Another of my main roles towards the production of 5150 was to mix the dialogue for the entire film. This has been an incredibly challenging element as EQ and compression had to be automated throughout the process. Tom Fleischman who has mixed films such as: Goodfellas, The Silence of the Lambs, Cape Fear & Miami Blues describes dialogue mixing as: “the most complex, the most time consuming, and the most difficult part of mixing for film” (cited in LoBrutto, 1994, p.77) and goes on to say:

Each scene is shot from several different angles, so the sound tracks that accompany those different pieces of picture have different qualities to them. When they’re spliced together, very often it’s bumpy and you’ll hear the sound change on every cut. That all has to be smoothed out and equalized so that the voices all sound like they’re in the same place. Just getting all of that together is a very painstaking process.

What Fleischman describes is part of the painstaking process I endured for 5150. When we were provided the VT recorded during audio project 1, we discovered that the crew had decided to capture the audio themselves with little training and using poor quality equipment with bad preamps such as the Marantz portable recorder. On top of that, the location was a manor house with high room resonances reflecting off the wooden floorboards and furniture. Therefore as Fleischman describes, I had to arrange an ADR session for the unusable lines and then use EQ to smooth over the different microphones, rooms, angles etc. 

I found the easiest way to make the performances believable was to assess each line by ear and begin removing imposing resonances using subtractive EQ. However, when purveying for tips, I came across an audio for film blog suggesting the following for dealing with distance recordings:

First apply a Parametric EQ at 300Hz with -4db and a Q=2. This can remove some of the “room boominess”. The second Parametric EQ at 4kHz with +6db and a Q=.25 will brighten up the dialog. Even a slight improvement will make the entire mix sound better. Also…I like to EQ dialog while the music, background sound and room tone is playing. If you solo the dialog and EQ in a vacuum…you won’t hear how it’s interacting with the environment and the mix (Nedomansky, 2014).

Of course, this isn’t a copy-and-paste-settings scenario, but they can certainly be applied as a rough guideline. For the character, Ursula in 5150 I applied the method after sweeping the spectrum and pulling down the room with a wide Q; notching out the whistles, removing the honky frequencies around 500Hz and high/low passing any unwanted frequencies such as low rumble and sizzle distortion; the final EQ curve looked like this (minus the high/low pass that was actioned on a separate plugin for proximity adjustment automation):

The full dialogue chain consisted of the following of which set the framework towards all dialogue processing:

• DeEsser:- tuned to each performers *s* range.
• High / Low Pass Filter:- automated according to the distance of the actor/actress.
• Subtractive EQ (before the compressor to avoid it reacting to removed frequencies.
• Compression to smooth transients, sporadic dynamics and to artistically draw out the personality of the performer.
• Expansion: follows the compressor as the compressor raises the noise floor. Expansion pushes it back down again retaining the voice.
• Additive EQ: used to solidify the fundamental of the voice; add midrange for listening universality, boost the presence region (4-7k) to make the consonants more intelligible.

The following is an example of the problem line delivered by the character Ursula from the original VT recorded by the FTV crew:

I considered the line to be too problematic to use and was originally scheduled for ADR, however due to actress availability I had to do the best I could. This is the version following the entire chain:

Time is vastly approaching the deadline and the physics have still yet to be added to the final sounds. Danielle and I sat down and discussed the timbre of the rooms throughout the film. The film only takes place in the following locations:

• Bedroom
• Psychiatrist Office
• Banquet Room
• Corridor
• Outside

(Reverbs & Delays for physical locations)

Therefore, we agonised over a number of reverb presets and adjusted the settings accordingly. Creatively, I wanted the asylum bedroom to feeling claustrophobic to emphasise the tension of the Susie’s situation, therefore a short reverb was selected. The psychiatrist’s office was larger with wooden furniture and needed to be warm sounding with a longer reverb tail. To achieve the warmth requirement; I set up an EQ following the reverb plugin and low-passed at around 4.5k to remove the high-end. This was followed by a gentle boost in the presence region (5301 kHz) in the context of the mix.

(Reverb EQ settings for Psychiatrist Office)

I referenced this with the dialogue itself as it was the main source of sound occupying this space and therefore integral to the scenes. Once a universal frequency was discovered that complimented the vocals, I performed a medium Q’ed boost. Similarly, any harsh frequencies that added build up around the 2-3k range were subtracted providing the illusion of warmth. This was similarly actioned in the banquet room as wooden furniture was the main occupancy, however the reverb tail was increased to provide the illusion of a greater size. The corridor scene needed to be very present in the mix as it wasn’t visually obvious enough that it was that defined location. To create this illusion, I allowed more of the high frequencies to come through and increased the tail. Such as all reverbs, I again sweeped the spectrum to find boosts that complimented the mix and subtracted any mud and harshness. In order to create an outdoor feel, I employed a short, single repeating delay that was just subtle enough to “feel” believable. You have to be careful not to overdo this effect in the outdoor scenes by finding a delicate balance prescribed by the distance of the sound source to camera.

(EchoBoy delay employed for the outdoor effect)

To save on time I discovered a useful automation technique called ‘auto-latch’. Simon Price describes when selected on a particular track: 

Automation only starts being recorded from the moment you alter a parameter, and continues until you stop playback even if you subsequently ‘let go’ of the control. This is probably the best starting mode for fader automation (2003, sound on sound).

By utilising the above technique, I was able to rapidly increase production by riding the reverb sends to picture. For example, when applying reverb to footsteps, I would follow the character on screen and boost when further away from the screen and drop when in an intimately closer position.

This was similarly a technique I employed when panning all the foley sounds. If you do this from the edit screen on Pro Tools, you are provided a horizontal fader rather than the mix screen’s pan pot–making it much easier to follow the sound source with a trackpad.  

Next are a couple of examples of the effects in action. The first clip is during the running scene in the forest. Notice when the character is further away from the camera, the delay on the footsteps was boosted in level:

The next video documents how the creative employment of camera moves allowed for a similar creativity in reverb. As the nurse points her finger, the camera does a rapid backwards pan. To make this more believable I automated the reverb to quickly increase as the camera moves away.

Here is the clip without the effect:

And finally, with:

Chion writes in Sound on Screen about the notion of anempathetic sound, where music or sound resonates with an emotional indifference to that of the visuals; 

whose studied frivolity and naiveté reinforce the individual emotion of the character and of the spectator, even as the music pretends not to notice them (Chion and Gorbman et al., 1994, p.8).

A famous example of the employment of anempathetic sound can be found in the film, Reservoir Dogs in the slicing off of a police officers ear to the jolly sounds of Stuck In The Middle With You by Stealers Wheel. The employment of emotional indifference of sound to the disturbed circumstance or woes of the characters on screen suggests an air of cold, brutality–taking on the mindset of a psychotic and consequentially triggering a heightened, intensified emotional response from the audience.

The above documents an example of anempathetic music; however, this methodology can similarly be applied to that of sound. Russian filmmaker, Sokurov describes all sound as anempathetic towards the plight of man:

landscape as a witness of death, landscape as an absolute category. In itself, it carries an artistic image or idea. Not every human face contains some artistic essence, but every landscape does. Each one is the indifferent countenance of nature looking at human beings, some lofty art that doesn’t care whether humanity exists or not (Sokurov, 2001).

Sokurov highlights the flowing of natural, vibrational sound being in an ever-present, continuum–removed from the emotional faculty of man. A classic example can be heard in Hitchcock’s Psycho where following the brutal murder of Marion Crane, the audience are returned to the soundscapes of before the event took place; the flowing of water from the shower and the drain. Chion describes this effect “as if nothing had happened (1994, p.9)”–no audible record that the event took place.

I took the creative decision to employ this notion in the scene where Susie is informed of the death of her father. The psychiatrist delivers the line with his back turned to the camera, so I had the freedom to choose from a number of takes as lip sync was not an issue. The chosen take was delivered with a distinct lack of empathy and already fit amongst the anempathetic method. To further play on this; I decided to not include any Hollywood-style music until after the message resonated long enough. The scene taking place in this room so far has sat over a bed of “uneasy” cello music–so the decision to remove the music for the delivery of the line was quite effective towards a change in the dynamic and also nakedly revealed the embedded rain and thundering wildtracks. This consequentially offered me the luxury to play further on the anempathetic affect by carrying on the flow of weather in a similar Hitchcock continuum–emphasising Sokurov’s notion of nature’s indifference to the plight of man. Other sounds following suit included the foley sounds of the psychiatrist looking at his watch (albeit prescribed by the visuals) and the ticking of the clock. The following video is an example of how the scene flows before and after.