Sound & Picture - Issue 5, 2016

Spotlight
Timelapse
In Brief

Ph otoc ourtesyofSoundDevices

Cinematographer Jose Sarmiento recently journeyed to Ecuador to film a documentary on the country’s indigenous Quechua people and their culture. Though they are the most populous ethnic group in the Ecuadorian Amazon region, they are struggling to preserve their language and way of life as younger generations emigrate to larger cities.

Sarmiento and director-pro-ducer Nate Brubaker spent four days in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, and five days in the Amazon rainforest capturing footage for the project. The two-person crew knew they would be pushing their filmmaking equipment to its limits in the region’s harsh climate conditions, so they packed only their most reliable and lightweight gear.

“Within two days of us being there
some of our equipment rusted,
which tells you just what kind of
humidity we were subjected to,”
says Sarmiento. “We rented a Jeep
Compass, packed it all up with
about nine cases full of gear, and
drove close to five hours into the
rainforest; often having to wait for
landslides to be cleared up along
these very narrow winding roads
through the mountains.”
The team used two Sony a7S
II cameras, a DJI Phantom 3 drone,
HBO’s Westworld, a drama series exploring the con-
cepts of artificial consciousness and sin, blends fu-
turistic technology with a classic Wild West environ-
ment. Re-recording mixers Keith Rogers and Scott
Weber of South Lake Audio Services and supervising
sound editor Tom deGorter of Atomic Sound crafted
the show’s complex soundscape, which includes ev-
erything from steam engines and gunfights to the
minutiae of robotic engineering.

“That’s the joy of this show,” says producer and
post-production supervisor Bruce Dunn. “We are
truly working on two completely different genres in
each episode, a full-bore Western and a clinical, fu-
turistic tech world. It’s a lot of fun to play with that
as it moves back and forth, or, especially, when the
two meld together.”
Many of the Western sound effects were de-
rived from actual period sources. “There are au-
thentic sounds of horses, wagons and guns,” notes
Weber. “There are no cars, so the ambience is birds
and wind in the trees. In the bar, we have glass
clinks and the crowds.” The futuristic aspects of
the soundscape are an imaginative blend of current
technology and speculation. “The equipment needs
to sound familiar but a little more advanced than
what we have now,” explains Dunn.

The team took pride in polishing every detail
of the Westworld soundscape. “The subtleties are
immense and it creates a lot of opportunities to
experiment with sound,” Rogers says. “It’s a sound
designer’s dream.”
a DJI Ronin-M gimbal, two sets of
tripods, a small lighting kit, several
prime and zoom lenses, and two
Video Devices PIX-E5s to capture
dynamic 4K images. “With the hu-
midity being what it was, we want-
ed at least two PIX-E5s on hand
so that we could do dual recording
with the Sony a7S IIs. By doing so,
we could get a more data-rich im-
age out of the 4K recording from
these monitors compared to the
compressed codec from the cam-
eras, which would mean our edi-
tors/colorists could do a lot more
in post.”
Sarmiento was impressed
with his gear’s performance in such
extreme conditions. “The humid-
ity was consuming; five seconds
before you stepped outside, you
were already sweating,” he recalls.

“It was intense, but we didn’t let it stop us. We even went on a four-hour hike through heavy vegetation and a creek where the water reached up to my chest at times. I probably gave Nate a heart attack when I used the camera rig for balance as I crossed this 15-foot- long log that was suspended above deep water,” jokes Sarmiento. “It was an amazing experience and it really put us and the gear to the test.”

Images
courtesyofSouthLakeAudio&HBO
Cinematographer Jose Sarmiento captures footage in Quito, Ecuador
(L-R) Paul Rodriquez, VP, South Lake Audio; Brittany Ellis, Recordist;