Sound Mixing

February 2, 2012
Elle Hoppe

In our celebrity-obsessed culture, the awards season focuses on the beautiful and doesn’t do justice to the people behind the scenes of the movie industry. The sound in films is hugely underestimated and rarely given attention. For example, The Artist is without dialogue but the subject of sound is pivotal and the flow of the film is so perfect due to the intricate editing. The same way it takes acting coaches and directors to make a picture, it takes a mixer to tie-in the sound.

Individual components are handed to the mixer and they make sure the whole film sounds seamless. These components include the Foley which is made in a studio where every sound made in a film is recreated with props; ADR – the locale for extras to devise lines of the characters on screen and the main actors to re-do every line; and the Soundtrack, which, if original, is created on a massive soundstage with a gargantuan orchestra.

John Ross works from home in his lavish Hollywood mansion that boasts the best view of Los Angeles (having retired in his old studio but got bored after three years) with his beautiful wife and three Labradors – his children. As we speak I imagine him in his ‘happy place’ surrounded by guitars (around 24) in his music studio.

John was born and raised in South Africa, playing in a band before and after serving his compulsory time in the army but always fascinated by sound. John started doing the live sound for bands in Sun City, South Africa, and was offered a job with Diana Ross, and made his move to the USA, aged 24, working on the road with many big names.

John was fascinated by emerging computer technologies, especially Fairlight CMI, which is “the first of what we know now of Digital Audio Workstations”. It consisted of a sampling keyboard, which could emulate orchestras. “At the time it was ground-breaking but would seem crude by today’s standards.”

John ended up working with Thomas Dolby (a name you don’t have to be a film buff to have heard of) and the two of them opened up a small recording studio, based on the technology available at the time. They worked in the music business for about four years and had the idea to move into Post Production using those tools to revolutionise the motion picture. “Up until fairly recently the sound for movies was generated on film-style recording tape (reels) that was synchronised with film by a mechanical connection.”

Thomas and John recognised that there was a way to record the same sounds but fire them out of a computer memory. “At that point in time they were totally random and nonlinear. You could put sound earlier or later in time, substitute sounds very easily and do all things that were difficult.” Readapting what was meant for the music industry and making it work for motion pictures.

Many in the industry were heavily opposed to John’s approach. The Studio System encouraged the traditional model, as the unions were very powerful in that environment. “The unions’ goal was to employ as many people as they possibly could and the older model was very conducive to that.”

Thomas and John were still limited to small projects, as bigger films wouldn’t go near them as a nonunion facility. As their new system grew, word spread and it became less of an issue – the studios began to understand how useful the new technique was. John recounts: “It changed from a singular sampling system dedicated to computers, to more of an environment.”

John loves what he does. He described to me the process of sound mixing as “pretty much like painting with sound. You start out with a fairly blank canvas or uninteresting canvas and you start weaving these various layers in and out and it becomes very intriguing just as painting a picture would be.”

I asked what his favourite film to work on was and he replied: “It was most intriguing working with David Lynch, he’s fantastic because he’s a very non-conventional filmmaker, he would do things that would be considered strange by other folk in his sound approach and I guess his films are fairly strange.”

John continues, “I did Lost Highway with him and other projects. He’d bring in all these various pieces of music that he owned and I would put them up on the samplers and play them backwards and forwards, half-speed and double-speed, and we ran that on into the console with all these different faders, feeding totally random pieces of information into the fader and he would sit there and write it up against the film and create this very avant-garde, on-the-moment, in-the-moment score which was very intriguing. You would never see anyone really even attempt that.” Recounting: “A creative accident.”

John was revolutionary to the world of sound, still open to evolving it further. He offers an experience that trumps any studio, inviting you into his home and giving his innovative edge to any movie handed to him. The hours are long and it’s his level of dedication that puts him above and beyond. John’s modesty makes it sound like everything just fell into place but having seen him at work I can see why he is still considered the best mixer in town.

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