Sound & Picture - Issue 5, 2016

Kendra Ruczak, Managing Editor

Editor’s Desk

I n s i d e L o o k In this issue of Sound & Picture, re-recording mixer Kevin O’Leary chats with us about his work on Alone, an extreme survival competition series. Contestants record their own footage while fending for themselves in the wilderness, capturing everything from daunting mountain climbing expeditions to howling wolves. “You don’t need to enhance it because the drama is already there,” O’Leary tells us. Cinematographer Luis Salas Lobo also shares his experiences lensing The Babymoon, an indie adventure comedy shot in the jungles of Costa Rica and Puerto Rico.

In our cover story, production sound mixer John Midgley and cinematographer Ben Davis talk to us about capturing the mind-bending interdimensional world of Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Davis explains the logistics of a particularly epic sequence in the film: “You have a world that’s traveling in reverse and you have your key artists moving forward, and the universe is changing speeds.” Picture editor Jennifer Lame tells us about assembling the poignant, intimate drama Manchester by the Sea. “We needed to get to version 30 to know that the second version was the best one. I loved doing that even though it’s a lot of work,” she tells us. Visual effects supervisor Dan Glass also discusses his decade of work on Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey, a documentary exploring the origins of life. Glass combined imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope with a variety of materials like liquids, gels, and gases to craft the film’s intricate visuals.

Production sound mixer Simon Hayes and sound designer Niv Adiri chat with us about their work on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Hayes explains the importance of capturing production dialogue in a film driven by elaborate visual effects. “If we can save and nurture that dialogue by recording it cleanly enough,” he tells us, “it will help the world that the post sound team and the VFX team build around it to be more believable.” Composer Neal Acree shares his experiences crafting the score for the multiplayer RPG Revelation Online with traditional Chinese instruments. Colorist Don Armstrong also tells us about setting the look of She Has a Name, a gritty independent thriller that aims to spread awareness about the human trafficking crisis in Thailand.

Sound legend Dan Dugan and Sound Devices’ Jon Tatooles have an in-depth discussion with us about automixing technology and its applications in production sound. Also, our reviewer takes the Tascam DR-701D recorder for a test run at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.

As always, a special “thank you” goes out to everyone who took the time to share their experiences with our readers. We greatly appreciate it. If you have any feedback or suggestions, or if you’d like to contribute to the magazine or have an article idea, please email us at editor@soundandpicture.com. For daily news and updates, visit soundandpicture.com.