Forever Young: OUT NOW!
In 2021 I was invited to join a hungry & incredibly ambitious team In the making of the feature film “Forvever Young”, by writer/director Henk Pretorious for Dark Matter Studios, starring Bernard Hill, Diana Quick, Amy Tyger, Mark Jackson, Stephanie Beacham, Anna Wolf.
Apart from the usual challenges of working on an independent feature film with finite resources & time, as a production mixer, the project had a few opportunities to capture some truly unique & one-off performances, specifically with capturing some live musical sections that was interconnected with on-screen dialogue, all within single takes. Of particular note was rigging drums, guitar, & a karaoke mic with hidden mic’s, hidden in-ear playback, recording a musical piece inside a 1-take scene, along the river Themes, with minimal time to prep & install the setup. Achieving this in the first week earned great confidence with our Director, who afforded sound department more opportunities going forward, as he was able to hear on the day, the true quality & power of capturing real-live performances, & not to rely on post-production to re-produce the sound. A real highlight of this process for me was the chance to record the incredibly unique voice of Anna Wolf, who’s vocal range & style is something that really has to be experienced.
One of the most important aspects in the success that sound department found on this project, lay with my 1st Assistant Sound for the film, Pierluigi Papaiz. I interviewed Pierluigi in the run up to the film while scouting around for a 1AS for the shoot, with him making an great 1st impression on me as someone who is dedicated to the craft of production sound, with a good opening few years of experience to build on, but was also ready to jump onto a hot-set & become battle tested. While it was his first real outing as a primary boom operator for scripted-narrative, I challenged him daily in every aspect of our craft, as he worked at 130% capacity to meet my rather aggressive goals as a production mixer. To say I was impressed & happy with his work, would be to say the least, as without his total commitment to the project & learning my workflow, this film would no way have the quality of dialogue track & live on-screen music performances it does. I’ve since gone on to work alongside Pierluigi on a number of projects, to which he has progressed to become a seasoned & calm assistant sound who applies his craft with a technical detail & precision.
As a production mixer, my focus falls with the challenge of capturing on-set performances of cast. who reflect a directors vision for the telling of a story. Film making is a deeply collaborative process though, & on Forever Young, I was fortunate to work alongside director of photography Lorenzo Levrin, who is what I’d class as a “New-school” DOP, with the meaning referencing his total understanding of the film-making process, he’s a Cinematographer of solutions, not problems. We had a number of situations in the shoot where the blocking & camera angle totally excluded sound department from being able to capture a workable boom mic track, with tight time considerations and little coverage to lean on, Lorenzo would look to create a new path to covering the scene & enable all departments (not just sound) to bring the product together. Along with a fun camera department, myself & Pierluigi were blessed to work with costume designer Gabrielle Edmunds, her wardrobe teams assistance in helping both Pierluigi & myself in landing hidden radio mics on our cast, was utterly invaluable, allowing Pier even greater leverage to establish some beautiful radio mic setups.
The film marked the first project I mixed on the Sound Devices 8-series platform, having moved up from the 664+CL6 to a Scorpio before the project, & while shooting adding a CL16 Mixer Surface to my work flow. I did a LOT very good work on the 664 mixer, but instantly found my production mixers on the Scorpio to be quieter, more detailed, & more dynamic. The 8-series in combination with the CL16 was also a pivotal tool when it came to deploying very flexible routing setups, in incredibly fast turn-around times, as we chased our own tail to generate bespoke Mix+minus setups to multiple places (AS feed, director & script feeds, discrete performer IEM feeds, production mix feeds). To go along with this major mixing & recording upgrade, I also added to my rig the Audio Wireless LPDA-A-WB fin antenna’s, feeding the DADM-226 mkII distro, which gave even greater RF flexibility & dexterity, allowing us to perform greater & more complex tasks (you can read more on my RF setup here). Another strategy we deployed on this piece, was to add a stereo recording setup for external scenes from the camera perspective, comprised of a pair of Sennheiser MKH8040 cardioid mics in an X-Y pickup pattern. This would give post-production a sonic field existing within the mix of the action, that adds a baseline width for the main dialogue tracks to sit atop.
The film is now widely available across the UK, & is well worth an evenings rental!
Sky Store - https://www.skystore.com/product/forever-young-2023/b730a6b8-efea-416a-ad82-12d8e349c7c3
Apple TV+ - https://tv.apple.com/gb/movie/forever-young/umc.cmc.3pdvkn2gtw2gg76m3m9pg1bz8
Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forever-Young-Diana-Quick/dp/B0CN971DH8
