Ask the Critic: Carina Chocano

Question: You often hear during Oscar season about sound mixing and sound editing, for which there are separate awards. What is the difference between the two? Do you ever find yourself in a theater saying, “Hey, that’s great sound editing”?

Chocano: Sound editing, like picture editing, pieces together all the elements of the soundtrack, including dialogue, effects, background noise and music. The editor syncs up the sounds and arranges them to the picture. The difference is that, with picture, we usually look at one layer of image at a time, whereas with sound, it’s all about layers.

Say there’s a scene in which a boy comes home to find his parents fighting, and he hears a heated argument in another room, music coming from the neighbor’s yard and a slamming door. In order for the slamming door and the hurled expletive not to interrupt the dulcet sounds of Mel Torme wafting through the window from Mrs. Hucklefink’s yard next door, each element must be recorded and edited on a different soundtrack.

Which brings us to sound mixing. Our brains tend to do things like filter out background noise and home in on important stuff, like that word mom just called dad. Recording equipment, on the other hand, is indiscriminate. That’s why when mom invites Mrs. Hucklefink to the cafe for coffee and a sotto-voiced heart-to-heart, she can hear what she is saying perfectly. But when she goes home and tries to play back the tape, the entire confession is drowned out by restaurant chatter and traffic noise.

A sound mixer mixes down all the tracks of sound into one and makes sure each sound plays at a level that sounds realistic, which is not the same as real. Mixing is also the stage at which the various sounds are placed in space, like panned left or right, put in surround-sound speakers, or the rumbling subwoofer. Also, mixing adds a sense of place, like the echo on the dialogue when someone walks into a cave.

Do I ever think, “Wow, that’s really great sound mixing”? No, but that’s the mark of good sound. Nothing exposes a movie as schlocky or amateurish as much as “noticeable” sounds that shouldn’t be.

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