanderRobert AndersonRobert DouglassRon ReavesRyan UlyateScott ClementsScott WeberSherry KleinSteve MorantzSusan Moore-ChongThomas HolmesTom PesaTom VicariTony LambertiTony PipitoneTroy SmithAndrew FletcherBrian RiordanEric SchillingFred ZellerPatrick BaltzellPaul SharpeRick BalTerry OBright

Sincerely,John CoffeyPresident, Coffey Sound

WHATS NEW AT COFFEY SOUND

The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 02 2008 4

1988-2008

20th Anniver

sary!

BY DEVENDRA DAMON CLEARY

The Beautiful Sound of Ugly Betty There are many names given to this particular position in the Sound Department. While Cable Person, or Utility Sound Technician, are the most common; my fa-vorite name is The Third. It sums it up simply and thor-oughly. There are only three members on the crew in most cases, and we are all coming to work with the same agenda: to capture the best possible sound during production of the companys precious talent. The role of The Third has always been important to Sound Mixers, but I feel its more impor-tant than ever now. My history in the business only stretches back so far, but a particular event sticks out in my mind that expresses the value of the Third. I remember it was early November of 2002 and I was asked to attend a pre-negotiations session, which doubled for the 4th quarter membership meeting for our local 695. It was held in the courtyard at the fabulous AMPTP offices in Encino, California. These talks were taking place at this time for several reasons including the proposal for Studios to freeze Boom Operator wages, and delete Paragraph 106, which dealt with the Composi-tion of the Sound Crew. Basically they wanted to have the Third Person be included on a Sound Crew at their discre-tion. Obviously the Boom Operator wage freeze proposal

was a pressing issue, and of course they did not get away with it, but I feel like the main reason for the assembling and demonstrating was intended to raise issue about the Composition of the Sound Crew proposal. I was allowed (or more so encouraged) to take the day off of work to at-tend this meeting. It was like nothing I had ever seen. The courtyard was like a Production Sound festival! Dozens of Sound Mixers with their carts on display, Boom Operators with fishers ready to demo, and everyone else in between all hyped up. When I scanned the meeting room, the two youngest faces were clearly Greg Gardner and myself (good luck finding fresh faces like that on the AMPTP side of the table). We looked as green as a well irrigated Sonoma golf course. Green or not everyone on our side of the room was there to support one common goal: To keep our Sound Crews with a Third Person. The talks themselves were fairly unproductive of course which I hear is common, and in the end that contract did not include this new proposal to delete Paragraph 106, and the Third Person was here to stay. Good thing too for my sake and for Sound Crews everywhere. Anytime I start a 1st season TV series I can never tell if its going to be a hit. Such was the case for Ugly

BY DEVENDRA DAMON CLEARY


Betty. Sound Mixer Jim Thornton called me up on some May afternoon in 2006 and offered me the job as the Third for the show. I had no idea what to expect when we started shooting that July. It was very hot and of course we started off doing a lot of shooting outside on downtown streets to replicate New York City and Queens. (Uh oh, did I fore-shadow too soon?) The show itself turned out to be very challenging sound wise. It covered two completely different worlds within the story and of course created two different worlds for sound. The first was the almost cartoon-like world of Bettys work: Mode Magazine. She, of course is a fish-out-of-water here as well as most of the audience unless they work in fashion. It is a very make-believe place with out-landish characters and so forth. It was balanced out by the fairly grounded home life that Betty returns to in Queens. There is humorous character work here too but it is much closer to reality. These story elements established a similar contrast for how we approached the sound. The house set is pretty straight forward yet not un-challenging. We got to use booms here! This was where Ace Williams showed off his skills and could be found up over some wall with a furny pad and a monitor. It was kind of a cramped set but workable so, this was where we approached sound in a more traditional way. The Mode offices were a different story. Im sure many shows are now facing these similar challenges and it was a bit jarring at first. Visually it was appealing to play the reflections throughout the set. A black-cloaked Camera crew would maneuver from in back of the rooms hoping to not be seen themselves. Nothing was gimbaled because the set was modeled after an actual practical office in New York where they shot the Pilot. Its funny, glass everywhere with no mullions. We were not necessarily up against the typical wide and tight fight but more so up against the style of the show, which leaned toward wide lenses. Depending on the angle, booms were possible during coverage but rarely dur-ing masters. So, wires were needed pretty much all the time

while shooting in Mode. Walk and talks employed wires as well but no suprise there. I was always pretty happy with the sound of the walk and talks. A lot of tie and blouse rigs that worked nice. Also, Jim is excellent at mixing wires and boom for a more natural sound. The next challenge we faced with the walk-and-talks were the unpredictability of blocking, props, or hand movements with the Betty character which made body mic-ing sometimes not so smooth. Finally a situation occurred where Betty had to zip up a winter coat during dialog and during an un-boomable shot. (Sigh-great, I thought. Are they trying to keep me on my toes?) The only option for the mic would be in her lovely wig. She, of course was okay with this operation having done some Theatre. That day early in the first season, the hair mic was born. We started off using a Sanken COS-11, but due to a tighter fitting wig design that came later we switched to a Countryman B6. This created a wonderful dynamic to the walk-and-talks. Now, Betty was free to carry props like books or boxes or planners up against her chest. Heck, she could even hit her-self in the chest if she wanted. It never ceases to amaze me how often Actors hit themselves in the chest while they are

Lectronics SM Transmitters with Sanken COS-11 lavaliers

Ugly Betty Production Sound Mixer Handsome James Thornton Follow cart with blue neon


wired. The other advantage from the mixing standpoint was because of the slightly more open sound of a mic in some-ones hair instead of their chest allowed Jim to use the hair mic as room fill to air out the other body mic or mics used in the scene. This was handy since Ace, the Boom Operator would probably only be able to be behind camera for the slate and at the end mark. We seemed to always get it with minimal ADR Im told. The show is off to New York City now and Im sure the same challenges will follow. One thing that softens the challenges is the fact that this particular group of Actors are among some of the most co-operative, professional, and talented people out there. When I first got into the business, Thirding was all about the cable and general maintenance. My film teacher who set me up with my first job on a movie set told me He needs a Cable Puller for his next movie (thanks Bob Newman and Dave Schaaf). That was in 1998 and I have been doing it ever since. The job itself has changed consid-erably. For the first several years I felt like the priority was the boom cables, running the snake cables to video village, cleaning cables, audio playback cables, satellite TV cables even. When I wasnt running or wrapping cables, I was soldering them. When I first moved to LA I was given the responsibility of distributing and maintaining walkie-talkies too. My early mentor David Barr Yaffe owns and rents walkies still to this day and is probably one of the few cur-rently taking this on. I hear this was always part of the job in the old days. So, I know even though not every Mixer utilizes wireless for their booms, you have to admit it has become extremely widespread especially in Television. The sheer convenience has attracted many to make the switch. For a while I felt that many people in our field wanted to keep it a secret from Producers that this was becoming the norm because of fears that it would eliminate the Cableman. I feel that it can have an opposite affect. Utilizing two booms is an attractive way to work anyway, and now we can show

Producers how important the Third Person is simply with their booming skills. And mention that those skills should be up to par with the first Boom Operator. And look how fast and efficient we can be moving around the set wire-lessly and switching spots last minute with no delay. With body mics becoming more widely used as well, it places a new essential factor in a Third Persons daily activity. In my earlier days of Thirding it was more common for the Boom Operator to step off the set and wire the Actors. Looking back on this I realize that this is rarely the case in my world now. This leads me to believe that the reason behind this practice was the fact that many Thirds at the time did not have the necessary experience to effectively and success-fully wire Actors. My theory is that only very few people really had the necessary tricks up their sleeves to pull it off anyway since wires were so infrequently used. The new M.O. seems to work better. While the Boom Operator remains on set working out the shots, even if they are not working the master they are formulating plans for boom-ing the coverage, I can stay by the cart or venture out to the talents trailers and get all the wiring done without holding anything up. As much as the job has changed in the last ten years that I have been around, the same principals apply as far as the dynamic between the Mixer and the Third, and the Boom Operator and the Third. Also remaining the same are political dynamics between the Sound Department and the rest of the on-set personnel. What I mean is the Third is still the low one on the totem pole. Some may disagree and look at it more from a team perspective, where I see truth in both. While Thriding will always be about technical inclination, signal flow, troubleshooting, equipment knowledge, sound reinforcement, cart placement, comteks, timecode slates, lock-it boxes, floor softening, shoe softening, door lubricat-ing, expendables ordering, soldering, time card logging, L&D logging, repair coordinating, frequency coordinating, making friends, picking up the Mixers dry cleaning, pick-ing up the Mixers Meds ;), or anything else the Mixer and the Boom Operator need. I do feel that it is less about the cable and all about wiring and Booming. While the dynam-ics may be the same as the old days, you have to admit the Third Persons value has absolutely gone up even in just recent years with the changing landscape of our business, and more demanding style of our ultimate product.

America Fererra (Ugly Betty)

Los Angeles Sound Crew (prior to the shows move to New York)Ace Williams, Boom Operator - James Thornton, Production Sound Mixer

- Devendra, Utility Sound Technician


On my very first take in the business I held the boom upside down, its been quite a learning experience ever since. Ill be the first to admit I havent spent much time on television or movie sets. I started working in com-mercials on the production side, and I was so excited and grateful to be a part of the business that I was probably the most eager and nave PA on the planet. I remember on one of my first jobs I told the production coordinator I could be waiting on standby at a grocery store parking lot at some ungodly hour in the morning, Just in case you need anything. I wondered, at the time, why he gave me such a strange look. After putting in some long hours and long days, I became a regular PA at a couple of different production companies. The first piece of advice I received came from an AD was, figure out whose job you want to have while youre on set, and watch what they do. Unless, of course, youre content with bringing everyone coffee. I took his advice to heart and starting working with different depart-ments to get a sense of what they do. At the production company where I was spending most of my time, the boom ops name was Cricket. She was always there, a fly on the wall, having secret conversa-tions no one else but her mixer, Doc, could hear. She was focused and calm, listening to every take. The pure zen of the job had me hooked. I told everyone who would listen that I wanted to be a boom operator. I got my chance a couple weeks later on a freebie with that same company and I actually did hold the boom upside-down. I worked on a couple of freebies, and then did some low budget favors which evolved into paid gigs. One of those favors was a two-day night shoot for a Los Ange-les Metro safety video with mixer Dan Kent. They were shooting hi-def on 30-minute tapes all night long, while I held up a 416 on a fully extended pole. My arms wouldnt stop shaking while the talent tried take-after-take to nail

his monologues. Dan started counting how many times my mic hit the ceiling, three four come on Hanna. I had no idea at the time but the metro station was so loud he was using the radios the whole night and he was letting me practice. I wasnt totally useless though, he oc-casionally used my mic as filler. I did a few more where I was there to catch a sneeze or some ambient sound, slowly working my way up to capturing hellos and thank yous.

Hanna Collins695 Newbie

Mark Sheret & Hanna Collins9 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 02 2008

695 Newbie: Hanna Collins

Soon I wound-up working with crews I used to PA for. There was no way I could pretend that I had become an in-stant pro, so I decided to ask questions. Lots of them. After all, who better to learn lighting from than a gaffer of about lenses from a camera assistant. My main teacher has become mixer Mark Sheret, and his bare bones style of telling me things only once made for quick learning and many heart attacks. Right before we would roll hed say Do you hear that? I would strain my ears to hear over the set chatter to here a faint high-pitched buzz. Thats a noisy ballast, what are you going to do about it? So Id scramble to find the gaffer to get it covered in time. Its been a trial-by-fire but unbeliev-ably valuable. I spent my down time working out, visiting Rob at Coffey Sound for more Sound 101 and occasionally chasing boom operator Yvette Hill around her house with a boom pole. I visited sets, like Scrubs and even got a couple of days as utility (thanks Joe!) on their second unit. Even-tually my daily heart palpitations subsided and I started showing up on set knowing what I had to do. By the time this article runs I will have been a part of Local 695 for almost a year. Im not quite as fluid and graceful as I thought I would be (those ballet lessons didnt take into account my big feet or my cable) but Im work-ing on it.

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695 Newbie: Hanna Collins

Ive done a fair amount of work on episodic tele-vision shows. Frankly, the standard operating procedure is about the same: Two cameras, wide and tight, merciless lighting, wire the cast wall to wall and keep your fingers nimble. Dirty Sexy Money is different. My wireless racks are off for days at a time and Boom Operators Jeff Erd-mann and Damon Harris are out there all the time. I am a traditional hardwired Boom kind of mixer. (More on that later). Dirty Sexy Money is a one-hour episodic, airing Wednesdays at 10PM on ABC. We had a pretty good run pre WGA strike and managed to finish our first seasons 13. Now we are back for a second season and another 13 episodes and a possible back-nine pick up. Season 2 premieres October 1st. The show is about the Darlings, one of the wealth-iest families in New York, seen through the eyes of their family lawyer, played by Peter Krause. Its a wild, humor-ous, exciting soap opera of sorts, with great scripts. Appearing with Peter Krause is Donald Suther-land, Jill Clayburgh, William Baldwin, Natalie Zea, Lucy Liu, Glenn Fitzgerald, Seth Gabel, Zoe McLellan and Blair Underwood. The show was created by Craig Wright who also serves as executive producer alongside Greg Berlanti, Bry-an Singer, Matthew Gross, Peter Horton and Josh Reims, with Melissa Berman producing. Horton directed the pilot, which was shot in New York. Our base is Paramount Studios where we occupy Stages: 23, 24, 27 and 20. We also shoot on the back lot

New York streets. Each episode shoots for nine days of which we are off the lot for about 2 of them. Dirty Sexy Money is staffed with one of the best crews Ive ever worked with they are all feature experi-enced guys who are not only fun to work with every day, but extremely co-operative, led by Jeff Jur our DP. Jeff likes to shoot masters with only one camera and then the closer coverage with two. This is a bonus for me and gives Jeff Erdmann and Damon Harris great boom positioning and allows me what I call a feature sounding mix. As I said, I like my booms to be hard wired. As good as the Lectrosonics are, I prefer the full dynamic range I get through a cable with no front end limiting. I have two Schoeps CMIT-5U mics for booms. For plant mics I prefer the Sennheiser MK50s and if concealment is an issue, I use a Schoeps MK41 capsule on a colette cable. When wires are necessary its the Lectroson-ics SMs with the Sanken COS 11s and occasionally the Countryman B6s. Currently I have two racks of 411s but I plan to switch to two of the Wide-Band Venues in the fall if SAG doesnt go on strike. My main recorder is the Deva 5 and I back up to BoomRecorder. Im using the Yamaha 01V96 and send AES to the Deva 5 and identical track assignments to BoomRecorder via the ADAT output. BoomRecorder is on my Intel Mac-Mini. The RME Fireface 400 is the firewire interface. Since this is a film shoot, the Yamaha serves as the master word clock at 48k.I record at 30 NDF-TC, BWF-Poly at 24 bits. I record my

By Richard Lightstone, CASFrom Left to Right: Mixer - Richard Lightstone, CAS, Boom Operators - Damon Harris and Jeff Erdmann


comp mix to Channels 1 and 2 and Channels 3 8 are my isos. You are all probably asking why I use two chan-nels for my main mix. I have been burned in the past by sleepy colorists making their own choices for dailies. I have telecine (Encore) well trained to transfer both chan-nels summed to mono for DVD dailies. The Avid flex-files delivered to editorial have discrete channels. So if I have to deliver a two-channel split; lets say a downtown walk and talk on two wires I dont have to send red-flagged notes to get them to transfer 1 and 2 for dailies. Ive done a lot of two channel splits on the show. Sometimes its motivated by what the cameras are seeing or a scene with music playback. The Picture Department has always been very happy when Ive given them that op-tion. I deliver a Deva 5 Master DVD-Ram with all re-corded tracks and my backup DVD-R from BoomRecorder is identical. Once telecine has done their transfers the material is delivered to Sound Editorial. I dont make any secondary two track only copies for telecine. I strongly believe that the Sound Editors are busy enough and I dont want to confuse them with anymore redundant dailies only copies of discs.

I am also archiving each days partition onto a G-tech mini drive and recycle the drives after each show is mixed. So I have plenty of redundant back ups available if disaster strikes.

From Left to Right: Mixer - Richard Lightstone, CAS, Boom Operators - Damon Harris and Jeff Erdmann

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The Yamaha 01V96 has been serving me very well over the last five years. I like having a lot of inputs, routing is a breeze and I also like the fact that Im output-ting and recording signals 100% in the digital domain. It works seamlessly with the Deva 5 and BoomRecorder. This season I upgraded my Yamaha with the Add-On-Effects package. Included in the software is Compressor 260, which emulates the dbx 160. Im using it right after the input trim on the channels where I have hard-wired microphones. Ive set the attack and release values exactly like the limiters on the Cooper 208 and its working beautifully. Our Post-Sound Supervisor is Marla McGuire and Pete Elia is the lead Rerecording Mixer over at Westwind Media. Here is Marla McGuires point of view: On Dirty Sexy Money we assemble the show from the original Deva 5 Masters. These days, its not un-common for facilities to translate the picture editors OMF and cut the dialogue using the sound from the Avid. We dont do this for two reasons. First, however slight, there is a generational loss. Secondly, the sound digitized into the Avid is the mix track only. Our production mixer Richard Lightstone has gone to great lengths to isolate characters on different mics and its nice to have access to all his tracks. The mix track off the Deva is used prob-ably 80% of the time. Its very nice to discover that what might not be usable in the mix track is on-mic and clean in the iso which means I can avoid looping a line that even the picture editor thinks we need to get. So my job is as follows. Before the show gets un-derway, my dialogue assistant and I communicate with the production mixer so were all on the same page technical-ly. Once the editorial department locks an episode, I go in for a spotting session. There is usually one spot for music and a separate one for sound. Here the picture edi-tor and producer (s) go over what they want the show to sound like and lines of ADR that they want to add. Many times the network will require extra lines of dialogue to clarify a story point. Next, I cue the ADR in a program that is easy for both the ADR facility and actor to use. Once the ADR is shot I cut it to match the dialogue being replaced or manipulate it to fill in the sound gap if its an added line. My dialogue editor has also been given a copy of the ADR sheets. He will edit the line being replaced out onto the x-track and put ambient fill from the scene in its place. This is why it is nice wherever possible for the production mixer to record room tone. Otherwise, the dialogue editor cuts out words in the scene to compile small bits of ambience strung together to create the fill. Once on the dub stage, the mixer can both try and clean up the dialogue on the x-track using various filters and

plug-ins or he can play the ADR and play the fill and work on the ADR until it sounds like it was recorded at the same time as the rest of the scene. The dialogue editor also smoothes out extreme ambience changes cut to cut and pulls out extraneous ticks and pops. Another chal-lenge is overlaps. Sometimes we get a section that has an overlap on one track and the line clean from a different take playing at the same time. This results in hearing 3 people talk when theres only two people in the scene! In that case, I either have to ADR both characters or find an ALT take to rebuild the section as close as possible to the performances that the picture editor picked. At the same time all the dialogue and ADR work is happening I also need to cue the Foley and give the cue sheets to the Foley walkers to perform. This includes a cloth pass the length of the show as well as all footsteps and prop mvt. After the domestic dub we do whats called an M and E (music and effects) which is a separate mix filling in the Foley that is missing when we just play the fx and music stem from the mix. The reason there is Foley missing is because often the production track will already have the sound of something we might add married to the dialogue (footsteps for example). If it isnt egregious, we will opt not to ADR the line and also not to add more Foley footsteps since that will result in doubling up on footstep in the section. So now when we lose the dialogue stem for the M & E there are no footsteps at all so we need to mix them in from the original Foley source units. I also pass on FX notes to my sound FX editor. I communicate to him what the producers notes are as well as my own ideas on how the sound FX should comple-ment all the other sound elements. He will cut stereo bgs, which will be mixed, in 5.1 surround sound as well as hard fx (gunshots, doors, car fx etc) Basically my team has 5 days to assemble the show and cut the dialogue, BGs, FX, ADR and Foley. The night before the dub I put the ADR and the dialogue in one session and run everything together so my dialogue editor and I can finesse how it all plays together for the dialogue mixer Pete Elia, CAS. We then have two days on the dub stage where I have one mixer who does the dialogue, adr, and music (provided by a music editor) and the second person mixes the Foley, BGs and FX. Dirty Sexy Money in particular is a dialogue intensive show. It is very rewarding collaborative process. Between Richard Lightstones full, rich dialogue tracks, the sound editorial process and a fabulous dub stage team, it all ends up sound great which is a reward unto itself! Heres how Craig Weintraub, the dialogue editor handles my tracks: The first thing I do in preparing a show for sound post production is copy the Sound Mixers Polyphonic

Dirty Sexy Money


Files and translate them into individual ProTools files. In the case of DSM, we have four to eight tracks per sound file, with two of these being dedicated mix tracks. Sound Logs are critically important in this stage. In Television, where there is often no time to individually label each file with the appropriate scene and take ID, it is crucial that the sound log accurately cross reference the Deva files to their corresponding scene and take number. Otherwise, the Dialogue Editor cannot quickly search for alternate takes when editing problems occurs. It also helps that our Sound Logs contain specific microphone designations for each scene and take for quick reference. After loading my dailies, the next stop in my process is assembling the production dialogue. For this procedure I use an Edl supplied by the Picture Depart-ment, along with Titan Software. Because our turnarounds are very short, I request a preliminary EDL the day before the turnover. This allows me time to troubleshoot any discrepancies in the database and procure any missing data that I am missing for the assembly. For DSM, we use the original Production Audio for our assembly and not the OMF (though we carry the OMF for reference). Although this is more time consum-ing, the production dailies are of higher audio quality and

allow an editor individual access to all the channels that were originally recorded. This all contribute to a better mix. I use Titan software to both assemble the original dialogue from the dailies and then to sync this assembly to a Guide Track provided by the picture department. Nevertheless, after both these procedures, I still have to manually check the dialogue for sync, cut by cut, because sometimes incorrect pieces can be assembled during the auto-conform. Fortunately on DSM, the timecode record-ed on the set has been successfully carried throughout the telecine and picture editing process, making these large assemblies pain free (knock on wood). Co-Producer Art Rusis is in charge of Post Production along with Post Supervisor Courtney Cowan. They are the most supportive and delightful postproduc-tion people Ive ever worked with. Then there is the ever smiling and happy Executive Producer Mathew Gross, Producer Kelly Van Horn and Production Manager Paul Cajero, who are all wonderful professionals and great filmmakers. Thats why its a joy to go to work each day on Dirty Sexy Money, which is truly a dream series to mix.

Dirty Sexy Money

I first worked with Lev Spiro many years ago. We were doing a fun TV show called Tales From The Crypt. Lev said he wanted to work on it because a lot of high profile di-rectors did that show. I didnt get his real meaning until later on. Lev was an excellent boom operator and third person, but he had one huge flaw.Lev would tell everybody who would listen that what I really want to do is direct. Can you imagine the audacity? Sure he had the same choppy reel of personal projects that all the other dreamers had, but I would have to constantly tell him to stop saying he wanted to direct and just accept the reality that his lot in life was going to be the same as the rest of us.toiling below the line until we retire. Whats so bad about that? But this guy just didnt have the common sense to listen to me. Then, one day Lev suddenly tells me he was quitting Tales immediately because he had an offer to direct a real film. Upon further inquiry, I found out his film was a really low budget deal, even for a Corman film standard. Naturally, I told Lev he was nuts to leave a perfectly good (paying) job and if he did, he sure wouldnt work with me again. The fool told me to stick it and left. Cut to montage over the next twenty years, as I would see Levs name around, on show after showto my amazement, his credit would say DIRECTOR! Lev went on to direct many hours of films, tv series and pilots. He actu-ally was one of the chosen few to have made it a career. In fact, hes the only sound person I knew who ever did. There were some, like the Steven Halbert, the ultimate filmmakers mixer, who forayed into directing several times, but Levs the only one I know who never went back to the sound depart-

ment again. So I was true to my word, Lev never did work with me again. Not that he would ever want to. He was now an established big time director. Damn, if I had only humored Lev more back then and encouraged him to follow his dreams. Then I would have had one hell of a client when he made the cross-over to the above the line world. As time went on, I would occasionally visit fellow mixers on sets, where I didnt know that Lev happened to be directing their episode. He was always quite pleasant when we acciden-tally bumped into each other, but I saw through him and wouldnt stick around long enough to get fed any humble pie. I would quickly slink off into the shadows of his set and out that stage door as fast as I could. Then, one day an old producer chum, Gary Stran-gis, hired me for another job with him. It was for a new TV pilot called Summerland. When he told me the director was Lev, I thought Oh >*^#! I had to do it because I had a house payment and I figured it would be another of those humiliations that happen as you try to get through life. So I was prepared to take it like a man. The director wasnt there when we got on the bus and took off to meet him at the first location. As I got off the bus, I walked right into the wait-ing arms of, you guessed it Lev Spiro himself! The hug seemed genuine enough but behind the smile, I was sure I detected a glimmer of payback in his eyes. I felt like a deer in headlights. This was going to be 3 long weeks of hell. I felt bad to do this to my crew of Tim Salmon and Gregory Frazier. Naturally, the fears never materialized and things

Lev, I always knew youd make it big...By John Coffey, CAS

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went fine after all. Lev was nothing but a class guy and didnt rub it in once. In fact, he didnt hold any grudge at all. When we started shooting, I was quite proud to hear him say action since I now fancied myself to be the one who gave him his first break. by driving him out of sound. Because Lev really knew his audio, no show I had ever worked on before or since was more satisfying than doing this pilot. It was 3 weeks of sound mixer heaven. Lev was one step ahead of us all the way. I never had to ask him for anything, ever, without him beating me to a solution to any problem. It was spine tingling to be walking towards a director to ask for something we need and hear him an-nounce it out loud before he saw me coming. It didnt matter if it was to ask for more voice, another take for a background noise, to wait for a plane or blowing my cue. Lev always beat me to the punch. Lev made sure that after awhile, I never had to put my newspaper down and have to get up. The crew didnt even know how tall I was. In fact, Lev did something that literally saved the audio on the film from being looped. Since this pilot was all shot at the beach, the house location could hear the varying degrees of loud wave action, depending upon if we were in the house, on the back porch, walking on the beach or in the ocean itself. What Lev did was so simple and subtle, but it worked beautifully. He always announced room tones before the tides and waves would change, so he could match all the coverage with the same backgrounds. His style was so unique and simple that I wish all directors would copy it. The coolest thing was that at the end of each piece of cover-age where we had wave noise in backgrounds, Lev would say Cut the camera but keep rolling sound. On top of that, he policed them. If any crew shuffled around like they usually do, Lev made a point to come down on them with a wrath. It wasnt long before the whole crew, even the DP and actors, realized that room tones were something to respect on Levs set. Its the first time I ever saw an entire crew stay completely noiseless for room tones longer than 10 seconds. The post mixer, Benjamin, told me that those room tones literally saved post from hours of looping. He praised me for recording them, but I have to admit a secret now. Maybe I forgot to mention it could only have happened with Levs direction and force of will upon his crew. In the end, those room tones only took up about a sum total of a few minutes of set time over the entire pilot and proved to me it can be

done on all shows with co-operation. Lev did other things like always using his multiple cameras correctly so that sound could still get an overhead mic close to the actors when they wore bathing suits and we couldnt use a wireless on them. He would have the AD roll just as the plane was tailing out to have longer clean time between planes. He cared about dolly creaks on wood floors. He would even occasionally talk to the boom opera-tor after a rehearsal to see if the shot was set up too hard to mic. I could go on and on, but suffice to say, the guy knew his stuff and in the end, he added more production value to his projects. That pilot got picked up, but Lev went on to other projects and I went on alone and mixed most of the first season, before quitting. I quit because of super long hours and drive time, but what was really hard on me and my crew (Tim Salmon and Jeff Erdman) was to do the same show as the pilot, with the same beach locations, but without any of same co-operation from the episodic directors. Everyone in production was really nice, but I was constantly told we would have to loop it rather than accommodate sound the same way we did it on the pilot. The comparisons between the pilot and series were a nightmare for me. After awhile, it simply wears on you to know that most scenes could really be shot without looping, if they would only do things such as use multiple cameras differently when we have scenes with actors in bathing suits. To read my sad story of that series, go to www.coffeysound.com. Lev spoiled me because he showed that sound can always be part of the big picture with little effort. If Lev were to say loop it, he would have a damn good reason for it. I have since retired from mixing to hang around the store, but I can now die as a happy former sound mixer who actually got to see that a perfect audio show was possible. For this special edition, I asked Lev if he would share some of his thoughts on audio with those of you in the sound department. Its priceless to get an actual insight into how a director thinks about sound while hes so busy doing every-thing else on set at the same time.

Enjoy,John Coffey, CAS

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Shooting Summerland at Malibu Beach

John Coffey working at the beach with his all-purpose vehicle cart

Okay, so Im not really confessing anything, but I thought it was a catchier title than A Directors Per-spective on Sound Mixing, which is what I was asked to write about. I do have a somewhat unique perspective on production sound, in that before I broke in to directing, I worked full time for 3 1/2 years as a boom operator, with some sound mixing and one utility sound credit thrown in for good measure. The latter was on the feature Terminal Velocity for mixer Stephan Von Hase; when I got my first Corman feature to direct a year later, my brother suggested that the films tagline be; From the Cableman of Terminal Velocity Since my Corman days I have managed to eke out a respectable directing career, largely in television, and over the past decade and a half have accrued over 100 epi-sodes, pilots, and films to my credit. Now; three things I love: Coen Brothers movies, my wife, and my dog. Three things I hate; waiting for actors to come out of their trailer, Bush Jr.s policies, and looping. There; now you know almost everything about me. In 1989 I came to LA fresh out of film school, with several festival-winning shorts to show. Despite landing an agent, it dawned on me pretty quickly that Spielberg might not materialize on my doorstep with $20 million and a feature assignment, at least not before my meager savings ran out and that Id better figure out a way to make a living while I attempting to convince the

town of my directorial genius (still working on that, by the way.) Because Id done a fair bit of sound work in vari-ous other capacities freelancing as an audio engineer for local television in Austin, Texas and Madison, Wisconsin, and recording bands both live and in studios - I thought I could market myself as a boom operator, with a view to being on sets and watching other directors work. After making 70 or 80 cold calls and sending my resum to as many mixers, I got a call from Cameron Hamza, who was mixing Lambada The Forbidden Dance and needed to field another sound team for some second unit days. Once I was on set, it took him about 23 seconds to realize how green I was (Oh, when the actor turns around you have to keep the mike in front of their face?) but whether through patience or desperation, Cam-eron stuck with me, and I got a crash course in booming over the next week. From Lambada I made a pretty steady living over the next few years doing television, features and commer-cials, with mixers that included Sunny Meyer, Stu Fox, D.J. Ritchie, John Barbee, and a handsome young fellow named John Coffey, amongst others. I wont go into how I managed to break in as a director but I will say that compared to being a boom operator, people laugh at my jokes a lot more now. But on to more important things sound from a directors per-


spective. First off, I really do hate looping. I rarely feel like Im able to recreate the performance we achieved on-set, when the actor is standing alone in a glassed-in booth try-ing to both emote and perfectly match his/her cadence to what was done before. And the looped lines often stand out to me in the final mix even if the audience is not consciously aware of the difference, I think they can often sense it. So on the one hand I will definitely try to go out of my way to give the Production Sound Mixer and his team the time and consideration they need to get useable sound. ( I hope that relatively few of the wonderful and talented mixers with whom Ive worked over the past years have just thrown down this magazine in disgust.) To elaborate; useable means something quite different to me than pristine or perfect. Having to shoot fast in television is more the rule than the exception these days. Lets look at a few situations in which I have found myself vis--vis sound. 1. The Flight Path. There seems to be a direct correlation between how much one likes a location as a director, and how close it turns out to be to a flight path. And of course, its at times when the clock is going to expire on your child actor in 45 minutes and you have a 3 page scene to shoot, that as soon as one plane starts to re-cede, the next one is coming in. (Any moments of silence in between will undoubtedly coincide with Cameras need to reload.) I may ask my mixer to roll as a plane recedes, knowing that we still hear it, but hoping to get the key moments of dialogue I need in between planes. There are also times when the plane is not quite gone, but I know very well that the part of the shot I really need in the edit-ing room doesnt occur until 30 seconds into the scene, so that plane that sounds like a friggin Stuka dive bomber will be gone by then. 2. Traffic/Background Noise. Having worked through many re-recording mixes, I fully appreciate what a blessing a clean, pristine dialogue track can be. But I also know that as long as the dialogue is appreciably above the background, 9 times out of 10 we can make it work in the mix. One thing I do often try to do when we have a BG problem is cut the cameras when I have what I need from a take, but ask sound to keep rolling and the cast and crew to freeze, in order to get the ambience track right then and there for the rerecording mixers. On a tight schedule, most producers would rather have you loop stuff than shut down the crew to record ambience before you leave a location. I hate looping. 3. Noisy Actor Business. Actors love business if theyre not refolding a loud crinkly newspaper, theyre whisking eggs in a metal bowl. You know the drill. As a director, I want the actors to be comfortable and in

the moment, and my primary goal is great performance. But have I mentioned that I hate looping? If we see the business in a wide or medium shot, then as long as the dialogue is discernible over the noise, Im fine. There have certainly been times when Im in a close shot and the Production Mixer asks if the actor can mime the business. Usually Ill say yes. But honestly, there are also times when I know it wont yield ideal sound, but Id rather not ask the actor to fake an action his tactile sense/memory stroking that chinchilla jacket is more important than per-fect sound. (Chinchilla? What?) 4. Things That Go Clunk In the Night. Im the last person to get annoyed at a boom op for bumping a shotgun on a location ceiling in the middle of a take. But that also does not always mean Ill do another take just because there was a clunk, or an electronic hit from the wireless on a piece of dialogue, or because a an electrician dropped a bear claw on a nearby cymbal (highly unlikely I know usually this is a teamster). Look, if I have time, its nice to have a perfect take all the way through. But when the clock and the UPM are breathing down my neck, I may know perfectly well that I liked that line better from Take 2 anyway, or that Im going to play that on the 2-shot. My advice is to let your director know where the take was bad, but please dont be offended if he/she/I move on anyway. I see my prattling has already eaten up most of my


Lev Spiro booming Terminal Velocity in 1994

allotted page space, so a few more odds and ends and Ill shut up.-- On pilots and films, I usually try to make it a point in the production meeting to tell the crew that I value good production sound, and want the other departments to cooperate with 695, whether it means moving genera-tors, putting up furnie pads, or zipping lips while getting ambience tracks. On episodes, Im a guest coming into a pre-existing culture and way of working, so I have rela-tively little say. The same goes for locations when its up to me, I try to choose sound-friendly places. More than once Ive walked into episodic prep to find that some or all of the locations have already been chosen. -- I will often ask mixers to cut the actors body mics when Im giving direction between takes. I dont al-ways want the writers and producers and the stunt doubles Comtek-wearing Aunt Martha to hear what Im saying to the thespians. -- I know how hard a boom ops job is. Throwing an occasional shadow or bumping an occasional ceiling is no different than missing a focus mark for an AC (and I

have made this point to several camera folk). My only pet peeve, and it rarely happens, is a boomer who has missed the rehearsals, and then has to ask me whats going on. -- Mixers, please turn the Comteks back on after lunch. :) -- There are times, hopefully few and far between, when I have to let go of my aversion to looping. Sometimes the Ritter is more important than the actors exclamation. -- I often shoot with two cameras. There are times when I know Im screwing sound, but in order to make my day I have to do wide and medium at the same time. I try not to. To be honest, I rarely have problems with my sound departments I usually find them to be some of the most competent and professional folks on the set. They have to be, because theyre generally underappreciated, and are unrealistically expected to never cause any delays. But both as a director and former 695 member, I truly appreciate good location sound, and will do what I can to make that possible.

confessions of a boom op turned directorcontinued


At first, we were afraid to suggest that this little receiver was tough enough for use in portable mixing bags. We tried to explain that it was meant for camera slot use only.

Afterall, it was two channels in one box, too small for fancy front-end filters, the current consump-tion was kept low, which reduced IM rejection, and so on.

That argument lasted about 15 seconds.

We simply had to face the fact that its tiny size and miniscule weight was just too appealing for use in a portable bag system.

Its in the bag now.After further testing and comparison with other models, however, it turned out to be much more competent in a bag than we first thought, which made us feel a lot more comfortable.

You still need to pay attention to bag issues like frequency coordination and antenna placement, just like you do with any other receiver. But, the back-saving benefits of having two wireless receivers in one little bitty 7 oz. box is worth a little fooling around.

Digital Hybrid WirelessTM

US Patent 7,225,135

Go ahead. Get comfortable.

COVER STORY

Upon arrival at the Walt Disney Studios nestled in the quiet town of Burbank, we were greeted by friendly, resident squirrels and enchanted by the serene campus-like setting. As we crossed Mickey Avenue and made our way to Post Production Services, located in the old Animation building, we were reminded of the studios rich history. As we conversed with Gil Gagnon, Vice President of Post Production Services, we found that Walt Disney Studios Post Production Services is much more than a sound department. We enable the entire digital work-flow throughout your feature film or television project, explains Gagnon. We have 16 different services that fall under our umbrella that includes award winning talent, award winning tools wrapped with high-end technol-ogy. From the day you start shooting, were with you the whole way. Coffey Sound was able to witness the process first-hand and also had the pleasure of meeting some key people as Gagnon walked us through Disneys Post Pro-duction Services facilities. Upon leaving Gagnons office, we couldnt help but gaze at the lit wall which showcased the seven Academy Award nominations received over Gagnons seven year tenure. His passion for the creative side of things was evident as he proudly pointed out the accomplishments of his staff including an Academy Award win for George Watters II on Pearl Harbor. There were plaques mounted under each of the posters with the names of the individuals and the years they were nomi-nated. In addition to George, Terry Porter, Dean Zupan-cic and Doc Kane were well represented on the wall of

fame with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Narnia, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Their creative accom-plishments dont stop there; Gagnon also plans to place plaques on the opposite side of the hall, paying tribute to the departments multitude of Emmy nominations includ-ing ABCs LOST and Alias. Its not about the box; its about the people running the box. Gagnon affirms. Im very proud to have such a talented group of creative artists here at Disney. We made our way out of old Animation and head-ed to the next stop on our tour: the Digital Media Center. The Digital Media Center, a central hub with over 200TB of storage, allows media to be managed and served via a high-speed fiber network. We enable you to send files around the world and provide many tools to help you work in todays fast-paced global environment. By way of Disneys Digital Media Center, clients can screen dailies throughout the production shoot, in a host of formats including High Definition to screening rooms and executive suites or Standard Definition to desktops in any location. There was a myriad of tape formats available including D5 and HDCAM-SR. Did somebody say D-Cinema? They have every brand of D-Cinema server on the market and that was impressive. We need to guar-antee that our D-Cinema packages will play on all of the players in the marketplace, Gagnon adds, Failure is not an option. They also have the ability to fiber feed any of their screening rooms, dub stages, ADR stage as well as dark-fiber feeds directly to their key suppliers in the

Walt Disney Studios DisneyPost DisneyProduction DisneyServices

More DisneyThan Disneya DisneySound DisneyDepartment

COVER STORY


Steve Wolstrup, P.J. Aminpour, Gil Gagnon, John Coffey & Jeff Bown

From the day you start shooting, were with you the whole way.

industry. When you make movies digitally, data is half the battle and knowing how to wrangle all of that information is key. Having 15 years of visual effects in my background has played a major role in getting us where we are today. VFX and sound have been digital since the early 90s and over the past several years weve seen the live-action picture world transition as well. Its both an exciting and challenging time in our industry right now. Im blessed to have such a great engineering department here at Disney. Steve Boze has been here for 27 years and knows whats at the end of every wire in this place. He has a great team of engineers as does Kevin Rosenberger who heads up Projec-tion Engineering. We couldnt do it without them. Gagnon insists. Moving into the post production phase, the baton is passed over to Disneys Academy Award winning sound

department. Early on, Sound Editorial designs the sound for both feature and television projects. This department features award winning talent such as George Watters, Rob Sephton, Don Malouf, and Tom DeGorter to name a few. Next stop, B Stage, home of four-time Oscar nominated ADR mixer, Doc Kane (see featurette). For Sound Mixing, the project is united with a team of award winning mixers on one of Disneys state-of-the-art Dub Stages. Disneys 5 stages are equipped to handle both features and television and use a combination of traditional film consoles and the latest in ICON technology. Gagnon added, When youre done with your final mix, were far from walk-ing away. Another one of Post Production Services unique businesses is its Optical Soundtrack depart-

A stock Disney Post Production Editorial Suite

Vice President of Disney Post Production Gil Gagnon and President of Coffey Sound John Coffey

Tom Dahl, Jeff Bown,and Erik Flockoi


Walt Disney Studios DisneyPost DisneyProduction DisneyServices

COVER STORY

Re-Recording Mixers Terry Porter & Dean Zupancic

ment. Gagnon explains, Once your final mix is complete, we shoot your optical soundtrack negative right here on the lot in up to four formats simultaneously and then its processed in our own black & white lab. Its then sent off to our negative cutters where the soundtrack is synced up to the picture negative. It then comes back from the lab in the form of a composite answer print which will be QCd in one of our screening rooms in all formats and in all lan-guages. We not only handle this for film but for all of the Digital Cinema formats as well. So now your film is ready for the World Premier and here at Disney, we wouldnt trust that to just anyone, pledges Gagnon. For the big premier, the Projection Engineering staff is deployed to guarantee that everything goes smoothly. From setting up a premier of Cars at Loews Motor Speedway in North Carolina for 30,000 people on three giant screens to the daunting feat of projecting Pearl Harbor on an aircraft carrier, Disneys Projection Engi-neering staff is truly amazing. Now that your film has been released all over the world, Post Production Services is just getting started with ancillary markets, as this department also handles all of the

audio encoding for the DVD and Blu-Ray home enter-tainment release. Additionally, PPS has a group of editors that will re-edit the film years later for TV and syndica-tion purposes. They handle over 500 titles a year, says Gagnon, Many years later, well pull out your movie and restore it, put it into a new format, if needed, and if it can be enhanced by a new mix such as Disney En-hanced Home Theatre mix, well do it! D.E.H.T. was the brainchild of Terry Porter and has become the standard for Disneys Platinum home entertainment titles. This 7.1 D.E.H.T. process is featured on the upcoming Platinum release of the recently restored animated classic, Sleeping Beauty. As we round out our tour and end up on the steps of the Main Theatre, staring at the handprints of Disney Legends, were again reminded of the rich history this studio offers. Gagnon concedes, As you can see, we never really let go of any project and were always look-ing out for the best interest of the title from day one to many decades later. Where we thought wed meet just another sound department, we found a whole lot more.

John Coffey, Terry Porter & Gil Gagnon

COVER STORY


Doc DisneyKane

How did you first get interested in sound?My first experience in sound was playing in a band in high school and college. I wasnt a great musician, but I liked the engineering aspect a lot. I was the one that recorded the band and I had fun learning to make the 4 of us sound like 8 of us and then 12 of us etc. I really enjoyed being on the other side of things.

How long have you been in ADR?I just kind of fell in by accident. I went to work for War-ner Hollywood and saw their ADR stage. I thought it was great, so I said the next time youve got an opening, Id like to take it!. Not long afterward, Kevin OConnell, who was working the ADR stage, went over to dubbing and they put me in there. I loved it.

How many years have you been at Disney?Ive been at Disney 20 years now!

How did you first come to work for DisneyWhen Michael Eisner came over, they started rebuild-ing the studio. Jacobus Rose was the head of the sound department and was hiring people to rebuild it. I made contact to Jacobus one summer evening while we were slow at Warner Hollywood. He invited me to take a look at the facility and then gave me a shot. The lot was really nice and really beautiful. The facilities were a little old, but he assured me theyd be updating everything. True to their word, they did and from then on, no expense has been spared to build the amazing facilities we work in every day.

Tell me a little about what makes working at Disney Post Production and particularly on Stage B so special.Disney is more of a boutique sound dept. Its not huge, theres only a few dub stages including an ADR stageits very small and family like. If I have a technical question, I can go to any person for a direct answer. We all have an open door policy and everybody wants to help each other. We strive to make it the best dept we can. Very small, very personal, very family like. I think we do the best work we can and it shows.

How do you feel your ADR work differs between an animated feature, a live action feature or an episodic TV show?Its all about the mic placement. Every single one of those jobs has a different microphone setup. In animation, its a traditional mouth close to the mic setup, with a backup mic for picking up extreme spikes in volume from the talent. This allows us the most dynamic range, as sound that would normally distort the first mic are picked up by the second on a different channel. Since its a controlled environment, we know when screams and the loud noises are coming.When we do the production ADR for a TV show, for in-stance a live action show like LOST, we shoot it also with 2 mics, but with the same boom mic and the same radio mic that was originally used. Shooting on to 2 different channels, so it becomes the re-recording mixers choice as to what track is most appropriate.

The Coffey Audio Files sits down with Disneys legendary ADR mixer for an in-depth interview

By Steven Wolstrup

COVER STORY: DOC KANE



Youve been nominated for 4 academy awards, what films were they for?Beauty & The Beast, Aladdin, The Incredibles and Rata-touille.

Can you give me a rundown of custom console?Its a D-Command that we split in half. Features 192 chan-nels, though we only ever need 32 channels in ADR. We can do mono, stereo, 4 channel, surround, discrete. Its an amazingly flexible console. The monitor section is all hand made by our engineering department here.

What would you add to your workflow (if anything)?An editor (laughs)! Seriously though, Id like to have more microphones. We have a very extensive microphone locker, but as technology changes, we do our best to keep current on whats actively being used in production. Being able to match up every scenario is ideal.

Tell us some more about the laser cue and how that came about.The laser cue came about working on the David Fincher film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. David wanted to work in hi-def from day one of shooting to post production, all the way through editorial, ADR and dub-bing. We had to gear up our projection system to run hi-def. In the 1080p world, the boxes that put out the white streamers were no longer usable. So, Steve Boze and Eddie Hernandez came up with an idea to use the same sort of streamer system the use on the dubbing stage called 3,2,1 Pop cueing method. It works in Pro-Tools and it acts like an audio track, only you cant hear it, but it will trigger as many green lasers that you have in the system. And it will show up over the hi-def image thats projected on the screen.

What is one unique aspect of your style that youdlike people to notice?I think the tracks we record are really dynamic. We ride the faders and I try to keep everything as dynamic as possible. I like to think that the re-recording mixers are working with great tracks when it goes through me, so that when they see that it came from Doc Kane, theyre confident that what they have to work with will be ex-actly what they need.I also have a lot of patience. Actors can get nervous when theyre scenes are put under a microscope and you have to be able to settle them down. When doing the re-recording of the performance, it has to be played back properly so it doesnt come across like a loop. Theyre very concerned about it sounding loopy and out of sync, and you cant convince them that itll sound great in the mix. You have to prove it to them, so we have an exten-sive sound effects librarythings like trafficwater etc. so when we playback we can use that and go in and out of production track to show them how it wont sound like a canned overdub. We try to instill confidence into the director and actor and weve been very successful. For example, TV shows like Lost and Brothers & Sisters are great sounding shows because we take our time and get it right. Ive never heard anybody say did you hear those loops about them. Were proud of that.


Walt Disney Post Production ADR Stage B

Doc Kane, Gil Gagnon & Eddie Hernandez at ADR Stage B



Tell us about some of the tougher jobs youve encoun-tered and the factors that made them so?The toughest job I had in sound was shooting 70mm prints (laughs). I was over at Warner Hollywood for several years in their transfer department. We had to open the cans of 70mm to let the chemicals dry and mount them up on a huge magnitech 6 track recorder. After we shot 10 or so, Id have to haul them over to the main theater for whoever was QC-ing that day. The elevator never worked, so I had to haul those things up the stairs to the machine room. It

threw my back out a few times, but I was young and didnt really care, but it was incredibly hard work. You also re-ally had to keep your ears open for drop outs. Since it was magnetic film, it was just like making a transfer. If there was any dropout, youd have to pull it out and send it back to the lab and theyd have to restripe it. That seemed to go on forever.

Other people who have influenced you?Oh Man! All the mixers over here at Disney and all over town have influenced me. They all have unique sugges-tions and techniques that I have learned from. Ive learned from the great directors too. Hal Ashby for instance. I was lucky enough to work for Hal for several years. Sound was

I think the tracks we record are really dynamic. We ride the faders

and I try to keep everything as dynamic as possible.

so important to him and he took it seriously. He took the looping seriously, the foley, all the sound effects. Every-thing to him was a tool and a piece of art. I think a lot of people today blow off looping as a last resort, but Hal knew how to utilize it. Frank Warner was a big sound design influence as well. Having a chance to work with those big guns in Hollywood was a real privilege, espe-cially considering how great they treated the people they worked with.

What new or future technologies are you excited about?I think right now Pro Tools has gotten so great sonically. Its such a great piece of technology. In the projection area, they have to do something better with the QuickTime movies they send us. Were getting so many different formats, including frame rates from all over the world. Getting it squared away would make our lives a lot easier.

Any tricks of the trade, or anything else you think is interesting?I keep my ear on the monitor speakers. Sometimes on the cuts, the Audio EQ will change, so I follow it. If its a little bit brighter on the next cut and I have to brighten up the mics a bit, I have no problem EQ-ing and compress-ing. Anything it takes to make it sound good. Its going to go the the stage that way. I try to match my track to the original dialogue recording that was originally recorded on location. The re-recording mixers need to spend more time mixing and creating for the final product rather than having to redo my job.



there of a certain sort of action/adventure genre, and his perspective and technique are all over this film. Its very much a product of his Russian sensibility mixed with the resources that are available here at Universal Studios. Its an intense special effects laden film and he designed most of the special effects in Moscow and did all the pre-visu-alization there in Moscow. Some of the effects were also produced here, but overall its very much a film that is based on his vision expanded with the resources available here in Hollywood.

What has Timur done before Wanted?He was making films largely for the Russian market, and they were exported on a small scale level. They became cult films for people who dive a little deeper into the marketplace looking for interesting material. His first two films that came here were called Night Watch and the other was called Day Watch. Theyre part of a thriller trilogy that is really interesting.

What was the third one?Its in pre-production. Its going to be called Twilight Watch.

J: Whats Timur like?Hes a very creative, edgy, very advanced filmmaker. So, you take a fellow whos really kind of a visionary talented

What are you doing on these days?Im working on a movie called Wanted. A Russian film-maker named Timur Bekmambetov directed it, so Ive been in and out of Russia, and Im actually leaving again to go back for another three weeks to do the Russian ver-sion.

Who else is working on the film?The sound effects designers that worked with me are Har-ry Cohen and Ann Scibelli. The dialog designer is Hugh Waddell, the re-recording mixers are Chris Jenkins, dialog and music, and Frank Montano is doing sound effects.

Whats Russia like?Theres a huge art community and theater tradition, and theres Mos Films which is in central Moscow. It has a campus bigger than Universal and the same kind of sound stages and scoring stages we have here. Its a full back lot. They have a tradition making films that dates back to when films were first made in the USA. Its pretty amaz-ing.

Whats the genre? Is this an action film?Yes, its an action film, but its also steeped in mythology. The most significant part of this film is that its a Russian/American co-venture. It was all financed here at Univer-sal. The director has a rich history of making films over

An Exclusive Interview with Supervising Sound Editor

Wylie Stateman

By Bryan Golder (with John Coffey, CAS)


Wylie Stateman

director, you provide him with marquee level talent and A-list technical people and what you get is a really excit-ing blockbuster potential film thats got sort of a Russian sensibility, American technology and know-how, Russian technology and know-how, and the whole thing combines to make something which I think is really interesting. Its quite different. James McAvoy is the star of the film. Angelina Jolie plays a supporting role, as well as Morgan Freeman, Terrence Stamp and some Russian actors. Its a real international cast.

How did you two meet?David Brenner introduced me to Timur. He and I have made films together for 20 years. Weve got a long history that dates back to the Oliver Stone films. We had worked a little bit on some of Timurs other films, doing the US ver-sions of those. Timur really understands action. He under-stands the thriller genre. He is a filmmaker by every stretch of the word; very comfortable working at all aspects of the process, and in particular sound is something that he has a great appreciation for. He spent a lot of time and effort cre-ating a blueprint with us for the design of this film, which is full of rhythms where sound and music and dialogue are handing off to each other. Ill play you this huge reel! Its a big action reel! The music plays a very significant role in the film.

How so?The rhythms in the music are all captured either from the dialogue or from the film cut and then handed off to the sound effects and we do that throughout the whole film. Thats probably the most unique aspect of this film. The editing style and music and sound effects just go hand in hand and literally hand off from one to the other in sort of this seamless fashion.

Was it an American crew?Mostly. Mitch Amenson who did Transformers, was the DP, and we had European production mixers. Chicago had an American production mixer. It was a blend of American and Russian department heads.

When you were in Prague were there other film compa-nies in the city?Yes, Pragues busy. In fact all the production centers around the world are busy right now. Film is alive and well and being produced everywhere on the planet.

As supervising sound editor on Wanted, do you have the same creative input and prerogative to shape the film from a sonic standpoint that the editor has with the visual aspects of the film?Yes, but you know, I think that post-production, to give a simplified view, is basically driven by the editor, who is not just the film editor - hes The Editor. He is literally the second in command behind the director. The editor ba-sically drives all of the decisions made in post-production. The supervising sound editor is largely responsible for the sound portion of the film. Theres a music department, a dialog department, and a sound effects department. At the end of the day, the supervising sound editor coordinates those departments, and yet they run somewhat autono-mously. They have their own decision-making and approv-al paths and that approval doesnt necessarily go through me, but the process is organized through my team, and that consists of myself and my first assistant, Branden Spencer.

How do you keep the soundtrack at the forefront of the directors mind and pull together a vision that might otherwise be overlooked when theyre so concerned with the visuals?You know, I never forget about the sound. Thats my re-sponsibility. Im a sound guy, and my ambition is to make sure that the sound is very well represented, and that goes from production all the way through to print master. Were

Film is alive and well and being produced everywhere on the planet.

Bryan Golder, Wylie Stateman & John Coffey29 The Coffey Audio Files | Issue 02 2008

Wylie Stateman

here today doing print master which is not even the final stage for me. We will then check the optical negatives and well look at the first several prints and do a quality control on that before theyre mass release printed. The foreign soundtracks are also very important and require a certain amount of attention. Im really an advocate for the entire sound portion of the production. I think an edi-tor and a supervising sound editor can work collabora-tively and help the director realize his dream in terms of a really collaborative soundtrack. Sound is fifty percent of a film, and three percent of the budget, but it pro-duces, particularly in a film that is so laden with special effects and CG animation, a layer of reality, and rhythm, and an authentication of the action. It provides depth of field as much as the visual image does. People spend a lot of time designing the visuals, from the art director to the cinematographer to the people working the DI at the lab. Sound has all those same qualities. Theres depth of field, theres detail, and its the job of the supervising sound editor to help realize the dream of having sound be that fifty percent contributor. But rather than think in terms of fifty percent, Id rather think in terms of, what is really cool? What is really going to enhance the experience for the audience, whats going to help tell the story, and whats going to help make very expensive visual effects look like theyre worth every penny that was spent on them.

Lets go back a little bit and cover some history. When did you get involved in the industry?I was one of these kids that, you know, the first record albums I had were sound effects albums. They were albums that had sounds of trains and birds and various other noises on them. I started recording things with a little reel-to-reel tape recorder that was given to me by my grandfather. Later on, I studied engineering, became a draftsman, and had what I thought was going to be a career in aerospace engineering. Then I took a trip to California after graduating, took one look at the film industry, and realized that the opportunity to work in sound and to do one-off design in sound was something I just couldnt pass up. If youre an aerospace engi-neer you can spend an entire year making a mount for a bracket on a helicopter. If youre a sound editor or a sound designer, you can do multiple projects that are all like a fantasy in terms of design. Its all original design. Its all steeped in experimentation and trial and error. Its all about learning the rules, and then breaking the rules. Sound has to follow physical reality, so it is somewhat regimented in that its got to pay attention to physics. But then after that, once you sort of learn the basics of it

Nobody pulls out a knife in a movie without it going swoosh!Yes, and a face punch or a gunshot is really just an interpre-tation of something you would want to hear. We work in a world where were limited by dynamic range and frequency, so its kind of like building a ship in a bottle, but theres no bottle. As the director on this film said, Its witchcraft. You take these ideas, and you take these intangible things that you cant hold in your hand and you throw them up in the air and you twist them and turn them and play with them. Its the ultimate in entertainment meets craft.

Your credit list has a lot of big hits, all the way back to The Long Riders in 1980.My first Hollywood film was Coal Miners Daughter, which I didnt receive a credit on because they didnt give credits to young punk kids who came in from out of town. I was a sound editor and sound designer on Coal Miners Daughter. Thats where I met my business partner Lon Bender. Our professional relationship now spans almost thir-ty years. We work together developing our business interests and weve worked together developing our creative interests. We founded Soundelux and all of its associated companies, of which there are many.

Is he more involved in the business side of it now or is he still doing post?Lon still does post. You know, weve evolved over the years. Soundelux is now part of Ascent Media. He and I together have probably started more than two-dozen audio compa-nies, of which were very proud. We both do creative work, and we both do administrative work. Theres the dream part of this business, which is highly creative and inspired by one project at a time, and then theres the enterprise part of what we do which is inspired by hiring really competent people and working together as teams with new partners. Weve always had multiple partners in every business that weve started and operated.

Do you feel like you helped pioneer the boom in quality manufacturing for microphone capsules overseas? Im talking about the Soundelux 251s. Well, we started manufacturing overseas, but at the end of the project everything was being manufactured domestically. You know, were not afraid of the world. And that was just a tiny little business! That was a little lifestyle business, one of many that we had started at that time. We have published sound effects libraries that are at radio stations and television stations all around the world. You probably cant walk into a TV or radio station anywhere on the planet and not find a sound effects library that we published.


Wylie Stateman

Are you always aiming to create new sounds or do you now just utilize the vast library you have assembled already?We do both. The sound effects that weve sold over the years - that business was designed to help facilitate and drive revenue towards our dream of always collecting sounds. We have three full time librarians, and we have people all over the world collecting sounds for us. The reason we publish those sounds is so that we can operate like a business, so were not just bleeding cash from one department to support our need to constantly improve our sound effects library. Its a self-sustaining business, and we really believe that all aspects of business should be self-sustaining where possible. Thats what inspired us to publish. But, in no way, shape, or form is it a replacement for putting boots in the field and constantly searching for new material. Every project is unique. Nobody wants a film that sounds exactly like some other film. Everything is custom made at the level that were working at. Wanted is completely custom made. Weve had multiple sound designers working for close to a year producing all original material for this film.

I know youre one of the first to get a Zaxcom Deva. What else have you been using?I use Sound Devices. I also use these little Zoom recorders.

Ill use anything that records audio. Ill use Dixie cups and a string if the application is appropriate. Im not real-ly hardware loyal to anybody other than those people that can produce a tool that has value at the time of our need. Its nice when those tools are evolving, and if Zaxcom is at the forefront of evolution, then Im with them. If its Sound Devices or Edirol or some new startup company anywhere on the planet - Im just interested in being able to capture material quickly, cost effectively, and often.

How about the post-production side. Any console pref-erences?Well, Wanted was mixed on a Harrison MPC4D. The Harrison console here at Universal Studios is an amazing tool.

Pro Tools for all the stems and playback?Yes, Pro Tools for playback, and a lot of plug-ins for processing, but a lot of the processing is also done here at the console.

How many Pro Tools rigs are rolling during mixing? Has the track count gone up logarithmically as it has become easier to layer audio?Well, this is not sound by the pound! (laughs). This is really a very articulate, very highly designed piece, where my team and the Universal team work together not to pro-

The Wanted Crew included: Back row left to right: Harry Cohen, Hugh WaddellFront row left to right: Frank Montano, Wylie Stateman, Chris Jenkins


Wylie Stateman

duce a tremendous quantity of material, but to produce a certain quality of material that this director was looking for, which were these rhythms that hand off from music to sound effects to the dialog, and its these rhythms that need to be simplified. You know, the idea of putting 500 tracks into the mix is really kind of an old school idea, which is about being photo-realistic and covering everything and then going to the dub to sort it out. The process for us here was really about trying to preserve these high concepts of accurate portrayal of action, but with rhythmic things that could hand off from the music to the sound effects to the dialog, and so it was far better to sequence things and to be very precise in our beats, and if

The Coffey Audio Files - Summer 2008

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