London, UK (May 16, 2023)―After supervising sound designer Ryan Hatton was tapped to re-mix the original audio of viral hit horror movie Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey for theatrical and DVD release, he discovered that his workflow needed an upgrade.
Diving into the project, Hatton enlisted the help of Nicola Itro, who served as assistant sound designer. The pair initially trialed a variety of upmixers and LUFS meters, which they soon realized weren’t providing the results they hoped to achieve.
“I was having a lot of trouble getting accurate readings, so I took my mix over to Justin Fraser’s studio and we noticed the loudness reading in his studio was slightly different than in mine,” Hatton explains. “We ultimately determined that the plug-ins I was using weren’t as accurate as we needed them to be. The director [writer and producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield] really wanted us to push the dynamics as loud as they could go, so we had to be very careful.”
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On Fraser’s recommendation, Hatton ultimately turned to the Nugen Audio VisLM loudness metering plug-in to enhance his workflow throughout this process. “We had to set a limiter to minus two, but the loudness was the most crucial part, so we wanted to make sure that the readings were accurate. After I trialed Nugen’s VisLM at Justin’s studio, that’s what I ultimately used to do the final mix and deliver the project.”
As the film was set for a theatrical release, in addition to mixing and editing audio for the film, Hatton was also tasked with turning the original stereo music mix into a 5.1 surround mix. Having previously been disappointed by other upmixers, Hatton also decided to try Nugen’s Halo Upmix, which he says is a standard amongst his peers.
“Everyone I know in the industry uses Halo Upmix, and they’re very passionate about that,” he says. “Halo Upmix made the 5.1 mix sound extremely accurate with regards to comparison to the original stereo mix. It did just what it needed to do. It sounded much more natural and faithful to the original stereo file, which was very important because the composer, Andrew Scott Bell, initially had a professional mixer mix it―I needed to make sure the surround version sounded exactly the same as the original.”
Hatton also found the dB meter reading to be extremely convenient. “I tend to have my plug-in windows on a separate screen, so I don’t always have my meters up,” he explains. “One thing I noticed on Halo Upmix is that you can also have the meters in view, which doesn’t seem to be the case on most other upmixers that I’ve tried, and that’s a big bonus.”
