Everett
Moore started mixing music in Oakland,
CA. He
segued through hiphop music editing into working
on big budget movies (The Shipping News, Maid
in Manhattan, Lost In Translation). As
of the date of this interview, he had just completed
an assignment at Skywalker
Ranch in Marion County, CA.
By Tom Soper
They have a Euphonix system
at Skywalker. Were you mixing on that?
Yes, they have a Euphonix, where we did a lot of pre-dubs but we actually finaled on a Neve.
How does the sound mix come together?
We’ll have a Pro Tools session that the effects editor cut. That’s what we originally start with. And in fact a lot of the playback machines in the final mix are Pro Tools G4s playing back these element tracks. But we’ll do a pre-mix, say of the dialogue, or the Foley, the ADR group, and the effects, and the music for pre-dubs. Actually, we didn’t do a pre-dub of the music in this film, and that’s probably more commonplace than not, because the music is so integral that they want as much control in the final mix as possible. So the music is brought in at the very end. So, the editors will show up at the mix with their final sessions in Pro Tools format. Then we will premix off those onto, in the case of Skywalker, Tascam MMR-8s which are rack mounted recorders. And, depending on how much control we want on those pre-dubs in the final mix we’ll either play off MMP-16s or off the Pro Tools sessions again. Skywalker has a gigantic accommodation for MMRs and MMPs and we used a lot of them
So then you’re really
building up layer upon layer?
We’re building up, but we’re also trying to downsize from the number of tracks we have at the beginning. So as we mix it down, like-sounding elements will go in like-sounding tracks. So a pre-dub might be a hard effects pre-dub, with doors closing, car doors and bangs, those sorts of things. Dialogue pre-dubs usually take the longest. That’s really where the director is involved, especially in a film that’s not effects heavy. They’re much more interested in performance, which cue to use, sibilance. Dialogue and music are competitive as the main elements.
Is there a rough amount of pre-mixes you want to get down to before the final mix?
There are two schools of thought on it. Do you want as much control as possible over all the original stems, and of course who can say no, or at some point are you just going to be overwhelmed? I don’t want to go look for track 72 in the middle of the mix.
How long does a final mix take?
That depends on the film. I’ve been on films that lasted forever and a day because the studio allowed it and they had really specific, really difficult things they wanted. The last film everything went extremely smoothly. There were no picture changes, which is most important. Otherwise, you can imagine how all of the elements of the sound, all the pre-dubs, need to be changed to match the final picture and that can be very time consuming. We started the dialogue pre-dub on the 21st and the effects on the 24th and both of those went to about the 3rd. Then the final mix was from the 4th to 15th, so the entire thing, including pre-dubs only took four weeks, which is a very accelerated schedule.
Have you seen the technology
change in the time you’ve been doing this?
I came along after the implementation of digital workstations, about 3 or 4 years ago. But the biggest change I’ve seen is more and more Pro Tools being used as playback machines in the mix. The advantage is that there’s an editor on the stage that’s controlling the Pro Tools and if the director decides this sound should happen a little earlier or if there’s a sync issue, that editor is right there and can do it instantly. That was much more difficult in the past. It makes our job a lot easier because it’s always in the same format.
How many G4s are in use then, during the final mix?
During the final we had Foley pre-dubs and the original Foley elements on one machine running Pro Tools. The dialogue pre-dubs were off an MMP. Music was on Pro Tools. Effects, too, was off several machines. I’d say five to seven machines overall.
And what does it all get recorded on eventually?
MMRs at 24bit. The majority of films are probably still 16bit but it’s moving more and more in that direction. I did think the 24bit recording verses the 16bit test recording we did on The Shipping News did sound better, but in other cases I have not been able to tell the difference.
So someone who has a powerful
G4 and is using Pro Tools is working very similarly
to the work you’re doing except for the final board, the Neve or the Euphonix. What
does that element offer?
Well, that’s a huge can of worms. Obviously the Pro Tools is a lot cheaper, but the difference is the mixer in front of the Euphonix who has an amazing control over that sound. There’s also routing capabilities, the usefulness of having a big board and the sound of the board some people would say. But I’m a big advocate of pre-mixing in Pro Tools and using pro-sumer technology to achieve your results because in the end it sounds good. I’ve heard a lot about Larry Blake’s work on the Soderbergh films and he loves the new technology for having total control at the end. The Mac architecture allows all the original recorded material to be available.
