London, UK (January 2, 2024)—U.K.-based film and TV production sound mixer Nina Rice, with credits including The Crown, This is Going to Hurt and Saltburn, upgraded her kit just in time for the start of Barbie.
A longtime Sound Devices user, Rice upgraded to the company’s Scorpio mixer-recorder knowing she would need to make full use of its track count during the production of Barbie. Pairing it with the CL-16 reportedly enabled her to get hands-on with everything she needed on a busy set.
“You always are prepped for anything that can happen on set, but it’s important to have gear that is flexible and easy to move around.” she explains. “The menus and workflow on Scorpio are extremely well-designed, so it was incredibly easy to shortcut anything we needed to do quickly. There’s also a huge time-save in having all of that rerouting at your fingertips and not having to physically plug and unplug things every time you’ve got to move. It gave us so much more freedom to do what we needed to do.”
Although her primary role is focused on dialogue, Rice says that her job has other creative facets that may not be as immediately obvious. “You’re working in a very controlled environment and there’s a lot of collaboration with art departments—hiding speakers on set and planting mics in the right places so that they are doing the job but aren’t visible, or distracting to the actors,” she explains. “One of the challenges of any film set is to establish a sense of lived-in realism that makes the actors on set comfortable and that’s where creative sound work can really make a difference.”
Her Scorpio setup plays a part there, too, she adds: “The USB-C input is also incredibly useful for those spur-of-the-moment creative ideas—you can plug the iPad right in, sync up a song from Spotify, and get it pumping through to inspire the actors.”
Streamlining her workflow also extended to the use of the SD-Remote App which enables her to give post-production teams immediate feedback from set and context for the sound recordings that they received. “It’s critical to give post-production as much information as possible when you are sending them sound for sync since they aren’t on set themselves,” she says. “I love having the App because I can just hit ‘Create Sound Report’ and send it right off to them with notes, so they know exactly what tracks to use and what takes are best. It also makes it easier to keep track of everything and stay organized.”
