You started doing music-based films with Oliver Stone’s The Doors.
Yes, that was the first foray into it all.
And was any of that done live?
Yeah, absolutely. Val Kilmer [who played Jim Morrison], a lot of his vocals in that are live, believe it or not. He was unbelievable. I was on that film for six weeks before production. I was there throughout all the prerecords. Having never done a music-based film before, that was the beginning of a major learning curve of trying to figure out how to do this. But Val would sing live and [to replicate] Jim's voice is so difficult, it tears up the vocal cords. With Val, we could only get six takes or so before his voice was shot. We would always do the close ups first and do those live. Afterwards, we'd switch to the wider shots and use the prerecorded tracks.
When he was singing live, he was singing to prerecorded music in an earpiece?
To capture live vocals, that's the general way of doing it for films. If we have a band, all of the band will have hidden earpieces in, which are called earwigs. Deaden the drums and all of the instruments, and then I have a clean environment to capture the vocal. Once Val’s voice was worn out, we would blast the backing music through the PA speakers.
I heard that after that experience you got hooked on doing music-based films.
Absolutely. It was a great challenge. Doing location recording for films – some films are challenging, some aren't as challenging, and some are just nuts-and-bolts dialogue recording. But musicals add a whole new dimension to it, and a whole lot of problems to figure out. I'll test lavalier mics with actors before we start shooting. I'll take six different brands of lavaliers and attach them to a grip stand, all in a row and at the height where the lavalier would be placed on the singers’ body – which is a bit below about dead center on the sternum. I'll also have my Sennheiser MKH 416 [shotgun mic] overhead. I'll give the actors headphones and have them sing and talk. I'll use whichever lavalier matches to the 416 the best. Every actor is different. Lavaliers have a particular sound to each, much more so than larger diaphragm microphones. I'll go through, and A-B each lavalier against the 416, and see which one replicates that person’s voice the best. That allows me to do transitions – if I'm boom mic’ing them and I have to switch to a lavalier in the mix for the same scene, I'm able to make that transition to the other mic and it doesn't sound different. It sounds nearly the same.
With the Dylan film, A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet – who played Dylan – sang 100 percent live?
That's correct. The first time ever that any actor has ever gone 100 percent live for the whole film. We didn’t use any earpieces whatsoever with him. Nothing even for tempo. Normally we'd at least give the singer a little earpiece – one of the little hidden earwigs – for tempo purposes to keep the music exactly in time for the editors later because, from one take to another, it can vary. But Timothée was dead on. With beats per minute, he was almost exact. Maybe off by one BPM from start to finish, if at all.
I heard you also recorded the buskers and the music coming from the apartments for the film. When Dylan’s character is walking down the street, there's a guy playing some percussion on the sidewalk and stereos blaring out of windows and such. You were recording that as it happened, rather than recreating it later?
Yep, and anything that was prerecorded, we played it back on the street in real-time to give the actors that energy. Having that music there was a boost for the actors. They appreciated it immensely, because it made the environment so much more real. On most films, we're always trying to keep this pristine, quiet environment so that we can capture dialogue. Here, we went all out – to the point where I'd even play back sounds that were happening on a television in a scene. Other sound effects, like ambulances and fire trucks going by, we used to help create that chaotic feeling, particularly during the Cuban Missile Crisis scenes.
A funny difference between film sound and record making, is that in film you’re often putting noise back in, whereas with records most of the time those same sounds would be suppressed or erased. Word is that you always have dancers do a take without singing to record all the steps and squeaks.
You did your homework! The actors and the dancers need to hear the music pounding if we're doing a bigger number, so we need to play it over a speaker. If we gave them a tiny earpiece and they're trying to create the energy of a big dance number with the emotion and energy of it, it just doesn't work. As soon as we get the scene visually, for ambient sound I'll give all of the dancers and actors wireless headphones and I'll have them reenact the entire dance. Everything they did, except without vocals. And they'll do the entire dance while I have three booms following them around capturing all of the incidental sounds. That allows me to capture everything that they're doing, whether it's footsteps, stomps, claps – whatever it is that's happening in the scene. Now we'll have an organic Foley track. It’s better than anything I could ever try to replicate in post-production.
Because it’s real and it actually occurred.
