James Mather: Sound Mini Masterclass

Hi, my name is James Maver. I am a sound supervisor, predominantly on large studio movies, tentpole movies they call them, I think, Harry Potter, Clash of the Titans, Sherlock Holmes and the such, and I've been in the industry for 22 years, started as an apprentice, and one of the things that I think I've learned is that there are three main attributes that help in this profession. One is the ability to collaborate, to listen and to understand, and the technical ability needed to operate the editing systems that we work on, Pro Tools, predominantly, and the other is the ability to allow yourself to follow your creative flair. If you think something is going to work, go for it. In layman's terms, as a sound supervisor, I'm the person that works directly with the creator, the director and the producer, and the director will give me his brief as to how he'd like the film to sound, and I will then look at the people I think might be relevant for that process, and I'll suggest that they're the people that they use, so I will try and put together a crew that I think the director and the producer will work well with. We then move forward and we start building the soundscape, and my role is to orchestrate the soundscape, including elements of the music, but ultimately getting the material, developing the material and supplying it throughout the process of editorial, so that by the time we get to temps and pre-mixes, they're aware of everything that they want, they've signed off on everything they want, and then my final part of the role will be sitting in a dubbing theatre during all the mixes, and to orchestrate and translate what the director wants, because he can't be there all the time, and so I oversee the sound from the beginning to the end. The thing that changes the most in the sound is usually the design and the effect element, because the nature of the rhythm of the cut will dictate how the sound elements need to work with that, so that soundscape is constantly moving and changing. Past a certain point you find that the newer elements are coming in less, but the re-syncing of everything is happening all the way through up to the very last minute. One of the most engaging moments, there were so many great moments that we had when we were working on Harry Potter, but I think one of the proudest moments for me is always when you come up with a new idea or a new sound that has to convey a storyline, and one of the crucial things that we do and we should never lose sight of is that we're there to enhance and embellish the story, and if we try and step on the feet of the story, we're doing our job badly. We should always follow suit and make sure that everything's clear, and in Harry Potter there were several occasions where subtext was being told through sound design and sound effect, and in Harry Potter 6, I believe, Part 1, we were required to develop a sound to convey the Horcrux, and it was such an important part of the storytelling motif, and it had to carry through the whole film, and it had to be nasty, it had to be threatening, it had to be specific, we had to understand that's exactly what we were hearing. At the same time in the film there were radio airwaves, so it couldn't be too FM, sort of twisted airwave sounds, but it had to have something like that, and we spent weeks recording everything we could find. We took part in piano, we recorded scraping piano strings, we managed to get some vuvuzela because it was the year of the World Cup, and everybody was complaining about this horrible sound vuvuzela, so we thought well that's a horrible sound, nobody likes that, maybe that'll work. We used sirens, we used a whole menagerie of different sounds that might relate to people, might pique people's interest or empathy with what we were trying to do, and when we finally got the sound, the assault of it and the in-your-headness of it, the grating, fingers down the chalkboard element, worked really well, and I think those things can often be, those very simple or seemingly very simple elements can often be the thing that doesn't actually get right until the very last stage. Everybody feels that they're struggling to really believe it, and we nailed it very early on, and it gave us a wonderful opportunity to use different parts of that all the way through the story, so a certain element of the horcrux would apply to a certain character at a certain time, and it meant you always kept in with this uneasy feeling that had to purvey the film, so that was a real, that was a, yeah, we were all very proud when we managed to get that simple, but very effective. Directors are very individual people, and they're very, they bring something to every film and every script that's very important, and their vision, their final part of their journey, as it were, is post-production audio, and so that part of the process is a very, very delicate, very personable, and very important stage. It's about letting go, it's about feeling that you've done everything you can to make this creation, and so my relationship with directors is very often to make sure that I understand what they want from the first point. That will change always through the process, that changes, but it's very important to know where they're going with the changes, to accommodate those changes, and then to make sure that they are, ideally, they want to feel as though everything that they want, they're getting, and something else, and that they're happy to let go. My advice to anybody starting in, or has an interest in Sanford film, or has an interest in filmmaking, it's very important to, to address all areas, and find out where your strengths are. Without doing them, you won't know, and I think people who really benefit from doing that, the people who will go and film their own, they'll go and film their own films on a video camera, or whatever they're using, but they'll also record the sound, and they'll take a small recorder, and go and record their own wild tracks, and they'll go and see what works, how close you have to be, how far away you have to be, and I think that's the first stage of gaining experience, but also gaining an insight into what you're really interested in, because it will change throughout the process. There's no reason why you should ever be in the same role, or in the same part of the industry. They, it leads you on as you grow through it, to different, different aspects.