CHAPTER 18

The Mix

A gymnast will spend years preparing for a 3-minute Olympic performance, a pianist will endure months of 12-hour practice sessions in preparation for a competition, and firemen repeatedly drill for something they hope will never happen. In comparison, dialogue editors have it pretty easy. Still, like the gymnast, for the past few weeks you’ve been preparing for one brief, intense experience: the dialogue premix.

Over the course of a few days, you’ll find out whether your editing decisions were sound and whether you constructed your tracks in such a way that the mixer (whom you may never have met) can quickly move beyond “making it less horrible” to using your work to breathe life into the film.

Each day during the premix, the producer will spend far more than a week’s worth of your salary, so the pressure to perform is high. There’s a balance between getting it done well and getting it done at all. Moments when you think you’re a genius are sideswiped by self-doubt when you realize that you misjudged a scene.

It’s your last hurrah, and there’s never, ever enough time. In short, the experience is thrilling, rewarding, scary, and overwhelmingly enjoyable.

Premix Goals

Two conflicting goals guide the premix: One, to see that scenes are smoothed, perspectives are established, sound is shaped, and ADR is matched; and, two, to ensure that important, volatile elements aren’t forever merged with the rest of a scene. Options must be held open for the final mix, when all of the other sound elements are available for comparison. That’s when the director absolutely, positively must make decisions—when the buck finally stops.

Given its schizophrenic mandate, what exactly are we hoping to accomplish in the dialogue premix?

With all these objectives, you have to become part artist, part traffic cop, and part perpetual cheerleader and facilitator. There are as many flavors of dialogue premix as there are films, dialogue editors, and mixers. Sometimes you’ll be a major player in the process, and sometimes you’ll be little more than a pair of hands. But the objectives remain the same.

Working with the Mixer

Why are you in the mix? You’re there for three reasons:

Getting the Most Out of the Mix and the Mixer

The rerecording mixer has the skill, experience, and (hopefully) taste that your dialogue tracks need to make the film work. He also runs a very complicated room, without which you cannot finish your job. But mixers are human like all of us and occasionally require a bit of maintenance.

Figure out right away how to get the most out of the mix and mixer. On one hand, you represent the client, so you have power. On the other, the mixer sits at the top of the audio postproduction food chain, far above the dialogue editor, so you may experience some insecurity and intimidation. None of this need be a problem if you keep two goals in mind: (1) finishing the dialogue premix more or less on schedule and (2) getting what you want from it.

Don’t be too shy to say, “That was really great, but I know you have it in you to do it better” or “It’s just not working. Let’s see what’s keeping this scene from being what I thought it could be”—or words to that effect. You worked hard on your dialogue and it’s your reputation that’s on the line. Push as hard as you reasonably can and give in only when you’re convinced that the tracks just don’t have it in them.

Still, there’ll be times when you feel the tracks aren’t getting the love and attention they deserve, and that the mixer isn’t addressing all of the problems. You have to deal with this, or you’ll never rest.

You will have several days together with the mixer to figure out how to get what you need from this high-octane situation. It’s vital that you apply the same skill and creativity that went into your editing to get the most out of the dialogue premix. There’s a magic within all rerecording mixers waiting for you to discover and make use of.

The rerecording mixer has the skill, the experience, and (hopefully) the taste that your dialogue tracks need to make the project work. In addition, it’s a very complicated room to run, without which you cannot finish your job. It’s vital that you apply the same skill and creativity that went into your editing to get the most from the studio and the most from the mixer and the mix room assistant. Unless you are very unlucky, you’ll find that you can benefit from all their skills.

Planning the Premix

Before you begin, spend a few minutes with the mixer to concoct a plan for the mix. Compare what you have to accomplish with the number of hours available, and decide what you must have in the can at the end of each day. The first reel will undoubtedly take longer than the rest, since there’ll be a certain amount of unfinished setup as well as some stabbing in the dark for the best way to address the tracks. So count the first reel as two reels’ worth of work when making up a schedule.

Mix Out of Sequence

Just as I prefer to edit dialogue out of film order, beginning on an interior reel and working my way out, I like to premix the dialogue out of sequence as well. If you don’t have a lot of time, you won’t be able to return to your first mixed reel once you’ve cracked the film’s code. In that case, don’t cut your teeth on reel 1, since it’s during the picture’s first few minutes that viewers decide if it’s worth watching.

If you start on a middle reel—but not the one where you began your dialogue editing—you can hide some of your learning curve in a “softer,” less exposed section. Of course, if you make a huge mixing discovery on your second or third reel, you’ll have to go back to your first finished reel and apply your new wisdom. Even so, by mixing in a sequence different from the editorial sequence, you’ll diminish the weaknesses of the “first-off-the-rack” reels.

Mix Groups

Within a scene, there are processing issues that all of the elements have in common. Overall noise reduction and sound shaping are more or less the same for all tracks, so they can be treated together. Conversely, each track has small, or not so small, quirks that will usually be individually sorted out in the console with the EQ and dynamics processors on each channel strip. For the “common” problems, the entire scene is usually bussed to an auxiliary mono chain that may be routed back into the console or to an external processor such as a Dolby Cat.43, a Cedar noise suppressor, or a Urei dipper.

Recording the Premix

As we saw in earlier chapters, finished dialogue is overwhelmingly mono. Nevertheless, you’ll premix it to 6 or 8 or 16 record tracks. Remember, a lovely dialogue mix is only one of your goals. The other providing quick, easy, logical options for the final mix.

A week or so before the mix, talk to the mixer or supervising sound editor to find out whether you should plan the recording strategy yourself (before the mix) or if the mixer will map it out. If you’re not responsible for engineering this strategy, read no further, but if you are, you need to understand the logic behind record tracks.

During the mix, you’ll be playing your 20-odd dialogue tracks from a workstation. Each output—analogue or digital—will be patched to a channel input of the console, mixed, and finally recorded onto hard disk. Let’s say you’re recording onto 14 record tracks. There are many ways to design these tracks, and unless you have a very good reason to object, defer to the mixer—he’s the one who’ll have to live with the consequences. Table 18-1 shows an example of what he might come up with.

The wider you spread the dialogue premix recordings, the more flexibility you’ll have in the final mix, but you’ll pay for it in the time it takes to reroute the mix to different record tracks, especially if your outboard processing equipment is limited. It’s easy to print to separate record tracks when all of your processing is within the console. Just route each channel to the record track you want and record everything in one pass. (In some premixing models, the number of record tracks is the same as the number of playback tracks.)

If, however, you’re matching shots using the console’s EQ and dynamics but bussing the entire scene through one Cat.43 or digital noise reduction device, you’ll have to print each record track separately. This is time consuming and a common birthplace of mistakes. What’s the “right” number of record tracks? Of course, the only answer is “It depends,” so talk with the mixer and the supervising sound editor. The following are a few guidelines.

Table 18-1 Dialogue Premix Record Track Design

As always, ask the mixer how to plan the recordings. Even if he decides to take care of the routing and track-arming plan, your input on how to efficiently record the dialogue premix will prove helpful because you know the film and probably have some pretty strong ideas about the focus and depth of its scenes. You also likely know the director better than the mixer does, so you have a better idea of where to cover your bases. Write your premix plan directly onto the cue sheets, as discussed in Chapter 17.

Forgoing the Premix

Newer, bigger, and more glorious digital consoles allow mixers to automate every fader move and every EQ and dynamics setting. That’s because the outboard kit linked to the console via MIDI, MADI, or Ethernet can be included in an automation session. With this power of recall, some mixers forgo premixes altogether, instead stringing up all the film’s tracks and interactively mixing one section with another. They argue that because all film sounds are interrelated, any change in one section of the mix necessarily affects all others.

This is undoubtedly true, but I’m still a holdout when it comes to diving headlong into the final mix. For me, the dialogue premix is about focusing on the details. It’s when you can really dwell on the tiniest of matters, without the burden of the rest of the film weighing on you. This is your chance to find those sublime moments that are rarely directly heard in the final but that collectively make up a masterpiece. During the final mix, everyone is more concerned with balance than with detail, with telling a story than with minutiae. And during the print master stage, there’s a further step back, to flow and the overall subtle changes that give the film its polish and integrity.

If the mixer insists on “going straight to final,” try to persuade her that a single mixer can’t open up all of the tracks and give them the attention they deserve. We have only two hands and two ears. This is a good time to try to get the producer to argue your point. If persuasion doesn’t work and you find yourself supervising the “dialogue part of the final mix”—whatever that is—your job will be to ensure that the dialogue isn’t shortchanged and swept under the carpet of backgrounds and effects.

Getting Approval

It’s just as well that most directors find observing the dialogue premix akin to watching a printer set type. It’s much easier on all concerned if you keep her out of the daily blow by blow, bringing her onto the stage only when you’ve finished a reel. If possible, ask the director to remain quiet and take notes while you play an entire reel. If you’re always stopping and starting to address her issues, you’ll never get a feel for the reel and you’ll never finish. Ask her to attach timecode or footage to her notes since it’s difficult to tell a machine control to “cue to the shot where Roxanne coughs.”

When you’ve finished screening the reel, listen only to the opinion of viewers who have any business spouting one. If you can, keep ex-spouses, accountants, boyfriends or girlfriends, and personal trainers out of the screening—one tiny bomb dropped by an outsider can poison an evaluation and the damage may take hours to rectify. Take good notes on who says what, and review them before dismissing the audience. Look for any conflicts, such as the director wanting scene 3 more blue and the producer wanting it more red. Don’t let anybody go until you have a plan for the fixes you intend to make.

As you address complaints, decide with the mixer which ones are for final mix and which require getting back into the premix. Normally, most issues raised by the guys in the back of the room are of the “Louder here, softer there” variety, which can be addressed in the final mix.

The Final Mix

It’s likely that you won’t be at the final mix unless you stick around for your own enlightenment (a good idea from time to time). Even if you aren’t there, it’s important to know what happens to your work down the line, after you’ve left the job, just as you had to know what happened to the dialogue tracks before they got to you.

Dialogue is almost always the first premix, since on most narrative films it serves as the backbone of the soundtrack, with other mixes referring to it. In the premix of the other elements of the film, as well as during the final mix, the 8, 12, or 16 multitrack recordings you created during the dialogue premix become playback tracks. Typically, they’ll show up on individual console channels and will be slaved to one or more master faders to make life more sane for the mixer. Global dialogue adjustments (for example, “Make it louder!”) can be controlled from these master faders, whereas individual dialogue premix tracks will be controlled from their channel strips, whether for reequalizing an ADR line or lowering a PFX door slam.

The number and sequence of premixes depend on the film type, the console size, and the mixer’s habits. Obviously, an action film will demand a lot of time on SFX and Foley, whereas on a dialogue-heavy film, with only atmospheric sound effects, the mixer may bring the nondialogue elements directly to the final mix. Giant consoles with ample automation allow premixing of any element without having to record anything. This is the best of all worlds because the mixer can focus on detail during the premix without commitment.

The final mix is where all elements finally meet each other. Music, more than likely already mixed at another facility, will appear as a set of LCRS (or wider) elements, and sound effects, backgrounds, and Foleys will show up raw or as multitrack premixes. As you would expect, monitoring the final mix depends on the format it’s being prepared for. A Dolby SR mix will be monitored on LCRS; a Dolby Digital mix, in 5.1 channels and SDDS, on five behind-screen speakers plus surround. The final mix is not only about story, style, balance, and emphasis, but also about sound image.

Just as the premixes were recorded “wider” than necessary to allow for flexibility in the final mix, so the final is mix recorded onto discrete multitrack groups called stems, which provide yet more flexibility. As the mix progresses, the final mixed dialogue is recorded on LCRS stems (or wider stems depending on the format), either on hard-disk or on 35 mm magnetic film. The same goes for SFX, BG, Music, and Foley—to preserve flexibility during the final pass and, more important, to facilitate the creation of print masters in various release formats.

Print Master and Special Mixes

When the mix is finished, two tasks remain. First, it must be mastered in a format that enables the shooting of an optical negative to hold all of the channels for the release print. From this optical negative, a soundtrack can be printed onto film.

Dolby SR The only surviving analogue format, except for mono, is Dolby SR; it requires the most exotic mastering process. During the mix, and later in cinema playback, it’s a 4-channel format but the four channels are stored on the film print as a 2-channel analogue optical track. In North America, this 2:4:2 print master format is called “Lt/Rt” for “Left Total/Right Total.” In Europe, it’s called SVA, for “Stereo Variable Area.”

Since this encoding process uses phase information to guide sound to the correct channel, the mixer has to listen to the playback of the decoded Lt/Rt to make sure there are no unexpected imaging gifts. Many mixers will mix the entire job through the Dolby matrix so that they’ll always be certain that all sounds end up where they should. A Dolby SR Lt/Rt print master is usually recorded to a DAT or DA-88, depending on the needs of the lab that will shoot the optical negative. Dolby Digital is a discrete format, so no matrix is required. The print master is recorded to a Dolby-owned magneto-optical recorder. SDDS and DTS each have their own special mastering requirements, so if a film is to be distributed in several release formats, separate print masters are needed.

International Version (M&E) Once the native language mix is complete, it’s time for the international mix. Wherever possible, this is a combination of SFX, Foley, and music stems, plus whatever you were able to extract from the dialogue during the premix. Many dialogue-based sounds in the final mix can’t be salvaged for M&E, usually because the dialogue steps on them (how ironic that dialogue editing requires excising nonverbal sounds from the track, while in the international mix it’s the words that ruin everything). The sound effects editor will undoubtedly have to add many new effects to cover the loss.

It’s much more efficient to create the M&E mix just after the main mix rather than weeks or months later. The sound crew is still assembled, the elements are easily available, and the supervising sound editor and mixer are familiar with the film’s quirks. Moreover, the automation is still loaded in the console and whatever outboard kit was used for the main mix is still connected.

There are times, however, when the international mix has to wait, usually because the production has spent its last cent on the mix and the lab, and they’re waiting for a foreign distributor to commit to the project. Only then will the M&E mix take place. It’s an inefficient way to work, but at times it’s the only option.

TV and Airplane Versions Most films will eventually make it to television, and in the United States there are some unusual laws and conventions about film language. Even if a film meets FCC standards for violence and nudity, it could still require dialogue cosmetic surgery to play, for example, in Peoria. Anticipating this, the ADR supervisor recorded alternate TV versions of all problematic dialogue while tracking the primary loop line. You added these alternates when you prepared the ADR for the dialogue premix. You didn’t need them in the regular dialogue premix, but you or the supervising sound editor will now use them to replace the offending lines. This new, aseptic dialogue will be folded into an otherwise acceptable final mix.

The airplane mix is the most castrated of all sound jobs. The way the airlines see it, going to a cinema is a choice and you can walk out if the movie offends you. Likewise, you can always turn off the tube if you find a film objectionable for you or your family. However, it’s pretty difficult to ignore the screen on a 15-hour flight from New York to Tokyo and harder still to keep the kids from watching Lenny while you sleep.

So, according to some rather draconian standards for film content, an airplane version will undoubtedly have undergone picture censorship, which means that you’ll be faced with a new print version. You will have to make the full-mix stems conform to this new print, and any ADR language expunging that’s beyond the scope of the TV version will have to be mixed in too.