Los Angeles, CA (January 15, 2025)—Our recent Mix Presents Sound For Film: Awards Season all-day virtual event highlighted some of the most amazing work happening in motion picture sound right now. We spoke with 13 sound teams from some of the top films released in 2024; here’s one of the most notable moments and insights from the day:
Craig Henighan, Re-Recording Mixer, Supervising Sound Editor
“First, Lora [Hirschberg, re-recording mixer] has to get the Madonna song set. We have to get at least that framed in. The song is doing all the things that it needs to do rhythmically—you’re hearing all the changes, you’re hearing the choral things, hearing the musical things—and then it was my job, sound effects-wise, to figure out what stabs you needed to hear, what gunshots, what body falls. When we had all the pieces at the final mix, we were able to think, ‘How do we start this? What effort is Ryan going to play? If that effort’s going to be on that beat, I’m going to offset the stab maybe a frame or two later, or the gunshot a frame or two earlier to sort of give it this natural pattern all the way through into the bus and then the final triumph where our two heroes come bursting out of the bus and we bust out the giant chorus, speaking to sort of the Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin style. Then you have Deadpool come over, he smacks the ground, and then things cut out. That’s classic Deadpool to me: You have all these different elements, and then bam—and then you’re open for a joke.”