On Ben Osmo's last major production, the contrast to "just a Nagra and a boom mic" could not be more pronounced.
Following our AGM, Academy Award winner Ben Osmo (Best Achievement in Sound Mixing 2015 — Mad Max: Fury Road) presented on the topic of:
Film Production Sound Through the Years - changes and added responsibilities.
Ben told us that his career in location sound production started in 1975 at the ABC. He explained that the typical setup of the time was a Nagra portable battery-operated tape recorder and a shotgun microphone on a long boom pole. He explained that the shoots were often one-camera affairs with shots framed as wide-shot, mid-shot, and close-up with the microphone positioned accordingly to achieve the appropriate sound balance.
Ben then took us through a series of his earliest films, Dead Calm, Strictly Ballroom Lorenzo's Oil and The Phantom, describing the particular challenges and the evolution of sound-for-film technologies across the period including early in-ear monitor systems, and the gradual usurping of the position of the Nagra tape recorders by digital technologies like DAT.
He indicated that by the mid-nineties, with the expansion of the size of sets and crews he had picked up the extra responsibility of crew communications systems, and how they evolved to fully wireless, in-ear systems.
Ben then described the processes involved in later films involving animatronics, CGI, and motion capture, and how that affected sound capture and communications requirements. He covered the productions Babe, Babe 2, Charlotte's Web, Happy Feet, and Peter Rabbit which drew heavily on these technologies. He noted that by 1998 and Babe 2, a ProTools workstation was being used and he was able to use time compression on ProTools to maintain sync on slow-motion replays for Director playbacks.
With his next live-action film Peter Pan, Ben told us that radio microphone technology had advanced sufficiently to be viable, and he started using Lectrosonics units as the body-pack transmitters were small and rugged enough to be secreted in even the skimpiest costumes.
For the music-themed film The Sapphires, Ben described the process of music performance capture and replacement, and he told us that he was now using a Sound Devices 788T solid-state recorder, and Sonosax SX10 mixer, as well as a significant PA system for playback.
Ben then moved on to the project that brought him the Oscar, Mad Max: Fury Road. He played a pre-produced video he had created to describe his work on the project, covering the recording equipment, radio mics and their associated antenna distribution, and power systems, as well as the methods of rigging microphones, radio antennas and power systems within the many "war rig" vehicles featured in the production. The complex communications requirements and solutions were also covered, as were the challenges of shooting in the extreme conditions of the Namibian Desert.
He went on to describe his next project, The Kettering Incident shoot in Tasmania — one involving a much smaller kit, where the dry and dusty Namibian desert was replaced by the lush Tasmanian wilderness.
For his next film, Alien: Covenant, Ben replayed a video created by Adam Savage where Adam interviewed Ben as a "Behind The Scenes" on the topic of the sound for this production.
Ben then described the criticality of communication, as well as the process of sound effect creation.
For the Friday on My Mind Easybeats bio-pic project, Ben described recording the musical performances and integrating them into the final mix.
For the film Three Thousand Years of Longing, Ben described how the Director, George Miller required the use of 100% location sound, so Ben outlined the process of acoustic treatment, and microphone fitting, as well as the use of the by-now mature CGI technology to "paint out" in-shot microphones, giving greater flexibility in lavalier mic fitting and boom mic placement.
This production was shot during COVID, and Ben explained the challenges that created.
Ben then described his last production, which cannot be named as it is yet to be released. This limitation resulted in Ben displaying a lot of pictures of gear setups, but no set photos. It was another action film that required complex communication and mic rigging.
Ben covered the radio mic spectrum complexities, as well as the advanced solar power options available for the sound van.
Both at the mid-point and the end of his presentation there were opportunities for questions to be answered, and a range of topics were covered such as the preparation required before a shoot, equalization of sources at the time of recording, equipment lost to the harsh conditions, the proportion of location sound used in the final mix, the hours required in pre-production preparation as well as the hours worked on-set, and the evolution of set communications requirements.
The Melbourne Section thanks Ben for the time and effort he put into this presentation.
A more comprehensive report on Ben's presentation, along with lots of photos and links to the two videos presented is available on the Melbourne Section website at:
https://aesmelbourne.org.au/mtg-rpt-aug2023/
