Electric Shock: How “A Complete Unknown’s” Oscar-Nominated Sound Team Re-Created Bob Dylan Going Electric
In the first part of our conversation with the Oscar-nominated sound team of James Mangold’s music biography A Complete Unknown, they talked about delivering an intensely music-centric film without using playback and differentiating between the soundscapes of 1961 New York, when Bob Dylan (an immaculate portrayal by Timothée Chalamet) first arrives in the city, and four years later towards the end of the film. Now, we continue the discussion with sound mixer Tod A.
“A Complete Unknown”: Orchestrating 60+ Live Performances for Oscar-Worthy Sound
In one of this year’s tour de force performances, Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters took almost six years to perfect (partly thanks to COVD-19 delays in production). For director James Mangold’s music biopic, A Complete Unknown, Chalamet not only learned to play the guitar and harmonica for the film, but also mastered Dylan’s famously idiosyncratic style to deliver over 40 flawless live-to-camera performances as the narrative charts his meteoric rise after arriving in New York in 1961.
How The “Blitz” Sound Team Shook Steve McQueen’s Harrowing World War II Film
While researching Small Axe, a riveting series about the political awakening of London’s West Indian community, director Steven McQueen found a photograph of a young Black boy standing on a train platform holding a large suitcase. The stark image had the director questioning who the child was and what his story was during the London Blitz, a period in World War II when the city was bombed by Germany over eight long months.
“Joker: Folie À Deux” Production Sound Mixer Steven Morrow Dissects 3 Essential Scenesew
“We tried to do everything we could to make the best sounding movie,” says production sound mixer Steven Morrow about director Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie À Deux. “Larry’s cinematography is beautiful, and with the amount of effort and time he puts into it, we wanted to put that kind of energy and emotion into our work for the audience and for Todd.”
For the much-anticipated sequel to the Oscar-winning film Joker,
Eye on the Emmys: “The Bear” Emmy-Winning Sound Team on Capturing the Chaos of the Kitchen
*After the 76th Creative Arts Emmy Winners, announced on September 8, and ahead of the 2024 Prime Time Emmy Awards on September 15, we’re looking back at our interviews with some of this year’s nominees. Costume
The Bear’s Re-recording mixer Steve “Major” Giammaria, ADR mixer Patrick Christensen, foley mixer Ryan Collinson, and production mixer Scott D. Smith recently won for Oustanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (Half-Hour) for the episode “Forks.”
“The Bear” Emmy-Nominated Sound Team on Capturing the Chaos of the Kitchen
The first thing you might notice in Season 2 of Christopher Storer’s hit drama The Bear is how well you can hear chef-owner Carmen (Jeremy Allen White) and his team of kitchen underdogs as they set to work reopening their Chicago restaurant. Restaurant kitchens, especially those still under construction, as the Bear’s is for most of the season, are not quiet places. But no matter how prevalent the sledgehammers and steel cookware may be on screen,
Can You Hear the Fear? How Sound Shapes the Daring Missions of “Masters of the Air”
Masters of the Air, Apple TV+’s new World War II epic showcasing the heroics and travails of a fleet of young U.S. pilots in Europe, has been lauded for its classical filmmaking and realistic approach to mid-century flight. Focusing on sober, earnest Buck (Austin Butler) and Bucky (Callum Turner), a battle-ready scamp, the show toggles between dogfights in the air and quiet moments on the ground, on airfields in the English countryside and in medical wards where some of the crew suffer from as-yet undiagnosed PTSD.
“Maestro” Oscar-Nominated Re-Recording Mixers on Building Emotion With & Without Music
In Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, the music is flipped. Tracking the arc of Leonard Bernstein’s career in tandem with his loving but complicated marriage to Chilean actress Felicia Monteleagre (Carey Mulligan), the film’s music is Bernstein’s music, playing as it did over the course of the composer’s life, whether that’s performed on stage or worked out in the studio at the family’s Fairfield country house. When we revisit emotionally charged, private moments from Bernstein’s life,
“Maestro” Sound Mixer Steven Morrow on Recreating Mahler’s “Resurrection” at the Ely Cathedral
Bradley Cooper knew Maestro was going to be the next film he directed before the proverbial ink dried on A Star Is Born (2018), his feature debut, which he starred in alongside Lady Gaga about a troubled musician’s relationship with alcohol. The adaptation, deservingly so, went on to be nominated for eight Academy Awards and won Best Original Song for “Shallow.” This time, the multi-hyphenated actor trades in a guitar for a baton to embody Leonard Bernstein,
“Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” Sound Mixer Ronan Hill’s Formula for Fantastic Sounding Fantasy
Ronan Hill has a way with dragons. The Belfast-based production sound mixer is best known for his tenure on HBO’s Game of Thrones, where he and the sound teams tuned the rich, resonating sonic palettes across its eight epic seasons, winning five Emmys along the way. Hill returns to familiar territory with Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, from directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, a film that refreshingly spins the popular fantasy role-playing game with a cast of enjoyable characters led by Chris Pine as Edgin,
Best of 2022: How The “Babylon” Sound Team Built a Sonic Bacchanal
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.
The opening sequence to Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (in theaters today) hits you like one of the many lines of powder its characters will ingest. It’s eye-opening, choreographed chaos, leaving you with an intensely euphoric feeling – quite fitting for a story that revisits Hollywood’s infancy of the 1920s and ‘30s when La La Land was a sandbox of drugs,
Best of 2022: How the “Top Gun: Maverick” Sound Team Ingeniously Captured Raw Emotion Mid-Flight
It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.
Mark Weingarten is no stranger to navigating the challenges of a production sound mixer. Over his accomplished career, Weingarten’s mixed on Christopher Nolan’s WWII epic Dunkirk, traveled to another dimension in Interstellar, captured the spirit of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, and tracked the drama behind The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
How The “Babylon” Sound Team Built a Sonic Bacchanal
The opening sequence to Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (in theaters today) hits you like one of the many lines of powder its characters will ingest. It’s eye-opening, choreographed chaos, leaving you with an intensely euphoric feeling – quite fitting for a story that revisits Hollywood’s infancy of the 1920s and ‘30s when La La Land was a sandbox of drugs, sex, and all night partying.
It’s here we meet Manny Torres (Diego Calva),
Best of Summer: How the “Top Gun: Maverick” Sound Team Ingeniously Captured Raw Emotion Mid-Flight
As we’ve done for the past few summers, we’ve compiled a few of our favorite interviews to highlight in this last week of August. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a little taste of some of the great conversations we’ve had during these hot summer months. Bring on sweater season.
Mark Weingarten is no stranger to navigating the challenges of a production sound mixer. Over his accomplished career,
“Nope” Sound Designer Johnnie Burn Puts the Fear in What We Hear
Before the opening credits even clear the screen, Nope plunges us into an alarming soundscape: the canned laughter of a sitcom. Knowing that this is a Jordan Peele horror film, immediate tension strikes. Something is bound to shatter that wholesome sound, and, of course, this happens in a brutal way.
Our ears get the first warning sign moment after terrifying moment in Nope as we hear what we can’t yet,
“Elvis” Sound Guru Wayne Pashley on the Sonic Glue Holding Baz Luhrmann’s Biopic Together
Bursting through in the golden age of television, Elvis Presley had stunning good looks and taboo-shattering dance moves that instantly attracted legions of female fans, but his legacy rests in that sound. His voice was inimitable with the pain and power he had to share to survive.
Wayne Pashley, the re-recording mixer, sound designer, and supervising sound editor of Baz Luhrmann’s epic biopic Elvis bravely took up the mantle of resurrecting one of the most famous voices ever recorded.
How the “Top Gun: Maverick” Sound Team Ingeniously Captured Raw Emotion Mid-Flight
Mark Weingarten is no stranger to navigating the challenges of a production sound mixer. Over his accomplished career, Weingarten’s mixed on Christopher Nolan’s WWII epic Dunkirk, traveled to another dimension in Interstellar, captured the spirit of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, and tracked the drama behind The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In director Joseph Kosinski’s world-beating Top Gun: Maverick,
“Morbius” Scoring Mixer Jason LaRocca on Sinking His Teeth Into Marvel’s Vampire Antihero
After suffering throughout his childhood from a rare blood disorder, Michael Morbius (Jared Leto) heads into the Costa Rican jungle and cuts his hand open, thereby trapping a swarm of vampire bats. The bats are the final key to the brilliant doctor’s cure, which, as we can guess by the fact that these particular bats are highly attracted to blood, means that anyone who takes said cure will themselves also come to be highly attracted to blood.
Oscar-Nominated Re-Recording Sound Mixer Paul Massey on “No Time To Die”
“When I started out, I had no objective whatsoever to become a re-recording mixer,” says Paul Massey, who may well be the most accomplished accidental Oscar winner in history. Growing up in London, Massey played trumpet in wedding bands, worked at a recording studio and then, he says, “I made a slow, totally unintentional transition to film post-production.”
Like Ridley Scott, one of his most frequent collaborators, Massey, Academy Award winner for Bohemian Rhapsody,
How “The Killing of Two Lovers” Sound Team Created an Agonizingly Tense Soundscape
The Killing of Two Lovers, written, directed, and edited by Robert Machoian, is a tale of a marriage coming undone that’s as taut and tense as a guitar string. The film opens in the moment before we believe it will earn its title. Two lovers are asleep on a bed, Niki (Sepideh Moafi) and Derek (Chris Coy) dream in the cold morning light while, looming above them and brandishing a pistol, is Niki’s husband,
