Audio for film: for film mixers, its all about getting big sound onto the big screen - Audio

Post, Sept, 2003 by Christine Bunish

Sound editors on The Last Samurai include Alan Rankin, Michael Kamper, Jon Title, Randy Kelley, Ken Johnson, Laura Harris, David Cohen, Bruce Tannis, Kelly Oxford and, at times, many others.

THREE GENRES AT ONCE

Providing top-to-bottom audio, "everything except production mixing," the sound services department at Universal Studios in Universal City (www.universalstudios.com/studio) caters to feature films and top-tier TV programming, says senior VP of sound services Chris Jenkins.

The department meets the needs of both Universal and third-party clients with three large feature stages, including the Hitchcock Theater, all of which are outfitted with Harrison MPC consoles; the first digital MPC with new IKIS worksurface was recently installed. There are three more mixing stages for TV, two ADR rooms, a Foley room, an all-digital room for independent features, plus a full complement of projection rooms for screening all formats from digital video to 35mm and 70mm.

Additionally, the extremely successful two-year-old BluWave Audio division has two large mix rooms for trailers and restoration; four digital mastering suites for DVD mastering, standards conversion and foreign-language mixing; three transfer core rooms in an isolated 5.1 environment; and three Sonic clean-up rooms.

But what makes Universal's cutting-edge gear sing are "three of the best mixing crews in the world," says Jenkins, who is himself a supervising sound mixer. "There's no pigeon-holing. They are capable of going back and forth from one genre to another"

A quick look at their credits confirms Jenkins's assertion. Andy Koyama and Chris Carpenter, who man Stage 3, mixed Meet the Parents, the Austin Powers movies and the summer hit 2 Fast 2 Furious. Three-time Academy Award winners Greg Landaker and Steve Maslow on Stage 6 are equally at home with star-driven action vehicles as with the Jim Carrey comedy, Bruce Almighty. And Jenkins and his mixing partner Frank Montana, who work in the Hitchcock Theater, have done everything from installments of the Star Trek franchise to The Sum of AII Fears and A Beautiful Mind.Jenkins is a two-time Academy Award winner, netting Oscars for The Last of the Mohicans and Out of Africa.

Not long ago Bruce Almighty, The Italian Job and 2 Fast 2 Furious were on the stages simultaneously.

The three films were challenging in terms of turnaround time and the complexity of their soundtracks, he says. An action flick like 2 Fast 2 Furious was out to "top what happened in the first picture," while for the comedy Bruce Almighty,"dialogue was king. A comedy might have its pratfalls and bursts of action, but if you don't hear the words, you don't get it.You need to hear every little nuance of the performance."

The sound department is gearing up for a busy fall with another diverse slate of Universal features: the epic vampire tale Van Helsing, the action-adventure Riddick, the George Romero-inspired Dawn of the Dead, the Meet the Parents sequel Meet the Fockers, and the thriller The Bourne Supremacy, plus many non-Universal releases.