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FEATURE


Broadcast TECH


‘There was plenty of off-screen horse whinnying, sabre-rattling, frenzied shouts


and the like’ Adrian Rhodes


Henry V: Without a budget for thousands of extras or extensive CGI work, Goldcrest ramped up the battle sounds


HENRY V NEAL STREET PRODUCTION WITH NBC


UNIVERSAL AND WNET THIRTEEN FOR BBC


Dubbing mixer Adrian Rhodes Facility Goldcrest Post Format Stereo/5.1 Primary equipment Avid D-Control ES; Pro Tools 9 with plug-ins from Neyrinck and Waves; customised Exigy S212 speakers


How did Goldcrest Post come to be involved, and what was the brief? Adrian Rhodes We worked with producer Rupert Ryle-Hodges during the fi rst series of Mad Dogs for Sky last year, which led to us being approached for his new cycle of Shakespeare plays for the BBC. The result is that Goldcrest has undertaken post on all four of the fi lms: Richard II, Henry IV (parts I and II) and Henry V. The productions are quite different in tone


– for example, Richard II is quite stylised in comparison to Henry V, while Henry IV has more of the look of a feature fi lm. But from an audio perspective, there was one com- mon thread, which was to make everything feel and sound appropriate to the scale of the events portrayed. The battle scenes were


30 | Broadcast TECH | May/June 2012


a case in point. The budgets didn’t allow for thousands of extras and extensive CG work, so there was an onus on us to help ramp up the battle sounds – meaning plenty of off- screen horse whinnying, sabre-rattling, fren- zied shouts and the like. There is a danger of overcooking these things, but I am confi dent that we haven’t overstepped the mark. I had a fantastic group of people working alongside me on the new Shakespeare fi lms, including staff editors Anthony Bayman and Chris Wilson; Julian Pirrie, Sue Harding and experienced mixer Paul Carr on Foley; and dialogue editor Keith Mariner. As a team, we were greatly assisted by the high standard of the original dialogue recordings from location. The fi lms were shot quite quickly in chal- lenging environments, but the dialogue was excellent and, given the scale and nature of the fi lms, relatively little ADR was required. In line with my general working practice,


I undertook a certain degree of pre-mixing – primarily cleaning up and EQ-ing the dia- logue, and sketching a 5.1 FX balance in my prep room upstairs before conducting the mix proper in Studio Three. Henry IV was mixed with Craig Irving at Twickenham as the director, Sir Richard Eyre, had mixed his previous fi lm with him. With the exception of Sir Richard, we were working with directors whose backgrounds


were predominately in stage productions. That required a certain amount of careful guidance during the mixing process, but everyone was responsive to our vision for the sound.


Describe a particularly demanding stage in the audio post work on this project AR Creating the sound for the arrows during the Battle of Agincourt in Henry V springs to mind. It was important both sonically to stand out as an event and in terms of the narrative, because it really highlights the moment that the battle turned in favour of the English. It’s always nice to feel that your sound is an important collaborator in the story telling process.


How did you achieve the desired end result? AR When I require some special sounds, I often turn to my studio at home and play around with various effects for a while. In the end, I used a sampling keyboard to capture the sound, which consists largely of my own voice, but treated with the various patches from the Eventide H3000 and a selection of tried-and-trusted Pro Tools plug-ins, includ- ing Waves and Pitch ‘n Time. There was a fair bit of trial and error, but I got the ‘wheeesh’ sound that I required, and I’m pleased with how that sequence turned out.


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