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Demented and Sad, But Social

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I’ve seen numerous interviews (here, here and here) about the incredible sound of The Social Network, but none featuring production sound mixer Mark Weingarten. Mark’s been quite busy since wrapping the movie, and hasn’t had time to participate in any of the Q & As or behind-the-scenes material, but was kind enough to take a few minutes out of his full schedule to answer some questions about his work on the project.

PAC: The script was adapted by Aaron Sorkin, well known for his voluminous, rapid-fire dialogue. Since this was such a dialogue-driven piece, did you approach it differently from any other film?

Mark Weingarten: I already had some experience recording Aaron’s material, as I was the mixer on The West Wing in its second season. The main difference between the way Aaron’s material needs to be recorded, compared to most scripted dialogue is that you must always record both sides of every scene all the time. Aaron writes it all to be played intentionally overlapped (two people speaking at the same time). Traditionally when mic’ing any scene you mic the overlaps when they are on camera, then clean up all the dialogue as you get into tighter coverage, [but] because of the pacing of Aaron’s dialogue the cuts for the most part won’t work well unless you keep the overlaps going in all the coverage.

Can you give a basic breakdown of the daily workflow for the sound department?

[We] recorded the movie on a Deva 5.8 hard disk recorder. 23.98 TC 48K 24 Bit. [We] mirrored everything to firewire drives and sent those to post for synching. We used no disposable media, [and] also sent guide track audio to the Red cameras to aid in synching in case there was a time code mismatch. We did not use slates, more later.

What did your kit for this film primarily consist of?

Three Sennheiser MKH 50 mic’s used for interior booms; three Sanken CS 3e mic’s used for exterior booms; Schoeps MS Stereo Rig for ambiance and live music recording; Lectrosonic SM wireless transmitters; [a] Lectrosonic Venue Receiver; many Sanken COS 11 lavalieres; Sonasax SXS 8 Mixer; Deva 5.8 Hard Disk Recorder; Deva II back up hard disk recorder; Sennheiser Evolution Radio transmitters and receivers to feed audio to the cameras. Earwigs, boom poles wireless headsets, etc....

One thing that struck me in watching the BTS on the movie was the absence of any slate claps. We saw plenty of non-timecode slates held up for camera, but not one clap of the sticks. Can you tell us about that?

On Benjamin Button we had no slates at all. We fed timecode from a Lockit box to both my recorder and the S.two hard drive recorder that captured the images as well. Since the code was identical on both picture and sound there was no need for time code slates or even sticks at all. I also was able to feed AES Audio to the data capture rig so they had their dailies audio there as well.

Fincher told me that he once cut all the slates together from a day of filmmaking and ran them. It took six minutes. That’s six minutes of filmmaking time that he could get back if slates were eliminated. We did the same thing on The Social Network. This time we did hold a slate for a second in front of the camera as a marker and we fed audio wirelessly to the cameras as a guide track and to help with synching if there was a time code issue.

David Fincher has a reputation for being technically meticulous. Did he make any provisions as to the production sound for the film, or was it sort of “business as usual”?

The scene most people remark about is the scene in the nightclub where Mark and Sean are yelling over very loud music. Fincher and I had a conversation about how to approach that, because he wanted the actors to be massively projecting so that in post he put in extremely loud music:

That scene was really fun to do.The club had an insanely loud sound system. I played back the music at earsplitting volume in the beginning of each take through the speakers,then, just before the dialog would start, I would dump the feed to the speakers,but continue it at high volume into their wireless earwigs. They were shouting over music that they were hearing, but the track was clean and the music could be replaced later by whatever music they ultimately chose. Ren [Klyce, post sound superviser] told me that when they were mixing they had the scene mixed really loud and Fincher listened to it and said “LOUDER!” It took several attempts to get it LOUD ENOUGH!

Fincher and I seem to have an unspoken understanding, we have worked together a lot at this point. Mostly we don’t need to talk much, I know what I would do in most situations and I think I know what he would want me to do as well. Every once in a while a situation arises where I’m not sure if he’d prefer this or that. Then, I will go to him and ask for his recommendation, or offer my opinion of how I feel we should approach something. I also frequently will mic scenes in multiple ways, putting alternatives on iso tracks to give Fincher and Ren the option to make a different mix in post if they would like to.

Did the audio post department have any sort of requests or discussions with you about the tracks you would be delivering?

[Ren] and I talk a lot before during and after a production. We have worked together on many projects, both with Fincher and Spike Jonze, so we too have something of a shorthand too.

I can’t remember any specific requests from Ren on The Social Network, but frequently during any given shooting day I will contact [him] with a question, or to describe a situation and ask for his advice and or preference as to how he would like something recorded. I will occasionally email him a take of something with a problematic BG noise and ask him if he’ll be able to remove the offensive noise in post.

His work on The Social Network was nothing short of spectacular. It is extremely comforting for me to know that he will be the person taking care of the sound after I’ve passed it on.

Many thanks to Mark Weingarten for his time, and congratulations to the entire sound team for their C.A.S and Oscar nominations .

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