On Sunday March 2, stars across the film industry will gather at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles for the 97th Academy Awards. Production Sound Mixer Paul Sandweiss is once again the Audio Director for this year's prestigious event, working alongside a team of highly respected and experienced directors, engineers and mixers. In this craft interview, Paul discusses how the industry has changed since his first Academy Awards show in 1978, his approach to mixing audio for global audiences, his love for the industry and more.
1. You're mixing the 97th Academy Awards on a Calrec Apollo in NEP Denali's Summit unit. Can you talk about the Calrec workflow? What do you find especially helpful when planning your approach?
The routing on this show is quite complicated with all the international feeds and the other stuff that comes through here such as the audience mics and dialogue, the podiums and RF mics, all the playback elements from audio and video playback sources. The orchestra and music performances are mixed in the music truck, but their mix feeds come through here to mix in with our broadcast.
The nice thing is when I come in, Hugh Healy who's our Chief Technical Engineer, and has been for years, hits a button on the Calrec Apollo console and I have last year's show in front of me. It means the management of all that is fairly straight forward. Everything is preset; I'm going to adjust things like panning, level, microphone gains, EQ, reverbs and such, for example, but I'm already in a good spot, especially as far as the insane in and out patching. I'm starting where we left off last year, which is really nice.
When you're working on a brand-new show you have to start from scratch and create everything, but for this show it's the same Calrec console, the same outboard gear, and the same team that we've had in place for many years. It's even the same venue for so many years. Pablo Munguia is on Pro Tools and Hugh's making sure we're technically safe. In the music trailer, we have Music Mixer Biff Dawes and Orchestra Mixer Tommy Vicari. Patrick Baltzel is at front of house, and Mike Parker and Tom Pesa are on Monitors to keep the artists happy on stage. It's a team who've done the show forever and it's great to work with and see everybody. It is an ultimate team effort. We do a few other shows through the year where we're altogether, but this is a big fun effort for us.
What happens from the starting point on day one up to the main broadcast?
This show is probably the most organised of the shows that I've done over many years, and we have two days of technical ESU to get everything working. There are many audio assistants on the stage wiring up all the audience mics, putting in the RFs and antennas and building the orchestra. Lots of PA speakers to be hung, and lots of onstage monitors for artists needs. By midday on day two we'll make sure every microphone and feed between us, front of house, the monitors and the music truck work, and that gets us to a rehearsal standpoint.
The nice thing about this show is we spend Wednesday and Thursday running all the acts, top to bottom with production to see if we have any issues. We use stand ins, but we can fix any elements that arise. We look to see if acts have any traffic flow issues, things like that all get sorted out.
Friday is what we call our music day' when we rehearse all the performances with the orchestra and the artists. Then Saturday is typically when we bring in all the presenters and go through everything. We let them see their eyeline and what camera they're reading to. We may need to put a number of wireless RF lav mics on many of the talent and find out what outfit they will be wearing so we can match the colour of the mics with their wardrobes. On Saturday night we do a run through, and on Sunday we do a full dress rehearsal with ABC network coordination, and then we are ready to go to air, after a bit of makeup and hair. It's well organised and well oiled. There are times when things go awry, and you have to be prepared so we have backups to things that we hope we don't have to use. Most people can't hear the difference between good and great, but they can hear the difference between good and nothing, so we try and avoid missing any sounds as best we can.
How many Academy Awards have you worked on?
In 1978, I was a maintenance engineer, and I worked for a company called Wally Heider Recording. Wally's trucks were known around the world to be the finest, you always used them for live events. Back then, I was doing what Hugh Healy does but in an analogue environment, so no Pro Tools and we barely had RF mics. I worked my way to being a mixer and in 1991 or 1992 they asked me if I would mix the show. I was still in my early thirties mixing mostly award or variety shows like the American Music Awards, Solid Gold, Star Search, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, Billboard Music Awards, MTV Awards, and Espy Awards.
Working in analogue was very different back then but the Oscars was a fun show and I enjoyed the people, the performers, and all the camaraderie. It was before the American Idols and all these other shows we did that everybody watched. It was a fun event to be a part of.
I worked on the show through the mid-nineties until they had a director change, and they brought someone else in. Then maybe 12 or 15 years ago they had another director change, and my dear old pal Don Mischer was producing and directing the awards and asked me to come back and I've been back ever since, and happy to still get that call every year.
4. In that last ten or twelve years how has the technology enabled you to adapt to all the different changes?
There's some things that have made it easier and some that have made it more
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On Sunday March 2, stars across the film industry will gather at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles for the 97th Academy Awards. Production Sound Mixer Paul Sandweiss is once again the Audio Director for this year's prestigious event, working alongside a team of highly respected and experienced directors, engineers and mixers. In this craft interview, Paul discusses how the industry has changed since his first Academy Awards show in 1978, his approach to mixing audio for global audiences, his love for the industry and more.
