Behind the Refined Mix of ‘Maestro’ – with Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic

In this interview, re-recording mixers Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic discuss the mix of Bradley Cooper's film Maestro – currently in the running for a 'Best Sound' Oscar (among other noms!) They talk about mixing the Ely Cathedral scene and the party scenes, mixing effects in a musical way during scenes without score, and so much more!

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Netflix

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Bradley Cooper’s Maestro is in the running for a 2024 ‘Best Sound’ Oscar. Last week, A Sound Effect talked about the sound editing on the film with Richard King and Jason Ruder. This week, re-recording mixers Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic – at Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services in Burbank – talk about how they shaped the film’s mix.

In addition to Maestro, Ozanich and Zupancic have another shot at the 2024 ‘Best Sound’ Oscar – for their mix on The Creator directed by Gareth Edwards. (Check out our interview with The Creator supervising sound editor/sound designer Erik Aadahl.)

Cooper’s Maestro is a reunion of sorts for Ozanich, Zupancic, and Ruder – all three had worked with Cooper on A Star is Born, which also featured music recorded live on-set.

Here, Ozanich (who mixed music and dialogue) talks about carefully creating the right space for the live performances using different reverbs to change perspectives to match what we hear to what we see. He and Zupancic discuss their combined approach to mixing the party crowds. And Zupancic talks about mixing foley to match different eras in the film, mixing the effects as a way to score specific scenes, like Leonard and Felicia’s argument during the Thanksgiving day parade in NYC, and much more.

Maestro | Ely Cathedral | Official Clip | Netflix

I had the opportunity to talk with Richard King and Jason Ruder about the sound editing on Maestro and one thing we talked about was recording the music live on set. I’d love to hear about your approach to mixing those music scenes, particularly Ely Cathedral…

Tom Ozanich (TO): So you heard from Jason about the live setup – basically, Jason hired a company to come in and they mic’d it all up and recorded it live. As they’re laying it down, they do a balance of the elements and lay it out into a whole bunch of 5.1 stems. Because it’s live and it’s all in this one big cavernous room, there’s tons of bleed of all of the elements onto the other elements. But, I think I had 20 5.1 stems. There were mics focused over the strings, over the brass, over the choir, and in some cases, there might be a couple of sets for the choir and then you have the two soloists. What I end up with are 20 or so 5.1 stems and then I try to fit that into the movie and the story that’s unfolding there.

Because it’s live and it’s all in this one big cavernous room, there’s tons of bleed of all of the elements onto the other elements.

There’s a big oner master shot where the camera comes over the orchestra and goes right up to Lenny and then eventually comes back and lands over Felicia’s shoulder. As we did that movement, I wanted things to feel like they were in the space in the real location – that they were relative to what we’re seeing. That would not be set in what they captured because they’re just capturing it in a static setting and obviously, there’s movement to all of that. We also wanted to let you focus on a couple of the elements as the camera goes by, like the choir in the beginning. The male choir has a big part that jumps out. Prior to that, they’re behind us and then they’re in front of us. So I’m trying to do really stealth moves where things just appear in the right place. In a case like that, I’m pushing the dynamics of that to get more out of it so things appear in the place we’re expecting to hear them based on what we’re seeing.

For example, at one point the timpani player is doing a roll and so there’s just a subtle move there to focus you on noticing what he’s playing right there. And that happens with different people, different players, but it’s never a solo thing or a featured thing where it pops way out of the mix. It’s just subtleties to make you dial into that and notice it without noticing that there was any change.

Maestro: Sound Breakdown | Netflix

That must’ve been tough given that, as you said, there’s bleed on the tracks. So the mics are stationary and the instruments aren’t isolated. So as the camera swings around, now you have to adjust the mix to that new visual perspective using a fixed recording…

TO: Yeah, sometimes the brass may have a bunch of strings on it that, when you go move the strings, they don’t want to move because there’s enough of them in other mics. So there is a bit of that. But again, it’s not intended to be a drastic move that you are aware of.

Dean Zupancic (DZ): But your brain registers where you’re flying over, which is great.

TO: I always think of sound as a focus-pulling device – amongst other things. So it can really cause you to notice things in the frame. By doing little shifts like that and highlighting something subtly, you’re thinking about it or you’re aware of that thing without us being heavy-handed, telling you to think about it.

The Sound of Maestro | In Conversation | Netflix

What about some of the more intimate performances, like Leonard’s piano duo with Aaron Copland? In my chat with Richard and Jason, we talked about a ‘better’ version of the performance being edited to picture there. From a mix perspective, what did it take to make that work, so that you believe that what you’re hearing is what you’re also seeing?

TO: I think it’s a matter of putting it in the space in such a believable way that you don’t question it. It just feels real; if it feels real, you’ll buy it. You’ll just sign off and you’ll disengage the part of your brain that’s questioning whether or not they’re really playing it or whatever.

… it’s a matter of putting it in the space in such a believable way that you don’t question it.

In that particular scene, you’re watching them play it. And so you do think about that. But the piano is not played just in front of us, straight up in a stereo manner. It’s pushed a little bit off to the right because the piano itself is sitting off to the right in the frame. And then it’s played in that room, and so there’s room on it. Those are all clues to tell you that thing is physically sitting right there, and I’m looking through this window at the scene.

I don’t think that’s a very tricky, big, difficult thing, but this whole mix is really about elegance and nuance and a thousand different little subtle things that make it feel tangible and real and just flow together.

I don’t think there’s any point in the mix where you question the reality of any scene.

DZ: I don’t think there’s any point in the mix where you question the reality of any scene. Honestly, from the guy sitting next to Tom, I believe all the space. I know what he’s doing, but I believe the rooms, the reverb (i.e., the room that he puts on that piano in that particular scene fits that room).
So you don’t question it. It doesn’t sound fake. And none of the reverbs or rooms to me in this movie sound manufactured.

TO: A great example is the very beginning of the movie; the piano is playing and it comes up over the logo so we have no context of reality tied to a picture because there’s no picture yet.

But as soon as we cut to the picture of Lenny sitting there playing the piano in the opening of the movie, all of a sudden, the piano focuses and plays like it’s sitting right there in that room. Prior to that moment, it’s played in a more typical, score-y abstract way.

How did you make it feel less abstract and more real for when we transition into actually seeing him playing the piano?

TO: Everything about it changes. It positionally changes, it changes in space, in the room, reverb, and a little bit of an EQ shift.

And then the other factor is that some of the sounds of the room start to come in there, too. There are a couple of places where something like that happens in the movie and it’s shifting to a believable, viable, real space.

Like when Lenny plays “Here Comes the Bride” and he’s actually in a different room playing the piano and you hear it coming out of that room into this room. Again, you just believe that he’s sitting there and playing that…

TO: Right, and it’s doing a similar thing where when it starts playing it’s like where is that coming from? We’re with Felicia where it’s like, “Oh what, wait, what’s going on?” And then we reverse and look at him playing and boom, the piano is attached to the piano. So it feels like it’s right there.

Were there any particularly helpful reverbs that you used? What helped these performances to feel real in the context of the scene?

TO: It’s all the standard tools that I use – mostly Audio Ease Altiverb and LiquidSonics reverbs like the Cinematic Rooms.

For Ely Cathedral, there’s so much room in the actual recording that is just what it is. There’s nothing added to that. At the end of the piece of music, when the orchestra stops and you hear this long tail out of reverb, that’s the actual Ely Cathedral. That’s what’s on mic.

That’s fantastic. What a beautiful-sounding space. And what about the singing in the film? There’s that scene near the beginning. It’s a party scene, and a man and a woman are singing together. Was that a pre-record or was that also recorded live on set?

TO: That’s live also. That’s just production, like as if they were talking.

That was tricky in that they’re both singing there and they’re bleeding onto each other’s mics. There’s a bit of a challenge to contain some of the peaky parts and yet let it feel like it’s naturally breathing. There are a few spots in there where they’re peaky and edgy and it would hurt if they’re not contained.

That was tricky in that they’re both singing there and they’re bleeding onto each other’s mics.

There are a few places where somebody turns their head and they really go off mic. Trying to find ways to feel that shift, but not as dramatically. What gets recorded is way too dramatic. If they go way off-mic, then you’re going, “What happened?”

That’s sometimes a matter of having to lean on another mic that’s either the other person or another mic in the room to pick that up or process it and gain it up to be at the right level and not be overly roomy.

Maestro: Crafting the Sound | Netflix

Speaking of dialogue bleed, Dean, in my conversation with Richard King he talked about how they got those great crowd sounds for the parties. That, in fact, Bradley Cooper staged a party on set and Steven Morrow miked up all guests. So you had all these discrete channels of the partygoers’ conversations and you could peek in and out of them to follow the camera through the room. Can you talk about mixing those crowds?

DZ: Tom handled all the on-camera and the group ADR – all the on-camera dialogue that you hear – because Tom did dialogue and music.
It was part of Richard’s domain because of dialogue editing by Richard’s dialogue editor, Tony Martinez.

Lenny’s room is always busy and alive, and Felicia’s room is more subdued.

Our part, sound effects-wise, was crowd effects – party crowds that we circled around and used to fill out the space to help dialogue and/or group ADR not to feel like group ADR/party ADR.

It was a combo. But as far as all the on-camera microphones, that’s Tom’s department. It all starts with dialogue.

TO: We usually establish what is our focus, which is generally the principal actors. I’ll go through and try to shape that and get that to read properly.

… it’s a matter of trying to keep it real sounding.

Then we start building the rest of the world around it. In the case of the party scenes like that, there are production crowds but the trick with that is that a lot of it has bleed of the principal actors on it. And so it’s a matter of a bob and weave to make sure you can use pieces of that. Some of it’s clean because people are far enough away, but if they’re close to the principles, then sometimes I can’t use that because it’s going to have the principal actors and they’ll be off-mic and roomy and not really helping. So then we’ll add in the group and all of the effects crowds around that.

And it’s a matter of trying to keep it real sounding. And with the group, it’s potentially the least believable part of it if it’s not done properly. So the effects crowds help to create a world and a bed for all that to sit in. And then the group can give you some depth. So we have people that are closer to us and people that are further away from us and it can play against each other.

Again, it’s just a matter of us sitting there, combing through it multiple times to decide the proper ebb and flow of all that.

DZ: And each room of that party, in particular, has a different feel, which was orchestrated. Lenny’s room is always busy and alive, and Felicia’s room is more subdued.

What about the foley sounds for those party scenes? Was that challenging to mix in because the crowd was so lively?

DZ: Yeah, well, foley’s tricky in its own right because if it’s not performed by the artist properly, and if the sounds aren’t true, it’s hard to mix them in. Then again, if the sounds are good, and the foley was performed great, it’s a delicate balance to mix it into the scene. If it’s underplayed, you can’t hear it, but if it’s overplayed, it sounds like foley. That takes you out of the scene.

You don’t know what’s foley and what’s really production.

We had great foley on this show. Foley and group ADR kind of work hand in hand. You’ve got to use it and mix it against the dialogue and mix it properly to sit in there to make everything believable. And in that particular scene, I love the foley because all the movement and the footsteps and all that you would hear in a party fits so well into that scene that you believe it. You don’t know what’s foley and what’s really production.

Were there a lot of foley tracks to cover all of that? Because, gosh, there are so many people and they have drinks and they’re all moving around…

DZ: It was probably pretty average for a feature. The foley wasn’t super wide. In general, foley can tend to get wide. This movie was a challenge in a way because the whole movie was a 100% foley, like all movies.

We did three temps on this movie. During the first temp, we had to stay true to the era, through 50 years. Foley was used back in 1943, but it was used differently in 1943 than it is in 2023. So we had to be very careful not to overplay scenes in ’43 and in the ’50s, in order to make the illusion that we’re actually watching a movie from 1943 in the black and white sections.

…we had to stay true to the era, through 50 years.

That was a matter of sitting with Richard and Tom on the stage and then working with Bradley to pick and choose what we needed to hear and what you don’t want to hear in order to make those eras believable.

So as we went through the eras and we hit the color sections of the ’70s and ’80s, all of a sudden more foley is being played, and it’s more complicated.

But the challenge foley-wise in the black and white scenes was to make it all sound believable to the era. Like today, if you pay attention to a foley track, the person three levels back in the scene, you delicately hear the foley for them. But in 1943, that wasn’t the case. So we had to make sure that we didn’t take the viewer out of the movie. We’re mixing the movie in 2023, but we had to mix the eras.

The Sound and Music of Maestro | SoundWorks Collection

Another thing Richard talked about was the sound effects in the sections where there was no music. The effects were musical in their scope and feel – to keep the musical feeling of the film going. Richard said they used a lot of wind sounds in a musical way, as well as birds and other natural sounds. Can you talk about your approach to mixing those more ambient sounds to keep the tone and mood of the scene going in the absence of music?

DZ: The whole track is musical. Everything about the track has a rhythm to it by design between Richard and Bradley and us.

Winds are a very big part of this movie – from delicate, nice, pastoral-type winds when their relationship is nice and growing and they fall in love to more tumultuous winds as their relationship starts to falter. The textures of the winds were very important.

It’s a very emotional thing when you’re mixing winds. It’s how it makes me feel that determines how I’m going to play it.

It’s a very emotional thing when you’re mixing winds. It’s how it makes me feel that determines how I’m going to play it. No pun intended, but you’re just riding the wind as the scene is emotionally telling you how to mix it.

TO: There’s like a wave and a flow to it that is a lot like orchestra playing – how things swell and dive out and come back and change between the different parts.

In many ways, this is all over the movie. The movie is designed to be symphonic, the whole thing and not just the music, because it has this flow to it and this grace, and this lyrical way of moving.

DZ: Even in the great iconic scene of the argument, the one-shot scene in their apartment during the parade. The crowds outside that scene, those Thanksgiving crowds, they’re ebbing and flowing as the argument is building. There’s a rhythm to that argument, too. If you listen to the dialogue, the way they’re speaking the dialogue is very rhythmic. And so once in a while, you’ll hear a bleed of a marching band go by or the crowd will cheer, but that’s all very much designed in a rhythm to the scene because life outside is going on while this argument is happening.

Watch a Thanksgiving Day Tirade in ‘Maestro’ | Anatomy of a Scene | The New York Times

Yeah, and the sound of their kids yelling through the door, saying, “What are doing in there?” Those interruptions have a really musical feel to them…

DZ: Yeah, that’s the theme of the whole movie.

For you, what stands out about the sound of Maestro? Why should it win the Oscar for Best Sound?

TO: This mix and the sound of this movie is all about elegance and it’s about sophistication. It’s not about being bombastic. It’s not about hitting you over the head with anything. It’s about precision and the musical flow of the entire thing.

It’s about precision and the musical flow of the entire thing.

So it’s really a very delicate, nuanced thing, and that’s what I hope people can recognize. It’s not a matter of density; it’s not a matter of having tons of sound. It’s not a matter of how hard it is, or anything. It’s a matter of how precise it is. It spans these really intimate, delicate scenes all the way to these giant performances, like Ely where it’s this massive thing, but it’s all a matter of grace and beauty.

DZ: And if it didn’t take you out when you’re watching it and you believed every frame, then every department did their job. If we didn’t do our job well, all those beautiful costumes and that remarkable makeup and those beautiful performances, we would have tanked some of it if we didn’t stay true just like all those other departments.

Aside from sound, not only did Bradley have to learn to conduct, he had to learn to conduct like Lenny.

There’s that really great scene near the end of the film where Leonard is at the university instructing a group of students on how to conduct an orchestra. Every time the kid conducts it, you hear the differences – it’s a little bit different. And then Leonard gets up and conducts, and it’s definitely different. It’s really amazing! The performers and Bradley as the conductor were able to create those differences…

TO: That whole scene is all recorded live. That’s all real. When it came to the M&E, it was a problem because the whole music track has dialogue on it because all those players are sitting right there and they’re right up on them. So when Bradley is talking, it’s all in the mics of the orchestra.

Again, there was some little subtle trickery to make sure that there were those noticeable changes and differences to the performance in particular, that it was a little more wowing when Lenny did his part. But yeah, that’s all real.

That was all my questions! Thank you guys so much for doing this interview…

TO: Thank you.

DZ: Thank you so much.

A big thanks to Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the mix of Maestro and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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