Interstellar Sound mixer Mark Weingarten records Nolans science fiction filmSound & Picture - Issue 3, 2014 - Page 72-737by Daron James

Director Christopher Nolan taks with Matthew McConaughey who plays cooper

For production sound mixer Mark Weingarten, working with director Christopher Nolan on Interstellar will be an experience hell never forget. Weingarten came on the project very last-minute as a replacement, and the day he started, he literally dropped his son off for his first day of school and then jumped on a plane to Iceland that afternoon. I really didnt know what I was getting myself into, admits Weingarten. There was a huge amount of prep done beforehand, and I was more just showing up with my gear, stepping off the plane and onto a glacier.

Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey as Cooper, an ex-NASA test pilot tasked with leading a space expedition through a wormhole in the far reaches of the galaxy. But the films narrative is much more complex than that as it pushes the boundaries and theories of space and time, all rolled into 169 minutes of entertainment. In order to create the feeling of these otherworldly places, production looked to the Vatnajkull glacier and the Brunasandur lagoon in Iceland for two of the planet locations where Cooper and his crew find themselves.

Nolan is a very different filmmaker, says Weingarten. Ive been used to working with David Fincher, who really spells everything out you watch the blocking, and hell tell you where the wide shots going to be, when theyll come in for close-ups. With Nolan, you have to be ready. Hell pick up the camera and youre rolling. Besides Weingarten, boom operator Michael Primmer and utility David Raymond were on the production sound crew. When I came on, Mike and David were able to get me up to speed the initial week until I got a handle on everything, says Weingarten.

The first task for the production mixer, besides braving the elements, was understanding how the spacesuits, especially their helmets, worked sonically. David and Mike were our helmet gurus and what ended up happening was that we placed a San-ken COS-11D right above the visor on the inside of the helmet. What was amazing was that the helmets were so isolated from the cameras, we didnt pick up any noise from them, notes Weingarten. Production shot using a combination of film (35mm, 70mm) and IMAX cameras, with the majority of the big exterior sequences using IMAX.

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), Brand (Anne Hathaway) & Romilly (David Gyasi)

For Iceland, Weingarten took four Zaxcom Devas, a slew of Lectrosonics wireless, a Schoeps CMC 5 set, CMIT-5Us, Sankens, Country-mans, and a ton of NP-1 batteries over a Pelican case full. I knew all the Iceland sequences were going to be wireless and over the shoulder, so I put a Deva and Lectrosonics Venue in a bag and made sure I had enough power. In order for the actors to hear each other and for the director to communicate with the actors, Weingarten set up an IFB system so that everyone could hear each other. Mike was in control of all of the communications between the actors while they were using the helmets, and he actually took care of the mix minus track using a Sound Devices 788T while I recorded the production dialogue. While we were doing that, David made sure everything was in order for our next setup at our base camp, explains Weingarten. Since the helmets were tight fits, the cable of the Sanken COS-11D came out the back and was connected to a Lectrosonics SM transmitter that was placed in a pouch on the actors arm.

Brand (Anne Hathaway) tries to escape on the water planet

Romilly (David Gyasi) & Cooper (Matthew McConaughey)

Weingartens first day had him wearing waders, as he was knee deep in water to film the sequences where the space crew lands on the water planet. It was kind of cool, they had these trucks with giant tires on them to get us around. We were basically waist high in water, so I thought better of it in order to keep the gear dry and stayed inside the truck. At one point we dropped a Lectrosonics HM, and I thought we were going to be able to save it because it was such fresh water, but when I sent it back to Lectro after the shoot, it was completely trashed, says Weingarten.

Bill Irwin holding a mechanical version of TARS

To record usable dialogue inside the helmets, sound reduced the Lectrosonics input level to its lowest possible setting. When we first started, we had the transmitter turned all the way up and everything was coming in hot, says Weingarten. The visors on the helmets were interesting, when you had them open, you could barely hear anything, but once the visor was closed, the audio had a huge presence so we turned them down as low as we could. Another smaller sound challenge they had to overcome were the fans in the suits that helped keep the actors cool. Initially, the fans they had in there were loud, so it was just the simple process of asking them to be changed out for quieter ones, mentions Weingarten.

Director Christopher Nolan taking a second to text his fans

On set with the crew in Iceland

The actors atop Vatnajkull glacier

When the unit moved to Vatnajkull glacier, which acted as the second planet the space crew voyages to, Weingarten traded his waders for cleats. To record the scenes between Cooper and Mann (Matt Damon) fighting on top of the glacier, just a handful of crew trekked to the top of the location. We were really out in the middle of nowhere and what kept happening to us was the IMAX camera would jam, says Weingarten. It was interesting because when they would switch out the camera for a new one, they would say it was working at base camp. What ended up happening was they took off the camera that was mounted in a bubble underneath a helicopter to finish the scene.

Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema

Weingarten was also impressed by cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema. He cracks me up, admits the production mixer. He is a really good guy with a consistent attitude all the time. We never had any issues with lighting and he understood vNolan always wanted the overhead mic in the shot. What was truly amazing was that Hoyte shot everything handheld. I mean, the IMAX camera is super-heavy, its like hugging a refrigerator, but he managed to do everything, cleats and all.

The sets for Interstellar were built at Sony

The production mixer did run into his own hiccups in Iceland, one of them being moisture collecting in the helmets. There was a small hole drilled in the front of the visor, but there was a time where the moisture took out a microphone in the middle of the take, explains Weingarten. I ended up telling Nolan immediately, and after he listened to the first three takes, he understood what happened to the fourth take. I think it was at that moment where he was able to trust me more since it was our first time working together.

A look at the spacecraft on its gimbal system

When production left Iceland for studio work, they set up stages at Sony. It was here where Weingarten switched to a more traditional cart setup using the Zaxcom Mix-8 before swapping it out for a new Sonosax SX-ES mixer. Weingarten used the Sonosax for the first time recording a scene where Cooper initially meets Professor Brand (Michael Caine) at a large conference table inside NASA. It was actually really funny. I went up to him afterward and I told him he was the first voice that passed through this mixer and he was a bit underwhelmed. I believe he said How unbelievably fascinating for you. It was really pretty great in that only sound mixers would know kind of way.

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) inside the tesseract

At the sound stages Weingarten also switched from a wireless boom to hard line. It was something that Nolan wanted to do so we did it, notes Weingarten. Theres really nothing that sounds better than a hard line boom so it was easy for us to accommodate the request. For the recordings inside the space ships, sound used a combination of boom, lav, and Sanken CUB-01 plant mics. We did plant mics wherever we could. They are so low profile that when the actor would turn away from camera or if the ceiling was too low for an overhead mic, we would stash a CUB to pick up the few lines of dialogue, says Weingarten. The ship had so much texture to it, it blended right in.

For the video diaries that took place between Cooper and his daughter Murph (Jessica Chastain) and other crew members, a speaker was placed on the ground in front of the actor so they could hear the video playback on set. A similar setup was put in place for TARS, who was voiced by Bill Irwin. Bill was an amazing guy and really funny, says Weingarten. Nolan wanted to make sure the actors could hear TARS on set so we gave Bill a DPA 4066 headset and David cut a Remote Audio Speakeasy in half and mounted the speaker side on the front of TARS and placed the controls on the back so we adjust them if we needed to. Bill could then talk through the speaker and I would record his character on a separate ISO. In the final scenes where Cooper is inside the tesseract, the place of five dimensions, Weingarten equipped McConaughey with an IFB and provided Nolan with a push-to-talk setup so he could speak to the actors without using a voice-of-god. In order for Cooper to hear TARS, sound played his dialogue through the same IFB McConaughey was wearing. Production also ended up going to Canada for the majority of the farm work, where sound mixer Drew Kunin provided the production recordings.

Weingarten made a big effort to talk to post, especially Gary Rizzo, in order to make sure they were all on the same page. I had a lot of conversations with Gary at the beginning of the production to understand what they were expecting and to work out any potential problems and so forth. Without them, Mike and David, I really wouldnt have been able to do this job. They were really outstanding guys to work with.S&P