Dolby Creator Talks

Netflix's "The Crown" picked up a whopping 24 Emmy nominations this year, including one for Best Drama Series — which is understandable, considering just how innovative, understated, and tragic the storytelling on that series is. 

This week, we're speaking with two of the nominees responsible for some of that incredible storytelling, longtime collaborators Yan Miles ACE, the Editor, and Lee Walpole, the Supervising Sound Editor & Re-Recording Mixer. Yan was nominated for editing and Lee for sound mixing the emotionally wrenching "Fairytale" episode from season four, which tells the heartbreaking story of Lady Diana's days from her engagement to Prince Charles up until her wedding day, which by then, it's safe to say, the "fairytale" was over.

This episode is like a masterclass in non-verbal storytelling, tone, and subtext as we follow Diana's emotional journey beyond dialogue, by showing us her relationship to things like food, loneliness, silence, and dance. We're delighted to share this conversation with you so you can get a glimpse into just how this talented creative team approaches this very complex subject matter.

"I was very mindful of that in the scene, to lean into this innocent, happy, young woman, always. And to always tread very carefully, because it's unusual to watch a film when you know the ending. That's a very unusual sort of storytelling. So I always, always [remembered] that, all the time. What would this young girl be going through, in these experiences? And I imagine any girl around the world, when she is sort of happy or sad, dances around the bedroom to a piece of music! It's relatable, it's hugely relatable. [Lady Diana] just happens to be in this huge, great big room or happens to be roller skating around this huge, great big palace."

–Yan Miles ACE, Editor, "The Crown" 

Be sure to check out the fourth season of "The Crown" on Netflix ahead of the Emmy Awards on September 19th.

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This week we bring you a remarkable story about how Carlos López Estrada, the director of the Dolby Institute Fellowship winner "Blindspotting," attended a spoken word poetry performance and was so inspired by what he saw on stage, he decided to make a wild, low-budget indie feature capturing some of the magic he witnessed that evening. With the help of Executive Producer Kelly Marie Tran, he turned a chaotic production, written and starring young poets (many of whom were only just out of high school!) into a highlight of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. 

We sat down with Carlos, Kelly, and two of the poet writers of the film, Tyris Winter and Marcus James, to discuss how they managed to make such a magical film under such wild circumstances.

"There's people [in this spoken word poetry group] from every single neighborhood in LA – as far east, as far west, south valley, everywhere in between. So you were hearing stories all about their relationship to their community, their environment, their families, LA themselves, [and all] as different as could be. But it was all young people talking about existing in the city in 2019, which put them all together into this beautiful package. And that was really sort of how the idea of what this movie could look like. We said it would be one day in LA, it would follow characters from point A to point B, and then they would pass on the torch to the next group. We would find ways for some of them to stick around, some of them would just make one-off interactions. And the only structure that this would have is that these are all young people existing in LA on the same day. And then from there on, we opened up the door for the poets, essentially told them 'you're going to write and you're going to star in your own scene. What do you want to talk about? What is important to you today?' And from then on, it was a madness."

— Carlos López Estrada, Director of "Summertime"

Be sure to go see "Summertime" in theaters while you still can. 

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How do I break into the film business?

That is the number one question we get asked, so we figured maybe it was time to finally answer it. For the past few months, we've asked some of the top professionals in the fields of cinematography, animation, sound, producing, and directing how they got their start and the answers were surprising even to us! 

"The world has a way of opening doors and closing doors on you. I basically ended up - through poverty and desperation - back in England as a news sound man, to begin with. Just trying to get a job anywhere I could. And [I] did freelance sound for the American networks for about a year. Which I was actually very, very bad at. And so it was kind of suggested that I do something else. And I kept telling the networks, 'well, I can shoot.' [Then] the Falklands war broke out in 1982 and there suddenly weren't enough cameramen in England to cover it. [So] they very reluctantly - CBS - moved me up to cameraman."

—Sean Bobbitt, B.S.C.

Many thanks to Sean Bobbitt, Kori Rae, Dan Scanlon, Peilin Chou, Glen Keane, Gennie Rim, Oliver Tarney, Mike Prestwood Smith, William Miller, and John Pritchett for sharing your superhero origin stories with us.

If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know. We might just make this a recurring series! You can follow Glenn on Twitter or you can leave us a rating & review on the Apple Podcasts app.

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Adapting stage musicals for the cinema is an often tricky process and "In the Heights," the latest adaption from Broadway phenom Lin Manuel Miranda, was no different. Director Jon Chu certainly did not shy away from the epic scale of the theatre production, if anything he made it even grander, which (as you might've guessed) had a number of unique challenges. Primarily, how did they manage to capture the immediacy of the live musical performances and still make it both cinematic and fresh? 

The production tapped music supervisor Steven Gizicki, who had previously worked on the very successful "La La Land," as well as Miranda's long time collaborator (and former roommate), Bill Sherman, to once again act as music producer, having worked on the stage show since the earliest stages. We recently sat down with Bill and Steven to discuss their process, and it was eye-opening. If you think you know how modern movie musicals are recorded, you may be surprised to learn what all went into making "In the Heights."

"The actors are always singing live when they're on set. So we're recording them just as a reference, so we can match lip sync later. It helps... Because there's a difference between 'singing' singing and 'acting' singing. And Melissa [Barrera] would be singing one of the numbers, like 'It Won't Be Long Now' or whatever, and would come to us afterwards. And she's like, 'by the way, if it looks weird on camera, that's because I'm singing totally differently than the pre-record. Note it. I'm going to have to go back and re-record it later.' And we would sometimes get a note from the studio saying, 'Melissa doesn't look like she's lip syncing accurately because it doesn't match the pre-record.' And we'd say, 'well that's the point, because she's acting now and we need to go back and adjust.'"

— Steven Gizicki, Music Supervisor, "In the Heights"

Be sure to check out "In the Heights" while you still can — ideally in a Dolby cinema near you or on HBO Max through July 11th.

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As games go, chess is maybe not the most exciting thing to watch as a spectator. Its complexities make it difficult for non-experts to truly appreciate. And yet, in Netflix's limited series, "The Queen's Gambit," the filmmakers somehow manage to not only make it exciting, but downright riveting. How did they pull that off?

Well, we recently sat down with editor Michelle Tesoro, ACE, and sound designer Wylie Stateman to discuss how they successfully crafted such tense and thrilling scenes which even a non-chess player could follow and, more importantly, enjoy.

"Chess is a wonderful game, but it's also sort of a board-level warfare experiment. And you're constantly playing out moves in your head. The way Scott Frank blocked the scenes, you know that we are in Beth's head, or we're in each of the chess players' heads. And that gives us a great opportunity to explore that space. It's a very aggressive game of control – or lack thereof, if you're the losing opponent."

— Wylie Stateman, Sound Designer, "The Queen's Gambit

If you haven't already, be sure to check out "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix.

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We're joined today by prolific showrunner and creator Neil Cross and re-recording mixer / supervising sound editor Ron Bochar to discuss their new series "The Mosquito Coast." The show tells the story of a grueling journey of a family on the run and it turns out the production was just as challenging. We discuss some of those challenges (and how they overcame them) along with some insights into how they approached the source material, as this version of the story goes in a very different, but interesting, direction.

"We would take an approach that was completely the opposite of what 'The Handmaid's Tale' did, where they started with an adaptation of the novel – what 'Big Little Lies, I guess the same thing – you start with a novel and then expand the world. So we're starting in the expanded universe and we are on a journey to 'The Mosquito Coast.' So our destination is still where we are headed in terms of the story."

— Neil Cross, Creator of The Mosquito Coast

You can binge the entire first season of The Mosquito Coast right now on Apple TV+.

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Besides "we'll fix it in post," perhaps the most common joke in film editing suites is, "the music will carry it." Meaning, a film almost always has the score to help with the emotional impact of any given moment. But what about films without a traditional score? That is the case with "The Killing of Two Lovers," a tense new indie drama from director Robert Machoian. But interestingly, the director and sound designer —Peter Albrechsten — instead created a unique sonic soundscape to act as a score, but without what we'd normally consider "music." This week, we sit down with Machoian and Albrechsten to discuss how this experiment went, and why it happened to work so well.

"Funny enough, I don't think I explained it very well to Peter [beforehand]. I was teasing him the other day when we were doing the sound mix at Juniper, he looked at me — I think it was like day two — and he's like, 'I'm kind of the composer!' And I realized that I hadn't explained it enough that, 'yeah, you would be.'"

— Robert Machoian, Director of "The Killing of Two Lovers"

Watch "The Killing of Two Lovers" at a cinema near you or at home on VOD now.

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The cult classic "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" came out just a little over ten years ago, and to celebrate the anniversary, the filmmakers (and Universal Pictures) decided to remaster the film in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos for a theatrical and home video re-release this year.

Dolby had the privilege of sitting down with the director, Edgar Wright, and the Sound Designer, Julian Slater, to talk about the experience and to find out just how different this new and improved version of the film will be.

"Sometimes going back in - remastering something - can be a bit of a chore.... But in this case, it was actually a very sweet reunion... I sat in this theater watching the Dolby Cinema version with the editor of the movie and the sound mixer of the movie, ten years later, and watching it I had like NO notes! It was such a pleasure because it was such an easy experience, because it was like 'well, it sounds and looks better than it ever has done. And what better way to celebrate ten years of this movie?'"

— Edgar Wright, Director of "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"

Be sure to check out the 10-year special re-release of "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" at a Dolby Cinema or home theater near you. You can find more information on the re-release here.

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Short films don't get a lot of attention these days, but it is one of the best opportunities for filmmakers to experiment with new storytelling techniques. Recently, the Dolby Institute was invited to the Aspen Shortsfest, an Oscar-qualifying festival for short films, to run a workshop on sound design. Well, the submissions blew us away with their creativity and techniques, so we wanted to share these conversations with you. There is a lot we can learn from how these filmmakers utilized their sound design to give audiences the subjective experience of the films' protagonists.

Unfortunately, these films are not yet available to watch online, but we have clips available in the video version of this podcast, which we will encourage you to check out here:

https://youtu.be/HBTixHStmFs

We spoke with three filmmaking teams and here's a table of contents in case you'd like to jump around:

00:01:56 - A Broken House, Directed by Jimmy Goldblum

00:17:33 - Ligie, Directed by Aline Magrez with Sound Editor Bruno Schweisguth

00:33:32 - O Black Hole!, Directed by Renee Zhan with Sound Designer Ed Rousseau 

Many thanks to Aspen Shortsfest for inviting us to the workshop and for allowing us to share these insightful interviews from these incredibly talented filmmakers. You can read more about each of the films featured in this episode on the festival's website.

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We conclude our 2021 Oscars coverage with the nominees for Best Animated Feature! Once again we've invited all of the nominees in this category to speak with us and we are thrilled to share them with you.

Here's a table of contents for each interview, along with the names of all the nominees, this time in reverse alphabetical order:

00:01:22 - WOLFWALKERS - Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, Paul Young, and Stéphan Roelants

00:16:08 - SOUL - Pete Docter and Dana Murray

00:29:00 - A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON - Richard Phelan, Will Becher, and Paul Kewley

00:42:54 - OVER THE MOON - Glen Keane, Gennie Rim, and Peilin Chou

01:01:52 - ONWARD - Dan Scanlon and Kori Rae

Congratulations and many, many thanks to all of the nominees. We'd also like to thank Apple, Pixar, Disney, and Netflix for helping coordinate these interviews and for providing film clips to share.

Don't miss these incredible animated films:

WOLFWALKERS

SOUL

A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON

OVER THE MOON

ONWARD

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