Part One

Table of Contents:

Sound editor and re-recording mixer Larry Blake, sound editor Mark Mangini and re-recording mixers Michael Minkler and Myron Nettinga offer sharply differing views about the future of sound post production and the use of workstations for mixing.

Pull Quotes:

Is post-production sound moving toward a unified future, or will mixing and editing continue in their traditionally separate roles?

On the last film I did, the director sat next to me when we were making the final fixes. We had a mix we all liked, but we took advantage of the power of mixing in Pro Tools to tweak every last frame and syllable. When the mix ended, he said, “I cannot conceive of working any other way.” — Blake

Mixing is building an audio landscape that enhances the visuals and takes an audience through all different human emotions over the course of the movie. None of that is done on a frame-by-frame basis with a level control or volume graphing or notching out little things here and there. — Minkler

Great mixes are getting done with traditional consoles, and great mixes are getting done in a ProControl-based environment. I think it’s really dangerous for us to get stuck on the notion that one way of working is better than another. All that matters is that you get the results that you want.  — Mangini

I’ve seen many great mixers at work, and they didn’t seem to be hampered by not having a computer keep track of the mix process. — Nettinga

Sound post production has undergone a dramatic evolution over the last 10 years. As a result of the new tools available, some sound editors and re-recording mixers, including Larry Blake (Full Frontal, Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic, Erin Brockovich), have begun to use workstations not only for editing but for mixing as well, integrating previously separated tasks into a unified workflow built around a single hardware standard. Others, including supervising sound editor Mark Mangini (The Time Machine, The Green Mile, Lethal Weapon 4, City of Angels) and re-recording mixers Michael Minkler (Black Hawk Down, JFK, Altered States, A Chorus Line) and Myron Nettinga (Black Hawk Down, Insomnia, John Q., Pollock), prefer a more traditional approach in which editors edit on workstations, and mixers dub with a conventional console. In this conversation, Blake, Mangini, Minkler and Nettinga offer sharply differing views about the future of sound post-production and why they work the way they do.

Blake: Let’s start by looking at the industry as a whole. I think in this day and age, there are certain givens. To my knowledge, there isn’t any editorial done on mag anymore. The industry seems to have solidified in that regard.

Mangini: I think we’re all happy to have gotten rid of mag, but there’s still no file standardization for digital playback and recording. That’s what I bemoan about the loss of 35mm sprocketed sound. Not that I wish we had it back, but the standardization was fabulous.

Nettinga: We’re in an in-between state. From a mixing stage point of view, we have to allow for all the different possible formats that can come in to us.

Minkler: It’s a bad situation that seems to be getting a little bit better as time goes on, because some of the formats have given up and gone away. Standardization would be a very nice thing to have. I think we should have set the standard high and found something that suited everybody. But it didn’t happen. The important question, though, is what kind of creativity does it bring you?

Blake: It’s not so much an issue of creativity as it is often a lack of organization. It’s no more or less creative to be pulled down or not pulled down. The problem is when you have music not talking to dialogue, and dialogue not talking to effects, and they’re all coming in at different sample rates and bit depths.

Mangini: Would we all agree that by and large, we’re seeing more delivery on Pro Tools than on other products?

Minkler: It seems that way.

Mangini: I’d like to hear what you like and don’t like about it.

Minkler: Early on, Digidesign made a business decision to include third-party manufacturers of plug-ins. That was an extremely smart move. What’s kept them ahead of everybody is that their equipment can offer so much versatility and flexibility.

Mangini: What’s bugging you about it? What’s not working when a guy shows up at the stage with his Pro Tools?

Nettinga: Mike, I know you like the bi-phase lock-up, and that’s the one thing Pro Tools doesn’t do. Even though we’re working off digital picture and everything’s coming off of Pro Tools, I have to wait while we’re backing up.

Minkler: True, but I think we have developed a system of living in multiple worlds. Jumping into the digital age, we could have left behind everything we learned before. But I don’t want to lose anything we liked.

Blake: Why don’t we go right to a topic that I know we’ll get to eventually — the whole idea of mixing within Pro Tools, as opposed to mixing with a separate console, and the perceived pros and cons of such an approach?

Mangini: My use of automation and mixing in Pro Tools has been really scattered. I have premixed some things to develop an aesthetic that I wanted to control entirely, maybe for a design effect. Also, I’ve done it for the automation in Pro Tools, because it’s so precise. However, that’s not generally the way I work. I am not currently premixing in Pro Tools and bringing the results to dubbing stages.

Nettinga: I came from an editing background, so I’m very familiar with digital workstations. But as a mixer, I would never want to use it as my main tool. There’s been a misperception that a ProControl [Digidesign’s hardware controller] is a mixing console; really, it’s a control surface, a front end to a single digital workstation. On our stage, we have a total capability of over nine hundred inputs. Now, we may generally use a maximum of 300 to 400 channels, but we have the ability to grab something else if necessary. By the time you got Pro Tools on that level, it wouldn’t be cost effective, and your efficiency would go down tremendously.

Mangini: Let’s take some fictitious reel — this insane sound editor brought a thousand tracks for one reel of film…

Nettinga: You call that fictitious?!

Mangini: Let’s not go there for the time being! Larry, would you want to have a thousand virtual tracks on a desk?

Blake: With the current technology, the most tracks you could have per system is a little over 100, including EQ and sends. As Mike said, you have to take the best of what’s gone in the past. So when I’m working, each track has multiple sends, multiple reverbs, full six-band EQ. It has what you’re used to. When some people mix in a workstation, they try to cut corners by having EQ only on the bus. I’m horrified that they wouldn’t have EQ on each channel.

Minkler: I think you’re starting to get into the crux of the whole thing, which is cost.

Blake: Absolutely. If it were literally a thousand tracks, then it would be unwieldy, because you would need ten systems. For something of that scale, my technology as it is today wouldn’t work. However, there are ways to do big movies and not have a thousand tracks. Ben Burtt designed Star Wars: Episode I [The Phantom Menace] ??LB: Italicize [The Phantom Menace] — and we can’t call that a small movie — so that every reel, with the exception of the big reel six, had one Pro Tools session with 120 or less tracks, including backgrounds and hard effects.

Nettinga: But even on smaller-scale projects, you won’t get the best results using one machine that tries to do everything. The professional consoles that we’re working on allow us to be fast and keep our creativity going. ProControl and Pro Tools aren’t as well laid out.

Blake: There is no question that the current control surface technology has nowhere near the ergonomic flexibility of a good re-recording console like the Euphonix or an [AMS Neve] DFC. However, you have a different mindset when you can do so much work of a critical, small nature off-line. In a normal situation, you have to be at play speed and be in “record” to make a change.

Minkler: Right there, you are defining the difference between mixing and editing. What you are saying is with a ProControl and a workstation, you can do these little finite pieces of work. That is the job of editorial. That is the composition of sounds, and that is not mixing.

Blake: But I’m not talking about moving or adding or deleting sound; I’m squirting a little bit of reverb on that syllable, or changing the EQ on that syllable, or changing the level. On the last few movies I’ve done, at the beginning of the first temp dub, I will put the input faders at zero, and then I will listen to representative sections of the dialogue. I find out at what level things were recorded at, then I adjust the master fader so that it will play at 85. At that point, I do the first temp dub, using the moving fader automation, with my hands on the faders, to adjust the level of that movie. That first temp might take anywhere from two to six days, usually closer to two. When I get to the second temp dub, having heard the first one in many theaters, carefully aligned at 85, I know what stood out, what wasn’t right, and I will go ahead and make those adjustments, either on faders or with volume mapping. And ditto with the EQ, sends and reverbs. When we get to the pre-mix proper, levels and EQ have been honed in, and I rarely touch the faders; I almost never touch them ??LB: add “for dialog” at the finals. At that point, because all of these decisions that I’ve made cumulatively have been kept, I’m fine-tuning at the level of words and syllables. The act of having to go in and record it at sync speed would slow me down tremendously.

Blake: One of the top mixers of the old days of Hollywood, Murray Spivack, would never, ever punch in—and he was recording a composite six-track master. No punch ins on pre-dubs, and on finals sometimes they would cut masters together. He felt that stopping would wreck the flow. But the industry moved first to punch in recording in the mid-Seventies, then to stems in the early Eighties, then to moving-fader automation, and then, in the mid-Nineties to complete console automation. Why? Because we gained (and clients demanded) more precise control and repeatability. My paradigm—event-based automation, with no distinction between source and console— is, I believe the next logical step.

Nettinga: It seems like you’re saying that not having recall ability is limiting, but to us, it’s not. I’ve seen many great mixers at work, and they didn’t seem to be hampered by not having a computer keep track of the mix process. I’ve never felt like I’ve lost the effort of a temp dub. On a first temp dub, we’re trying to find where the director wants to go with this movie, and to become familiar with the movie and its possibilities. When we come in for the final, we can build a better show using the understanding we gained in the temp dubs.

Blake: You’re creating a false dichotomy. You make it seem that you remember either the mood or the technical stuff. I’m doing both. Hundreds, if not thousands, of good decisions, approved by the director, will be reproduced exactly.

Mangini: Larry’s way of working allows him to piggyback on work he’s already done, while you guys start from scratch after the temp dubs with new tracks and new recordings. So is this an efficiency issue?

Minkler: No. Somehow, a misconception developed that this ProControl tool can actually mix. But all you’re doing is assembling sounds, and very few of those at that, in a very limited domain.

Blake: I’m just flabbergasted by what you’re saying. A ProControl is clearly far from an ideal console, but to say that what is done with it is not mixing is absurd. Does the dialogue sound good? Does the music sound good? Is it appropriate? That’s what mixing is. At the end of the day, you hit play and watch the movie at 24 frames per second. And all that matters is what you’re hearing.

Nettinga: Using a ProControl would never fly on some films we’re on. Directors like the fluidity that we give them. One of the worst things I’ve seen happen to somebody supposedly mixing on their workstations is when they pull picture off-line and start doing something; a glaze comes over the eyes of the other creative people around, because they’ve been excluded from the process.

Blake: Ironically, I find it more involving. On the last film I did, the director sat next to me when we were making the final fixes. We had a mix we all liked, but we took advantage of the power of mixing in Pro Tools to tweak every last frame and syllable. When the mix ended, he said, “I cannot conceive of working any other way.

Minkler: Again, Larry, you’re describing editorial — preparation of tracks, composition of material, and assembly of tracks.

Blake: What are the tools of mixing, if they’re not volume, sends ??add “, outboard gear,” and EQ? None of use would agree with the infamous line from a legendary old-school mixer, who summed up all that he did on a re-recording stage as, “I raise ’em and lower ’em.” But I’m trying to establish a broader description of mixing. Tell me what else is done.

Minkler: Mixing is building an audio landscape that enhances the visuals and takes an audience through all different human emotions over the course of the movie. None of that is done on a frame-by-frame basis with a level control or volume graphing or notching out little things here and there.

Blake: But I’m still soundscaping. I’m not even discussing that, because to me, that’s a given.

Mangini: And to be fair, in addition to Larry, there are many people mixing movies on ProControl.

Minkler: But it’s rudimentary. In a closed environment, for instance, a television series, where you’ve got the same tracks, music set-ups and effects set-ups, day in and day out for nine months, beautiful. Do it that way. But it doesn’t have the flexibility and sophistication to do any kind of project, any size, to deliver anything to anybody.

Mangini: We’re talking about two very different worlds. Larry is both sound editor and re-recording mixer, so he has great control over the flow of elements between the two. Myron and Mike and I live in another world — they have to service many different clients, and I have to bring tracks to a wide variety of mixers. Unfortunately, as I understand it, Larry’s virtual paradigm doesn’t work very well in a client-based world. Unless mixing and editorial are symbiotically connected, you don’t get the full advantage of virtual mixing.

Blake: I admit that the way I work is not good as a business model for a facility, because I’m committed for six months or so.

Minkler: Who’s given six months to work on a film? Nobody. Just you and Gary Rydstrom.

Blake: I was joking. In fact, my mixes are shorter, if anything.

Minkler: That’s only because you prepare everything prior to the mix. Who the hell does that? You are the only person on the planet.

Blake: First of all, I do 90 percent of these “mix” decisions on a mix stage, with proper monitors, during temp mixes and the real mix proper, and not in an edit room. But what’s wrong with it?

Minkler: There’s nothing wrong with it. But we’re debating where the industry is going. Well, the industry’s not going there, you’re going there.

Mangini: The industry could go there, though. God knows, if there’s a cheaper way to do something, somebody’s going to make us do it that way. Let’s not assume that ours is the only way to work.

Minkler: The industry cannot go there. It’s too inefficient. The bottom line in our business is efficiency. And creativity along the way.

Blake: If you were to ask my clients — specifically, Steven Soderbergh or his producers — I think that they would strongly disagree with your concept of “efficient.”

Mangini: What’s the barometer for efficiency?

Minkler: In the world I live in, efficiency is whether you can you make an A+ track when someone says, “You’ve got six weeks of editorial and mixing, total. Go, now!”

Blake: That sounds like procrastination to me, Michael.

Nettinga: Oh, my God! You’re kidding, Larry!

Blake: Let’s not call that kind of rushing, “efficient.”

Minkler: It’s not efficient on their part to have demanded it. But it’s efficient on our part if we accomplish it.

Blake: I could do it, too, if I had to. But, I don’t, because we plan around it. There’s very little waste of people, time or money. And that, to me, is efficiency.

Minkler: I agree that the way you work is extremely efficient. It’s the best way to do a movie. But your client is the only one I know of in this business who will allow that to happen. In general, the flag is dropped and it’s, “Go.” We have to come up with a different mode for getting the job done.

Blake: I do this to remove the grief overhead, so I can focus on what the director and I want to hear. Let’s look at any movie, which has x number of original edit sessions in Pro Tools, which get boiled down to y number of pre-dubs, which get recorded on z number of stems. Now what happens if, in the final dub, the director wants to pull a scene out of a reel and move it to the next one? You certainly have to conform the final stage session, maybe the music session and whatever else you have going out to final mix. You almost certainly have to conform all the effects pre-dubs. You have your 24 to 40 tracks of stems. You’ve got to clone them, you’ve got to conform them, you’ve got to rebalance them. In my scenario, I only have to conform the original units. So in terms of handling a complicated show, I think this would offer a big advantage.

Minkler: Initially, if we were in a hurry, we would just conform the pre-dubs and start mixing, while somebody else conforms the original elements.

Nettinga: If we felt the need to conform the original units. You actually have more work to do. If I have hundreds of pre-dub tracks, I probably had a thousand tracks coming in on original material, which means you have a thousand tracks to conform. That doesn’t seem very efficient. I pre-dub to Pro Tools, and if I need to change something, I can.

Mangini: You guys are running direct from Pro Tools?

Minkler: Yes. We have 450 channels of Pro Tools, just for our pre-dubs.

Mangini: You don’t come off of MMR-8’s or MMP-16’s?

Minkler: We use both MMP-16’s and Pro Tools.

Blake: So you will have how many Pro Tools stations working at the final mix of a complicated movie?

Minkler: Seven, eight.

Nettinga: Even more.

Blake: And the fader moves and EQ that you used to make your pre-dubs are playing with the original Pro Tools edit sessions?

Nettinga: I don’t dub off of them, but if I need to, I can recreate any pre-dub at a moment’s notice.

Blake: But let’s say you’re doing complicated outboard processing on, say, a line — the classic instance where you don’t dig into the line too much because you want to see what everything’s going to be like at the final dub.

Minkler: That is the one advantage that you have, Larry. But that has nothing to do with having a ProControl. It depends on your Pro Tools sessions. Could we process something in the Pro Tools domain before it hits our faders? You betcha. We just don’t do that. But we certainly could, and you wouldn’t have that advantage. We have a set of procedures that works pretty well. You’re saying you have a set of procedures that works pretty well, and that’s fine. I think our debate is about the technology of a console versus a ProControl, and the ProControl, we have to admit, guys, is just in its infancy.

Blake: Absolutely. But there is nothing that you can do that I can’t do, and vice versa.

Minkler: But we can do it ten times faster.

Blake: Oh, give me a break! Ask me how long the dialogue pre-dubs were on Ocean’s Eleven, or on Traffic.

Minkler: Okay, how long?

Blake: About five very leisurely days. But seriously,??LB: delete “seriously” since it refers to a now-omitted aside the bottom line is the work. Did you hear Traffic and say “God, if Larry had only used a Euphonix, it would have sounded good.”

Minkler: Absolutely not.

Mangini: The fact is that great mixes are getting done with traditional consoles, and great mixes are getting done in a ProControl based environment. I think it’s really dangerous for us to get stuck on the notion that one way of working is better than another. All that matters is that you get the results that you want.

In our next issue, Blake Mangini, Minkler and Nettinga talk about the blurring of job classifications, sound quality in today’s theaters, the Academy Awards and more.

Sound Roundtable

Larry Blake, Mark Mangini , Michael Minkler and Myron Nettinga

Part Two

Table of Contents:

In the second part of their conversation, Larry Blake, Mark Mangini, Michael Minkler and Myron Nettinga discuss the blurring of job classifications, sound quality in today’s theaters, the Academy Awards and more.

Pull Quotes:

I don’t care for directors who want to edit, editors who want to cut sound effects, or sound effects editors who want to be foley artists. I think it’s most creative when everyone does one thing very well. — Mangini

When good decisions are made in the editing room, we don’t have to spend two weeks auditioning tracks and deciding how to bring them together. We can concentrate on the big picture. — Nettinga

We have our own little home-brewed TAP system, where I personally call theaters and talk to the technicians who align them. On Oceans Eleven, we sent these theater technicians T-shirts that said, “I projected Ocean’s Eleven at 85*,” then in small type, “*and nobody complained.” — Blake

Budgets are still going down, and it really upsets me. People keep laboring under the false assumption that we can do it quicker and faster because we have Pro Tools and ProControl. — Minkler

The development of digital tools has made it easier for people to move between crafts, blurring some distinctions between professions. In the second part of their conversation, sound editor and mixer Larry Blake (Full Frontal, Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic, Erin Brockovich), supervising sound editor Mark Mangini (The Time Machine, The Green Mile, Lethal Weapon 4, City of Angels) and re-recording mixers Michael Minkler (Black Hawk Down, JFK, Altered States, A Chorus Line) and Myron Nettinga (Black Hawk Down, Insomnia, John Q., Pollock) talk frankly about this trend, as well as budgets, sound quality in today’s theaters and the distinction between the Academy Awards for sound and sound editing.

Minkler: Mark, over the years, you and I have talked many times about the different disciplines of editing and mixing. They meld together, but they need to be separate, because it’s different mindsets. One person cannot do mixing and editorial at the same time. There’s so much skilled work that needs to be done that one brain can’t do it all.

Blake: But it is done. Gary Rydstrom does it. Randy Thom does it. If I think of top jobs of the past few years, the first thing that comes to my mind is Contact that Randy did. Saving Private Ryan — Gary Rydstorm

Minkler: You’re under a misconception that the guys you just mentioned do a hundred percent of the editorial, a hundred percent of the mixing. These gentlemen, who are extremely talented and I love every single one of them, they’re not doing what you’re thinking that they’re doing.

Blake: Michael, I’m not in any way saying that I do all of my movies by myself, because I don’t, or that they do all of their movies by themselves, because they don’t. They all work hand-in-hand with a supervising sound editor and with one, if not two or more, re-recording mixers. But I would say that Gary’s involvement with Jurassic Park or Saving Private Ryan as the person supervising the sound track was no less than Mark’s is on one of his sound jobs, and no less than the mixers on Mark’s shows. No difference. I think that they’re in charge of getting those sound effects to the stage.

Mangini: I agree with Mike that irrespective of how you want to work, sound editing is a very specific discipline and mixing is, too. I want to keep those disciplines separate. It allows me to work more creatively, because I can focus on just that aspect of my work. It’s a bothersome trend to me, this blurring of job descriptions. I don’t care for directors who want to edit, editors who want to cut sound effects, or sound effects editors who want to be foley artists. I think it’s most creative when everyone does one thing very well.

Nettinga: I second that. I think you risk being a “jack of all trades, master of none.” You can be very good at those trades, but there is something to be said for people who specialize in their fields. We like to work that way because all these talented people focusing on what they do really produces a product we can be very proud of. It’s a real team effort. There are certainly other ways to do it, but I don’t think we’d be very effective as a business if we couldn’t offer this kind of service.

Blake: Michael, years ago I was visiting you and Mark when you were doing Die Hard 3 together, and the issue of reel lengths came up. I remember you saying, “Hey, give me a reel that’s two hours long.” And I thought you were completely out of your mind. But now I’m getting to the point where on projects that allow it (and not every one does, because of picture changes), I’m trying to mix shows that are three reels long, because of the additional flow that it gives. Assuming a show is not crazy with picture changes, would you work that way?

Minkler: In fact, the other day, I said to Myron, “Gee, I wish this was all one reel.”

Blake: I’m curious if other people have tried this. I find it really liberating.

Nettinga: At the same time, AB reels do lend themselves to the segmenting of the movie. Also, when picture changes happen, having a big section that has to be changed could work against you.

Blake: No doubt about it. The more picture changes, the less viable this is as a way of working. For that and other reasons, I would never want to work on a show as one reel.

Mangini: There are the psychological implications, too — the sense of satisfaction that comes from finishing off reels. Also I’ve been on films where we’ve pushed right up to release date, and the studio needs a reel for the lab. If you’re built on just two reels, how do you do that?

Blake: When we record the stems as hour-long parts, we load into the same session a guide track that says, “This is the head pop on 1AB, tail pop of 1AB, the head pop of 2AB,” and so on, so we can carve them out with great precision. But by working with longer reels, I’m able to focus better, because the time to change reels is divided by a third.

Mangini: At Warner Bros., they were trying to implement a technique where they would release on one-hour reels.

Blake: I asked them about that on Ocean’s Eleven, and they said it doesn’t work, partly because of the training of people who are plattering in the theaters. Knocking the core out of a 6,000 foot reel is not fun.

Mangini: You just touched on something — I think what’s really great about our industry now is that the technology and all the tools make our job a lot more fun so we can be more creative. But the frustrating thing is the theaters. You still can’t trust what’s going to be heard in the theater because of the lack of standardization.

Minkler: We put in all this work, and it comes out on the other end sounding like crap.

Blake: The only thing we can control are trailers, which are getting better but still need improvement. On a lot of Steven’s movies, we have our own little home-brewed TAP system [TAP is Theatre Alignment Program], where I personally call theaters and talk to the technicians who align them. On Ocean’s Eleven, we sent these theater technicians T-shirts that said, “I projected Ocean’s Eleven at 85*,” then in small type, “*and nobody complained.” But I walked into the Ziegfeld, which is the most prominent single-screen house in New York, and the guy had the SDDS processor down 7 dB from 85. I said, “Have you walked out in the theater and listened to it?” He said, “If we turn it up, people are gonna complain.” And I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll stand right here and protect you.”

Blake: What do you feel about formats that go beyond 5.1, like five behind the screen or three surrounds?

Minkler: I like the 7.1. I would like to have an 8.1 with three surrounds. But I think 6.1 would be good — three front, three surround and a boom. But I wouldn’t put the surround in the back wall, I’d put it on the ceiling, towards the back — better place for your ear to pick up something flying overhead or behind you.

Mangini: Is there an HD spec yet? People are talking about 12 channels or 16 channels, and that’s something we’re going to have to address.

Blake: There is a SMPTE working group, DC 28.6, developing the audio standard for digital cinema. Anybody who is interested can log on and see what they’re up to or attend the meetings. I think people should get involved, because we want to make sure that the standard that evolves is something we can live with.

Mangini: It’s like the tail wagging the dog. Movies, generally speaking, have been the top of the pyramid in terms of presentation. But now, with the HD spec for DVDs or high-definition television, we may define a multi-speaker sound environment that will go far beyond what most motion picture theaters present.

Nettinga: I think DVD sales have been strong because home theater set-ups have been doable and reasonable. Now, if all of a sudden we confuse it with 12-speaker set-ups and things like that, will people get so turned off that they won’t be interested anymore?

Mangini: It’ll be like the theater owners. Every time a new sound format comes out, they think, “I’ve got to buy another decoder, another speaker.” But we need to make ourselves familiar with the HD spec. When my movie comes out on DVD, I want it to play right.

Blake: The spec that’s being worked out now is for digital cinema. It doesn’t relate to the home.

Mangini: The 5.1 spec was originally for theaters, too, but now we have home systems that play it.

Blake: God help us if we have to have 12 channels at home.

Mangini: It’s gonna happen. We better get involved and start mixing for it. I don’t know about you, but I can remember making agonizing decisions with clients, 15 to 20 years ago, about whether they should go to six channels. And they thought, no, those prints are only going to show for a couple of weeks. Now they wish they had mixed those movies that way, because they’d be ready for DVD.

Blake: What do you think of the quality of the ADR that you’ve been getting in recent years?

Minkler: At the good stages, they work so hard at matching. There are three or four in town where you just know you’re going to get good sound, because they go out and get the same microphones, and they try to work with you on mic placement. And the audio supervisors work so hard at getting performances. A good performance and a good recording make all the difference in the world.

Blake: What do we think about how the loudness of movies these days? I think the industry’s getting better. We hit a low point or, if you will, a loud point in the mid to late 90s. But, I think the industry collectively has been more attentive. Can you or do you rope directors in, when they are wanting more and more and more?

Minkler: I always try to convince them by showing them alternatives. It’s worked for every director except for one. No matter how bad it was, he didn’t care, as long as he got it his way.

Blake: Bad, you mean, as in painfully loud?

Minkler: The sub-woofer was just completely maxed out.

Blake: Little bits of speaker cone flying past people’s heads.

Minkler: Yeah. And, of course, it was never reproduced that way in any theater. Myron and I think that you can make things louder by making other things lower. It’s how you use your loudness and when you use it. But, I think guys are getting smarter. People are learning more about compression.

Blake: Do you use compression to emulate tape compression on your bus?

Minkler: Yes. Not specifically to emulate it, but if that’s the effect I get, then fine. But I do like to round off the higher levels.

Blake: It’s eventually going to play in people’s homes, and even if they have a good home theater, that type of sharpness coming through speakers five feet from you is just unbearable.

Mangini: Hey, Myron and Mike, how do you deal with sound editors bringing too many tracks?

Minkler: I think sound editors today are much more responsible than in the old days. I think they bring us what they know can work, as opposed to bringing five or ten of the same thing.

Blake: That’s certainly the potential offered by workstations, but when I mix shows that I haven’t supervised, I still find that people can carpet bomb.

Minkler: They need to compose good sound. That’s the beauty of the workstation and the ProControl: composition of good fundamental sounds.

Mangini: What about the Academy Awards? One sound award? Two sound awards? [The Motion Picture Academy currently offers two awards: Best Sound and Best Sound Editing.]

Minkler: I don’t want to cause any dissension between mixers and editors, but the fact that there is this line drawn and there has been 20 years of animosity between these two groups — I think they ought to just drop it. We work side-by-side to make a beautiful track. That's the way it should be. This distinction is really bad.

Blake: This distinction, as far as the award is concerned?

Minkler: Yes, that sound editing is so different from sound mixing and should be given its own Oscar. In the older days, it was true — they were very different. But they’re not so different these days. We should have one award, and it should be called Best Sound. The difficult part is how many people get that award. I understood that last year, there was a bargain on the table. The Board of Governors offered five statues for the one award. It was declined. I think that was a mistake.

Blake: None of us were there, but if that, indeed, was true, I completely agree with you. One of the problems I have with the current situation is that there can only be three films worth of sound editors nominated every year, which is absurd. [The nominations for Best Sound Editing are chosen after a “bake-off” screening, and a maximum of only three films can be nominated.] Number two, more often than not, when a show wins for best sound, you guys could not have done your work without the contributions of the sound editors. And third, if you have a musical, the music recording mixer, who could work for six months recording the music and doing elaborate premixes, is nowhere to be found in a nomination for a movie.

Minkler: I think that that’s the responsibility of the executive committee of the sound branch. They need to recognize in the rules that every year there will be one or two or three movies that have particular cases and should be handled differently. They need to do a very thorough investigation, ask a lot of questions, get some documentation and come to a conclusive decision. They shouldn’t be afraid to do that.

Blake: Everybody knows everybody in this industry, and it would be very easy to have oversight over seven or ten films.

Mangini: I’m on one of the rules committees, and I can tell you, it’s a logistical problem. In the amount of time that you’re allotted to do that research, it’s almost impossible. They already have a committee that does pre-research, and they narrow it down to 15 or 20 films in December, even before the nominations are known.

Blake: You could hand each film to two people. And those two people, on their own, could make phone calls to the re-recording mixers, supervising sound editors and directors of these movies and ask who’s responsible for the track. In an industry such as small as ours, I think it would be impossible to not come up with the right decisions. And this is before the ballots have even been handed out, to narrow things down for the bake-off. Regardless of what happens with the merger of the sound editing and the sound awards, I think it is essential that sound also have a bake off.

Minkler: They used to do that 20 years ago. We used to show 10 consecutive minutes — you couldn’t just pick your scenes.

Blake: I didn’t know that. That’s fantastic. Because there’s no way you can judge otherwise, unless you have enough time on your hands to see all the films at the Academy, which none of us can do.

Minkler: I think the ideal thing would be to send out a ballot to all 450 members of the sound branch. Then everyone shows up on a Saturday and watches 10 or 15 consecutive minutes of the top 10 to 15 vote-getters, in the same room and the same conditions. Then you really know what’s right. It gives you a much better picture of what a mix is all about.

Blake: I agree completely. What about budgets? Do you see any trends?

Minkler: Somehow the perception has gotten out there that the equipment we work on is cheap. It’s expensive to keep the mix stages equipped to do it right.

Mangini: But the fact is, we are the cheap part of the business. We’re three percent of the budget. We’re a bargain.

Minkler: Budgets are still going down, and it really upsets me. People keep laboring under the false assumption that we can do it quicker and faster because we have Pro Tools and ProControl.

Blake: Who says that?

Minkler: Every director and producer.

Blake: You’re serious? But, you’re not using ProControl — how could they possibly say that to you?

Minkler: Somebody has told them you can do things things faster and cheaper these days. So they ask us to do it for a half of what it’s supposed to be done for. They know that they’ll always find somebody who will do it for less money, somebody who has a ProControl in his garage. And, can that person get the job done? Yes. Are they gonna like it? Nope. Are they ever gonna do it again? Probably not.

Blake: But has a director with whom you have a relationship or their producer come to you and said, “No we’re not going to avail ourselves of your experience and taste, because Manny, Moe and Jack in Azusa can do it.” Please tell me you haven’t had that, Michael.

Minkler: No, the people in our room come there for a reason. But there are some shows we don’t get, because of that. But on the next picture, when it is important to them, they’ll come back.

Blake: To me, it’s all about presenting the client with creative options in any one moment. And I think that as long as all of us are trying to think of the final result, when people see the movie at home on DVD or in a good theater, they’ll look at the creative decisions that went into it and see that we all did good jobs.