An Interview with Brian Vessa, Part 1

Dolby Podcast Episode 43 - July 17, 2008

Find out how sound is created in the movies with Brian Vessa, Sony Pictures’ Technical Audio Director. In Part 1, Brian talks about all the different layers of sound needed for one motion picture and how they are created. Don’t miss Part 2 of this 2-part series about movie sound production.

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Mentioned in this Episode

Craig Eggers: Streaming to you from our headquarters in San Francisco, this is Dolbycast, the insiders’ guide to entertainment technologies from the experts at Dolby Laboratories. We are here to give you the straight talk and news on everything you need to know about technologies that excite your eyes and ears.

First some news. Frequent listeners of our podcast will notice the absence of a very familiar voice, that of Mr. Jack Buser. Jack has been offered a unique and exciting opportunity to work with the Sony Playstation group here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I can tell you that after a run of 40 podcasts with Jack, he will be missed. Will we replace Jack? The answer is yes and no. The fact is, you can never really replace someone entirely, especially a person like Jack, who had that unique combination of enthusiasm, knowledge, playfulness, and that magnetic personality.

I have to tell you I really enjoyed working with Jack and I will miss his energy and his dedication to Dolbycast. We are auditioning co-hosts as we speak. And I can tell you that there will be a new person sitting in that seat across from me. And they will bring their distinct personality, their distinct energies and insights to Dolbycast. And I am confident that together, we will elevate Dolbycast to even greater heights.

One final word from me. After 40 podcasts, I do want to say “thank you” to each of you, our listeners, for your generous support for what we try to do here. Your enthusiasm for Dolbycast is genuinely appreciated.

With all that behind us, we are going to take a short musical break. But when we return, I want to introduce you to Mr. Brian Vessa. Brian is an industry professional whose works I am sure you are going to be familiar with if you care at all about great movies.

So I am Craig Eggers. This is Dolbycast. Back in a moment.

Announcer: If you have questions for the experts at Dolby Laboratories, email us at dolbycast@dolby.com. For more information and links pertaining to today's topic, be sure to log on to dolby.com/dolbycast.

Craig: And we are back at Dolbycast. Have you ever really listened to a movie and wondered how much time and effort went into creating and bringing all of the elements of a soundtrack together into a finished and polished production? I can tell you it is a massive effort and it requires the creative genius of a whole host of dedicated professionals.

In December of last year, I had the honor to participate on a panel discussion with Mr. Brian Vessa. Brian is the Technical Audio Director for Sony Pictures. Now if you love movies in the cinema or even in your home theater, you are really going to love hearing Brian's insights into how these incredible productions are created and come together.

Brian, thank you for being on our program and welcome to Dolbycast.

Brian Vessa: Thank you Craig. It is great to be here.

Craig: Well, thank you for coming. I know you have got a huge, huge resume and lots of responsibilities. Can you tell us just a couple of them?

Brian: I am basically in charge of making sure that the audio is delivered correctly, it is used correctly, and archived correctly. I write specs. I do interface with the production to make sure that they know what to do, and if they didn't do it right, help them do it right. I am responsible for digital cinema. I wrote the specs for that. I am directly responsible for the home theater print masters for Blu Ray, for the DVD extended versions, for the procedures and specs for conforming and encoding for DVD, Blu Ray, and all that. Foreign mastering - we do audio for transcoding. And again I am responsible for all the audio archiving.

Craig: And I might say, one of my favorite movies, Spider-Man, you have had a lot of extensive input on.

Brian: That was a fun one.

Craig: So Brian, let's talk about sound and movies if we will. There was a time when movies were referred to as motion pictures. In fact they still are major motion pictures. But my question to you is, is from the production perspective, from the directors’ and producers’ minds, how important is audio today in creating a blockbuster movie presentation?

Brian: Well especially with the blockbuster movies, sound is at least half of it, if not more. Sound really creates the impact in the experience. I think sound is the final touch that completes the story and it enhances the overall experience. And another thing you can say about sound is that it tells the story subliminally while the picture tells it visually.

Today, the directors see that more and more. And especially in the blockbuster movies, I think the directors are depending on the sound to really carry a lot of the movie.

Craig: I think it is important though. I mean, you love these big bombastic movies with great special effects and great audio special effects. But on the other hand, sound can really be important in creating that whole emotional attachment; the presence or the airiness of the environment that you are in. Can you talk about that for a sec?

Brian: I think the subtle sounds are the ones that are the most interesting because you don't even notice they are there. They just bring out an emotion or they bring out a scene or they kind of make you know the villain is coming or that this is not a good place. Like you say, the subtle sounds are really interesting. They bring the emotion to the characters. They bring the emotion that you are supposed to get. Actually, the sound sort of requests the emotion from the listener.

Craig: I like that. I like that. It is also interesting in that if it is really done well, you don't notice it. It is there. It is creating that attachment. It is creating that ambiance, the whole connection if you will. But quite frankly, you don't notice it when it is happening, do you?

Brian: You don't and hence it is subliminal.

Craig: So let's talk about how we get to creating sound in a movie, if you will. We have got the accountants to sign off, we have got the talent, we have got a script. Who actually provides the guidance and direction with regards to what kind of sound effects are going to be used in the movie, what kind of theme music we are going to use for a movie, what kind of musical themes are going to be used to introduce each character in the movie. Does that come from the director and producer or is it something else?

Brian: Well usually the director is the one with the vision for how he wants the movie to go. And quite often, before even any of it has been shot, he gets together with his people that he has hired to bring the soundtrack to life, and kind of describes what he is looking for. And if there are particular characters or particular themes or whatever he is looking for, usually all that gets discussed sort of up front. If they have storyboards they will look at that. Or if they have done some dailies in shooting already or have a director’s cut or something, they will take a look at that.

Craig: Brian, for our audience, what is a “daily”?

Brian: A daily is actually little pieces. It is the takes from the production of the day. On Tuesday, we did like 5 scenes and we did 20 takes of each scene. So now you have got 100 dailies to look at - each one of those takes for each one of those scenes.

Craig: Gotcha.

Brian: So anyway, he collaborates. Basically what a director does is he will hire a team of people that he knows understand his vision. He will describe the particulars for this picture and where he wants it to go. And then usually, he will let them go off and do it. And then they will come back and show him their creativity and then he will sign off or he will have suggestions, etc.

Craig: Interesting. So it sounds like it is a collaborative effort, but it also probably involves a lot of trust.

Brian: A lot of trust. And it is usually built up over years. And then you look at people like Clint Eastwood or people like that. They always use the same people because they just really trust these people and they know that having worked together with them for a long time, they know instinctively what he is going to want.

Craig: They get into the director's head if you will.

Brian: That's right.

Craig: That is very cool. You know, when we were together back in December, you told a great story; did a great PowerPoint presentation about the entire process of conceptualization to, quite frankly, premiering the movie on a Saturday night in Hollywood. Could you walk us through the entire process of, "OK. We've got the directors. We have got the creative talent. We are ready to start putting this movie together…" Can you walk us through the process of what happens on the sound side, the audio side, of creating a blockbuster movie?

Brian: Sure. After we have done the collaboration that I mentioned a minute ago, we are actually going to execute the movie now. The first thing, of course, that happens is that we actually go on the set and we do some recording, picture and sound. And so the first element that we bring forward with everything is the production sound, the sound that is happening while the camera is rolling, what the actors are saying, sounds they might make with their hands, anything that is going on that is recorded as the same time as the film…

We also usually get sounds from the location when the cameras aren't rolling so that we can use them in the film. We will usually, if there is any particular sounds that are unique to the set or unique to the location, we will be sure to record those.

Craig: So if they have a team that is going out and actually shooting some landscapes, etc., in addition to capturing those landscapes, they are also capturing some of the native sounds, the ambiance of the environment.

Brian: Exactly.

Craig: Is that done in surround sound or just two-channel?

Brian: Well, I think both are done....sometimes they only record two channels and in post-production, we create a 5.1 or whatever surround we are using. Recently, there has been a proliferation of microphones that can actually record surround right there. And also, we now have 8 channel location recorders. So recently, within the last year or 2, we have started to see more and more actual surround sound being recorded on location.

Craig: Do you see that as a trend as you move forward?

Brian: I do. I do see that as a trend, especially with movies where sound is a big deal and ambiances are a big part of the soundtrack. If it is an outdoor movie, for example, that is really where you would have that for the most.

Craig: So you have captured the sound out in the field. Then what happens?

Brian: Well, of course after everything is recorded and we’ve captured it, we bring it in and we start the post-production process. The post-production process for sound usually starts with the picture editorial. You take the sounds that were recorded. They put them into the digital workstation such as Navitor [indecipherable] or Final Cut Pro. And the editor makes his edit. And he brings along the production sound with it. And so you have, at the end of that, you have not only the cut, but you have the sound from the set kind of roughly cut in to match it. In the old days, they called that a one-to-one. It was something that the editor would supply you.

The sound editorial people take that as a reference and then they go back to all the daily roles, which is the sound that was recorded on the set for each one. And the build all the production sound back in as high a fidelity as they possible can in the editing system. That is what we now call the editing production sound.

We then start in with the process of creating other sounds that go with it. The sound designer is a person that would be hired by the director usually if it is a film that has unique sounds or particulars. Like if it is an animated film and we want particular sounds for each of those characters or something like that, the sound designer would get involved with that.

We also have the process now of creating the sound effects, the Foley, and any additional or replaced dialogue.

Craig: So Brian, let's talk about Foley. I have got to believe this is the coolest job in Hollywood.

Brian: I would love to be a Foley artist. I think it is an extremely exciting thing to do.

Craig: So for our listeners, there is a thing called a Foley stage, where you have all these different props. I don't want to steal anything from you Brian. But you have all these props and you have a screen. And Brian, what is happening?

Brian: Well what is happening is that the people are performing sound effects while watching the picture. And that is the unique thing about Foley, is that they are all performed by people. And there is two aspects to Foley. One is the footsteps, where the Foley artists will get together - there are usually two Foley artists that work in tandem - and they will recreate all the footsteps of all the characters that are on the screen. And these footsteps are performed on different surfaces. If you look at a Foley stage, they have a bunch of different little pits and a lot of different surfaces. There is hard, soft, gravelly, watery, and so whatever the scene calls for the people will actually walk those footsteps and mimic each character.

So that in itself is an absolutely amazing process. And then the other thing that happens in Foley is that the artists perform actual sound effects using props. So if there is someone on the thing and they are doing like a whirl through the air, they will actually take like a whip and go, "Whirrrlll...", like that, and that will go right in sync with what you are seeing on the screen. Many other things, like just banging on a window, hitting a car door, all of those sorts of things can all be absolutely performed to the screen and recorded live. So it really brings an organic thing to the soundtrack.

Craig: So they are watching the screen and performing these sound effects, or creating these sound effects simultaneously. It must be a real art form.

Brian: It is an incredible art form actually. It really is. Like I said, it is the most organic part of it, because you actually have performance.

Craig: So we have captured all of our Foley sound. There is this thing called ADR. And I understand that when you record out in the field, you film out in the field, you capture audio sometimes. And that audio can be the dialogue. But there is also other things that happen in the studio to enhance the audio of what we are hearing when we watch a movie. Can you talk about ADR? Tell us what ADR stands for.

Brian: ADR is Automated Dialogue Replacement. It comes from...the original thing was called looping. And the reason it was called looping was because you actually took a piece of film that had the thing that the actor had to mimic and had a piece of recording thing, and they actually put them in loops and just kept running them until the actor got it right.

When they got Automated Dialogue Replacement, you have a situation where the ADR editor says, "OK. We are going to do this line of dialogue right here." And so then you hear some beeps. If I am going to say, "Hello, how are you?", you are going to hear, "Beep. Beep. Beep. Hello, how are you?" So at the place where that fourth beep would occur, that is where you are supposed to start talking.

So they have automated the queuing for the actor to know exactly when to begin speaking.

Craig: So the actor is basically watching what was filmed out in the field, if you will. So they are watching themselves.

Brian: Exactly. If you are doing true replacement, then the actor is performing their line again and matching exactly the way that they did it. There can be a number of reasons why that you do that. There could be noises, a very noisy environment that made it difficult to get a good recording on the set. There could be they maybe didn't like the performance so well, so they are trying to get a different performance out the actor.

In some cases they actually re-voice the actor because they want that person to sound like they are somebody different. So they actually put another person's voice there. That is quite often done with characters and things like that. Not maybe the lead actors, but some of the character actors and stuff. They will replace their dialogue to make them sound like they have a different dialect or whatever.

Craig: Now Brian, you talked about earlier about the fact that you are involved in foreign films and foreign releases. So when a movie is completed and there is a Spanish language version of that, is that done in ADR or is that done some other time?

Brian: Well what happens with those is that they script that out just the same way they would script anything else out. They figure out exactly how they are going to do the translation and script everything. And then they hire different people to voice the different characters in the movie.

So it is basically voice recording, but the best of these are done with particular people that represent particular characters. And they rehearse it and they get the emotion of what they are supposed to be doing and the whole thing. So, the best of these will capture as close as possible the emotion of the original. And then, of course, they will mix that with the body of the soundtrack without the dala [indecipherable], which is called the music and effects track. And then together they make the Spanish language master.

Craig: Incredible. So Brian, I want to take a short break. And when we come back I want to talk to Brian and ask Brian about sound effects. In home theater, we are really into the bombastic sound effects - the cannons, the explosions, the car crashes. I am curious to hear how Brian creates those. We will back in just a moment.

Announcer: You are listening to Dolbycast with Craig Eggers.

Craig: And we are back at Dolbycast with our special guest Mr. Brian Vessa. Brian is the Director of Technical Audio for Sony Pictures. We are talking about how sound is created for movie soundtracks.

So Brian, tell me about Venom in Spider-Man 3 and how you created that magic.

Brian: Well, Paul Ottosson, who was the sound designer in that movie, he took a bunch of different animal sounds. I don't know exactly what they were. I think there was like snake sound and cougar sound and various things like that that he blended together. And he pitch shifted some of them and stretched them time wise, added in a few sounds that were just synthesized and together created that very recognizable, screechy sound that Venom had.

Craig: Brian, we have captured the Foley, we have captured the ADR, we have layered and created all these incredible sound effects that create an identity for the character. What happens next?

Brian: Once we have done the sound design for the characters, we go into the process of sound editing. Actually, it is usually concurrent. Sound editing has various things about it. We do the backgrounds and the ambiances, which some of those are recorded on the set and we are now cutting them in to match the picture. Some of them we are going to get from a sound library, those things that create the room sounds and the outdoor sounds.

We are also going to start to look at the sound effects that were spotted back in the collaboration stage. And people go into their libraries. The sound effects editors all have big libraries of sounds they have used over the years and that they have been collecting. And they pull from those sounds and they match them up with the picture, layering where necessary, to create sounds to go with everything that is going on.

The Foley that we performed is set to each scene and put in. And we also work with the dialogue, which is a very important aspect. We take the dialogue that was done on production, which is already in sync by nature. But then we take the ADR and put it in sync.

And then there is additional dialogues that are recorded which can be an off-screen sound. It can be crowds. And quite often we have something that they call “loop group”, which comes in and they do reactions. So like if you are in a fight scene and somebody punches somebody and the crowd goes, "Whoooo!", those were all recorded during the ADR sessions. So those were all cut in.

So basically the sound editors take all the dialogue, the backgrounds, the Foley, the sound effects, and get them all in sync and prepare them to bring to the mixing stage.

And then during that whole process, the composer, who has been busy trying to get themes done that the director is going to like, is doing that work and composing and do all of that sort of thing. And we are getting ready to do the music recording session.

So. once the themes are signed off and everything is ready to go, an orchestrator orchestrates all the parts out for the orchestra that they have determined is going to work. A contractor hires all the musicians and contracts the place they are going to do the recording. The music editor comes in....

Craig: So, live musicians?

Brian: Excuse me?

Craig: Live musicians?

Brian: Live musicians!

Craig: I love it!

Brian: Yeah, believe it or not, there is a big wave going back to live musicians, especially in the bigger movies now.

Craig: That is interesting.

Brian: For a while, everything was synthesizers. And now it is like, "Well if you really want a big sound, you gotta have a really big orchestra. "So if it is a high budget, big movie, you are going to have an orchestra, which is really wonderful to get back to that because I think things were getting a little thin for a while there.

So the music editor sets that whole thing up and we do the scoring session and perform the music. And the director is usually either at the scoring session or he is tied in like we are on ISDN or he is on a network of some kind and giving his feedback. They are changing things on the fly and doing everything necessary to please the director in his vision on that.

And there is usually a team of music editors that are busy cutting everything into place and throwing it back over a network. So it is really very high tech these days. The music recordings are pretty fascinating.

Craig: Incredible.

Brian: After we have done that, the music editor comes back and re-syncs everything to the picture, which usually has undergone 200 cuts since that point. And also deals with what we call the “source music”, which is the music that appears to be happening at the scene, which could be like a radio that is playing or a television that is on, or maybe you are in a disco and you are hearing pre-recorded music. All of those kinds of things. So the music editor takes care of all that stuff.

Plus, we have the song. So some movies, there is a number of actual popular songs that are edited in. So the music supervisor will function as the person that finds those songs and clears those songs. And they negotiate out what they are going to pay the publishers and that sort of thing. And then the music editor cut cuts them in the way they are supposed to go.

So basically, now we have prepared all of the materials, and we go on to the next phase, which is mixing.

Craig: Wow.

I think my first take away from our conversation with Brian is the incredible amount of work and dedication that goes into creating a soundtrack for a movie. We will have Brian back in the future to walk us through the process of bringing all of the elements together that create a theatrical, as well as home video, production of a movie.

In the meantime, don't forget to send us your questions. Our email address: dolbycast@dolby.com. That's dolbycast@dolby.com.

Or give us a call and leave a message at 888-6-DOLBY-C. I am Craig Eggers. This is Dolbycast. See you soon.

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