Tag: Sound Editing

Soundstage Access: Gwen Yates Whittle, Supervising Sound Editor

Brando Benetton
June 6, 2022
Soundstage Access

For this masterclass on the Art of Sound in film and TV, we welcome on the show Gwen Yates Whittle, a 2-time Oscar-nominated sound professional whose credits include this summer’s Jurassic World: Dominion, Saving Private Ryan, Top Gun: Maverick and the upcoming Avatar: The Way of the Water.

In today’s conversation, the Skywalker Sound member and I break down some of Hollywood’s biggest sound moments. We discuss Gwen’s beginning in the industry and why the prospect of sound editing intrigued her in ways that sound mixing never did; her relationship with detail-oriented directors like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and David Fincher (Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, Benjamin Button, Gone Girl); the process of layering animal sounds to create the dinosaur voices in the Jurassic World franchise—as well as how the pandemic suddenly impacted Gwen’s work. All of this… and much more!

Gwen’s newest movies Jurassic World: Dominion and Top Gun: Maverick are now in theaters across the world, with Avatar: The Way of the Water opening in December 2022.

Listen to the podcast on:

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Conversations with Sound Artists: Dialogue Editing and ADR with Gwen Whittle

Glenn Kiser, Director of the Dolby Institute
September 21, 2015
SoundWorks Collection / The Dolby Institute

Editing dialog and working with the original recordings from the set is one of the most under-appreciated arts in cinema sound. In this episode of “Conversations with Sound Artists,” two-time Academy Award nominee Gwen Yates Whittle talks with the Dolby Institute’s Glenn Kiser about why George Lucas thinks dialog editing is one of the most important parts of the process, why she loves working on low-budget independent films (“They talk more,”), and why David Fincher and Meryl Streep love doing ADR.

Netflix Presents a Women in Film Conversation

Jazz Tangcay, Senior Artisans Editor at Variety
March 24, 2021
Netflix Film Club (YouTube)

Join a who’s who of behind-the-scenes talent for a Women in Film discussion about their work on Netflix‘s Oscar®-nominated slate this year, including:

  • Animated Short Producer Maryann Garger (If Anything Happens I Love You)
  • Costume Designer Trish Summerville (Mank)
  • Hair-and-Makeup Artisans Mia Neal, Matiki Anoff and Jamika Wilson (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom)
  • Songwriter Diane Warren (“Io Sí” from The Life Ahead)
  • Supervising Sound Editor Renée Tondelli (The Trial of the Chicago 7)

Mix Presents Award Season 2021: Mank

Tom Kenny
February 8th, 2021
Mix Magazine / SoundWorks Collection

Director David Fincher tasked the sound crew with reviving the feel of the Golden Age of Hollywood in the track. They came up with a process of combining old and new technologies to create a “patina” for playback.

Ren Klyce, Sound Designer
Drew Kunin, Production Sound Mixer
Jeremy Molod, Supervising Sound Editor
Nathan Nance, Re-Recording Mixer

Moderated by Tom Kenny, Editor of Mix

Listen to the SoundWorks Collection podcast on:

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The Golden Age Sound of ‘Mank’

Jennifer Walden
February 10, 2021
Mix Magazine

Ren Klyce and Jeremy Molod of ‘Mank’ Break Their Silence on the Sound Secrets of 1940s

Rich Quinn (ADR editor), Jonathon Stevens (Sound Effects Editor), Jeremy Molod (Supervising Sound Editor), Malcolm Fife (Sound Effects Editor), Ren Klyce (Sound Designer/Re-Recording Mixer).

Patrick Z. McGavin
December 2, 2020
CineMontage

Orson Welles famously observed a writer needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a filmmaker an army.

One of the soldiers behind Welles’ most fabled work is at the heart of David Fincher’s new Netflix film “Mank,” which excavates a creation myth from the contentious backstory of “Citizen Kane,” Welles’ 1941 feature directing debut. Many critics consider it one of the best films ever made.

Fincher commanded his own army of Foley artists, dialog editors and sound specialists for his iconoclastic biographical portrait of the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman).

Verisimilitude was the most pressing concern in crafting a symphonic soundtrack of rare cars, Underwood typewriters and vintage telephones.

Sound designer/re-recording mixer Ren Klyce and supervising sound editor Jeremy Molod have worked on every Fincher movie since his breakthrough second feature, “Se7en” (1995).

“We know what Fincher is trying to get at when he is giving us directions,” Molod said. “Sometimes when he is asking us to provide certain sounds and he gives us a description of what the character or location is, it’s not always meant to be a literal translation.

“It’s more of a feeling and what he is trying to convey.”

Klyce assembled an impressive and highly experienced editorial team that included dialog editors Kim Fosacto and Richard Quinn, Foley editor Shaun Farley and the FX editor Malcom Fife and his team, Jonathon Stevens, Josh Gold and Coya Elliott.

Most important they all had a deep work background with the fastidiously exacting filmmaker.

Read the full interview

Mix Magazine 2020: The Music in Sound with Ren Klyce

Ren Klyce in Peter Elsea’s Studio (1984)

Larry Blake
November 5, 2020
Mix Magazine / SoundWorks Collection

Animated short for Sesame Street (January 17, 1984) produced by John Korty. Sound and music by Ren Klyce:

SoundWorks Collection: The Sound of MindHunter

Glenn Kiser, Director of the Dolby Institute
July 2, 2020
SoundWorks Collection / The Dolby Institute

Cinema director David Fincher created one of the first original streaming series with House of Cards, and his innovative spirit infuses the Netflix original series Mindhunter, now in its second season.

In this podcast episode, the sound team discuss Fincher’s unique approach to the sound of serial killer interrogation scenes, a hallmark of this fascinating, dark series. The team discuss setting the acoustic tone of the series, including the oppression of the FBI agents’ basement office (and a very special door), why it was important to Fincher to always hear trainee agents at Quantico at target practice, and the joy of receiving Fincher’s incredibly detailed mix notes.

Steve Bissinger – Sound Effects Editor
Scott Lewis – Re-Recording Mixer
Stephen Urata – Re-Recording Mixer

Listen to the SoundWorks Collection podcast on:

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
SoundCloud
Stitcher

How Crafts Amplified Berkowitz, Watson, & Manson Scenes in ‘Mindhunter’ Season 2

A look at the crafts behind the killer interrogations, including cinematography, sound editing, prosthetics, editing, and rerecording mixers.

Megan McLachlan
June 20, 2020
Awards Daily

Awards Daily’s Megan McLachlan and the technical team behind Netflix’s Mindhunter Season 2 (cinematography, sound editing, editing, prosthetics, and rerecording mixers) break down why each killer interview is completely different.

Mindhunter Season 2 starts with a “doozy” of a sequence.

“You’re not sure where you are,” said Mindhunter re-recording mixer Scott Lewis.

The opening sequence reacquaints us with the mind of a killer—in this case, specifically the BTK Killer (Sonny Valicenti), who we’ve been following in Season 1 through vignettes. BTK’s wife comes home to discover him tying himself up in the bathroom while wearing a mask. Lewis and his re-recording mixer partner Stephen Urata went back and forth about how the sound of the door, bumping from BTK’s aggression, was supposed to sound from down the hall.

“[Director] David [Fincher] gave some vague directions for that,” said Urata. “We tried to keep it really mysterious. We started with really dreamy, big reverb, did some fabbing, and [the wife] starts picking up on those knocking sounds. We took our liberties with it. The knocking sounds probably wouldn’t be that loud.”

It had to compete with Roxy Music’s “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” something they had to find the right timing for with the knocks. When it came to editing the sequence with the music, editor Kirk Baxter felt like he was working on a music video.

“The track was predetermined, so I could plot everything to the music, when it was gonna hit,” said Baxter. “So much of the reaching, the hand, it was based around being stretched so the door opened at the exact beat I needed it to. To me, it was like a Christmas present. When you’ve got all of the angles and coverage, you can expand the tension and manipulate the hell out of it.”

The Crafts Behind the Madness of Mindhunter Season 2

It’s specific technical details like this that take Mindhunter to a new level of creepy with each episode. And though these elements are subtle, they add so much to each and every scene, especially when Holden (Jonathan Groff) and Tench (Holt McCallany) interview the killers.

While they might seem like they’re similar in format, each interrogation scene is completely different and tells you so much about the killer they’re questioning, with precise engineering and great care that goes into them. Let’s look at how Berkowitz, Tex Watson, and Manson are all completely different from each other.

Featured crafts:

Kirk Baxter, editing
Kazu Hiro, prosthetics
Scott Lewis & Stephen Urata, rerecording mixers
Erik Messerschmidt, cinematographer
Jeremy Molod, sound editor

Read the full profile

Creating Mindhunter’s Calculated Sound

Director David Fincher’s Mindhunter series on Netflix is as calculated as the serial killers it fictionalizes. Fincher locks down all the details on a nanoscopic level, including the sound. Here, Skywalker Sound supervising sound editor Jeremy Molod talks about his collaboration with Fincher and how they deliver a finely-crafted show.

Jennifer Walden
May 20, 2020
A Sound Effect

Having spent so much time as a Foley editor in his early career, award-winning supervising sound editor Jeremy Molod, at Skywalker Sound, appreciates the value of that performance art, as does his long-time collaborator director David Fincher. So much so, that Fincher even requests samples of potential footstep sounds for his characters before the Foley is shot. With all the details that a director has to attend to, it’s rare that one allocates so much attention to sound — even down to the Foley footsteps.

In Season 2, Ep. 2 of Netflix’s Mindhunter series — which is up for Emmy consideration for sound editing and mixing — Fincher and Molod used Foley and sound design to communicate the nervousness and discomfort of BTK-survivor Kevin Bright (Andrew Yackel) as he recounts details of the attack to detectives Tench (Holt McCallany) and Drowatzky (Jeb Kreager). Kevin is in the backseat of Drowatzky’s truck, and because of the camera angle and depth-of-field, he’s not clearly seen by the audience. His movements are implied through Foley, and those increasingly agitated movements reflect Kevin’s emotional state.

Here, Molod discusses the sound team’s work on Mindhunter, focusing on several key scenes in Season 2, Ep. 2, and their use of Foley and loop group as a storytelling tool that adds unique detail to the soundtrack.

How has your experience of working on Mindhunter Season 1 impacted your approach to Season 2? Any lessons learned on that first season that sparked ideas for this new season?

Jeremy Molod (JM): Once we got through the first season, our crew had a rhythm down. That made things a lot easier for Season 2 just in terms of our workflow and how we do it.

We didn’t take a new approach to the second season. We treated Season 1 and Season 2 as one long, huge movie. We continued exactly what we were doing before. David [Fincher] would give us his spotting notes and we’d work on it and then he would give us notes on what he liked and didn’t like. We just proceeded that way.

Since you’ve worked with David Fincher before, did he just give you general notes and let you do your thing?

JM: No. He’s very hands-on, more so than any other director I’ve worked with. He cares about every little aspect. Before we start working on it, he’ll tell us what he has in mind sound-wise, but every single day he is chiming in with more information, more detailed notes, and more ideas of things he’d like us to try. It’s a back-and-forth all the time. I send things to David almost every day for him to listen to and make notes on. It’s a very collaborative effort.

Often directors are so busy handling everything else that they don’t have time for sound collaboration. It’s good to hear he’s very involved in that…

JM: Absolutely. It’s a rare thing for a director to be this involved in sound, but that’s one of the reasons his movies are so good. He cares about every little aspect of it.

Read the full interview

Netflix’s Mindhunter: Skywalker’s audio adds to David Fincher’s vision

Patrick Birk
March 26, 2020
postPerspective

I was late in discovering David Fincher’s gripping series on serial killers, Mindhunter. But last summer, I noticed the Netflix original lurking in my suggested titles and decided to give it a whirl. I burned through both seasons within a week. The show is both thrilling and chilling, but the majority of these moments are not achieved through blazing guns, jump scares and pyrotechnics. It instead focuses on the inner lives of multiple murderers and the FBI agents whose job it is to understand them through subtle but detail-rich conversation.

Sound plays a crucial role in setting the tone of the series and heightening tension through each narrative arc. I recently spoke to rerecording mixers Scott Lewis and Stephen Urata as well as supervising sound editor Jeremy Molod — all from Skywalker Sound — about their process creating a haunting and detail-laden soundtrack. Let’s start with Lewis and Urata and then work our way to Molod.

Scott Lewis, Stephen Urata, and Jeremy Molod

How is working with David Fincher? Does he have any directorial preferences when it comes to sound? I know he’s been big on loud backgrounds in crowded spaces since The Social Network.

Scott Lewis: David is extremely detail-oriented and knowledgeable about sound. So he would give us very indepth notes about the mix… down to the decibel.

Stephen Urata: That level of attention to detail is one of the more challenging parts of working on a show like Mindhunter.

Working with a director who is so involved in the audio, does that limit your freedom at all?

Lewis: No. It doesn’t curtail your freedom, because when a director has a really clear vision, it’s more about crafting the track to be what he’s looking for. Ultimately, it’s the director’s show, and he has a way of bringing the best work out of people. I’m sure you heard about how he does hundreds of takes with actors to get many options. He takes a similar approach with sound in that we might give him multiple options for a certain scene or give him many different flavors of something to choose from. And he’ll push us to deliver the goods. For example, you might deliver a technically perfect mix but he’ll dig in until it’s exactly what he wants it to be.

Urata: Exactly. It’s not that he’s curtailing or handcuffing us from doing something creative. This project has been one of my favorites because it was just the editorial team and sound design, and then it would come to the mix stage. That’s where it would be just Scott and me in a mix room just the two of us and we’d get a shot at our own aesthetic and our own choice. It was really a lot of fun trying to nail down what our favorite version of the mix would be, and David really gave us that opportunity. If he wanted something else he would have just said, “I want it like this and only do it like this.”

But at the same time, we would do something maybe completely different than he was expecting, and if he liked it, he would say, “I wasn’t thinking that, but if you’re going to go that direction, try this also.” So he wasn’t handcuffing us, he was pushing us.

Read the full interview