By Patrick Birk
The Fast & Furious series made an explosive return to theatres last month, with director Justin Lin’s latest offering, F9: The Fast Saga. The film sees the return of Vin Diesel as Dom Torretto, accompanied by an ensemble cast that includes Michelle Rodriguez, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, John Cena and Tyrese Gibson. F9 delivers fast cars, spectacular explosions and, of course, reminds us what life is all about: family.
I recently spoke to re-recording mixers Jon Taylor and Frank Montaño, who work at NBCUniversal StudioPost, about keeping a soundtrack chock-full of roaring engines fresh and impactful.
L-R: Frank A. Montaño and Jon Taylor
The film is action-packed. How do you manage to keep the soundtrack fresh with such seemingly nonstop racing, fight and explosion sequences?
Frank Montaño: When we started working together on Fast Five, the mantra was “Get me to Mia” (a reference to the franchise’s Mia Toretto) — you go from the action sequence to the overseer of the plan, and when we get the coordinates (“Turn left. Turn right. Go here.”), you always have those little breaks in between, but they’re all slightly different.
Jon Taylor: I know this is about sound, but so much of having the breaks that Frankie’s talking about starts in editorial. Because when these breaks aren’t there, it’s almost impossible to shape any dynamics in it. But because this is Fast 9, they really have a groove, or a process that’s been established, while having each film be totally unique.
From the beginning, I felt that there were more dynamics in Fast 9 than any of the others. It just had a natural feel to it. Part of that is because Justin Lin spent a lot of time with the composer, Brian Tyler, and really shaped the score with the film. As Frankie said, you go through it and make sure that the harshness is taken out so you can have a little more movement. If the harshness has been taken out, then you can push things and pull things a little bit more. Have a little bit more room between all the different frequencies.
Montaño: We try to manage the mid-range with EQ and compression, so, in the case of steadies and things that just are underlying components but not highlights, a lot of that stuff is just overall dynamic range. So the lower we can go, the clearer we can be, and when the action starts to elevate, we can be more dynamic without being abrasive, which is especially important over a 2-hour and 23-minute film.
Taylor: A lot of times it’s not how big you go, but how low you go and while still sounding big. Big is a good word for us because it means the sound has more width. When something comes at you and it’s got a nice roundness to it, it will still push you to the back of your seat.
What tools do you use to create that dynamic space? Is it just EQ and compression?
Montaño: For me, from the effects side, it starts with equalization. The effects are all broken into food groups, just like it would be orchestrated in music. So car engines are separate from tires and so on, and then guns, impacts, etc. So it’s all broken up into groups. The first line of defense is, obviously, equalization, followed by compression and then limiting. And then I always have a degree of a multiband compressor, which I’m continuously using, just to give the sounds some broadband relief when the buildups start to happen.
And then, of course, the mixing component starts to happen. So, you’re ducking, weaving, diving, just minute moves, to dynamic moves, and shifts. Then panning changes as things move on and off screen. It’s all variable in how it’s handled, in conjunction with what Jon is doing with music, how those are married together and how we’re telling the story. You can never lose the dialogue and the story component in that aspect. We’re always cutting, clearing, moving and grooving, and we kind of mix for demographic, depending on who the film is made for. So if it’s made for a younger audience, for example, we’re going to make sure there is no “nails on chalkboard” scary stuff.
When we get into movies like this, for younger adults in the 15 to 30 range, who want rock and roll and to have fun, the soundtrack is kind of elevated. Then we get to a mature audience, such as ourselves. I want to make sure the mix for older folks is finite, clean, simple and elegant and that the dialogue’s very clear. It’s kind of a broad statement, but that’s generally where we fit things for cinema mixing.
Were sound and picture cut in parallel, with one process informing the other and vice versa? Or did sound strictly follow the locked picture cut?
Montaño: This one was interesting. Because of the situation with the pandemic, we did a temp mix and were left to our own devices, which was much different than what we’ve experienced before. It was solely a playback scenario rather than a participation temp dub — where everybody’s in the room and we’re working together and getting those opinions and feedback in real time. We have so much experience with this crew, with this filmmaker and with this franchise, that we just kind of did our thing and got the film in a really good pocket. JT, do you agree?
Taylor: Yeah, I think for the whole film, having the mock-up music from Brian and his team was a massive help. At first, we didn’t know that it was actually the music for the film, but we would do the score and realize how well it worked because, again, there was nobody there with us. We talked to the composer’s assistant and said, “Hey, is this real?” He said, “Yeah, this is all the real stuff, except we’re going to go back and do strings and horns and all that stuff.” They did three days in England at AIR Lyndhurst for the final recording.
But the score was doing so well in the temp that it made a great roadmap. When the strings and horns came in, it was almost the same, but it gave us more dynamics. Having the real strings and the real horns, and then having the synth strings to use if I needed any filler or anything like that, it all worked together. They prepared it beautifully. We got very lucky.
There was one scene, Reel 3, which takes place in Edinburgh, when Ramsey takes the truck and starts driving. We really had a very difficult time in the temp. It was hard to get that scene to sound good. In fact, I never got it in the temp. It just never hit. But in the final, when we just had a little more dynamics because of that live recording, it turned out to be fantastic.
Would you say that replacing the sample instruments with live recordings grants you more dynamic range?
Taylor: It’s overall just a major change, even though most of the elements were the same. But Brian Tyler, who also did Fast Five, would give me a 5.1 stem of strings, a 5.1 stem of horns and a 5.1 stem of orchestra and percussion, and then everything else would be stereo. Because I would have 60 stereo pairs, that meant I had lots of room for movement and placement that worked best for the scene and for the musicality of it. On temp dubs, you don’t have time to place the music or to move the music, but there’s a lot of music that’s moving in the final cut. There’s a constant breathing in the busier scenes, and that takes a lot of time.
Generally, I will get somewhere between six hours and a day to pre-dub music for a reel, which lasts between 18 and 21 minutes. That way, I can stay out of Frankie’s way, so he can lead when he’s got one of the big effects scenes. But if there’s music, you still want to follow the beat. If there’s any sort of melody going on, you have to hear it. That’s a must.
Having worked on the series since Fast Five, what is the sonic vocabulary of the films? How have they evolved, how has your process evolved, and what are the mainstays that have to be in there?
Montaño: Well, they’re based on the vehicles, and obviously the cast is relatively the same, so the thread of family’s in there. But the origin of the franchise is the street-racing side in number one, and it’s elevated to space now. So we’ve been part of that arc. One of the funny little things that we get to see is that no matter what the vehicle is, there has to be a close-up of a pedal stomp or grabbing the shifter to slam it into gear. Those are threads throughout all the movies, from my recollection. And if they’re not in the original footage, then there are pickups for those. Really, the cars are the bloodline of the franchise.
You mentioned that you break down your effects into “food groups.” How do you subgroup the vehicles?
Montaño: It’s very much like a music mix organization, where each car is independent from one another in grouping. And then inside that group, there may be an interior/exterior split. So that allows leeway for the dynamic panning component. Front to back, back to front, side to side, whenever the cars are going by, et cetera. Those things are always separated, and then the incidentals include the mechanical components: shifters, interiors, door closes and all those things.
So the sessions are super-wide. Really large. As a matter of fact, we had the largest rigs available, and even with them, the hard effects are separated from backgrounds or atmospheres and Foley. We were pushing between 550 and 700 individual tracks, which we bussed out and assigned to stems on the physical recorder so that cars, guns, backgrounds, Foley and design each had their own stem. We always record the output stems to a physical recorder for archival purposes.
What do you see as the most crucial element of sound mixing?
Taylor: This is something Frankie and I always talk about: making sure that you have a good, solid dialogue track. The first thing we do is try to warm the dialogue up so it doesn’t have any sharp spikes. The bigger the scene, the more the dialogue has to be pushed, so it needs to be equalized to retain the clarity but not the harshness.
The shape of the film is done on the console. It’s done with faders; that’s what we know. Then we take care of all the specifics in the box. For instance, if there’s a harsh S, since sometimes S’s that are recorded end up with almost a zipper sound. We go through and take every S or every consonant and separate them. And with EQ we can make them sound exactly how we want them to sound. I know it sounds like a crazy amount of work, but it helps warm the track up, and the effect is that we’re able to have more room to work when it’s more linear and smoother and nicer. So it helps an awful lot with the rest of the film. I know generally, dialogue in the Fast films is kind of a small component, but in the overall, it’s a pretty huge component.
Finally, any particular plugins you enjoy working with?
Montaño: I used FabFilter’s package for EQ and Dynamics on Fast 9. As far as the harmonics simulations, I use reFuse Lowender. As far as reverbs go, it’s a combination of Altiverb and the Phoenix reverbs.
Taylor: I’m basically the same except for how I use FabFilter Pro-R. I use that for mono reverbs because in dialogue, you’ve got to match ADR and lav tracks to the boom. To me, that reverb works best for the center channel. Then I use Phoenix for all the surround reverb or large environments.
Patrick Birk is a musician, sound engineer and post pro at Silver Sound, a boutique sound house based in New York City. He releases original material under the moniker Carmine Vates. Check out his recently released single, Virginia.
