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MillimeterHonoring Minimalism
Jul 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman
Veteran sound designer Leslie Shatz says he was “shocked and floored” when he learned he had been honored for his minimalist sound design work on Gus Van Sant's new film, Last Days, as co-recipient of the only technical award given at the Cannes Film Festival: the Prix Vulcain de l'Artiste-Technicien.
Leslie Shatz (above left) worked with director Gus Van Sant (in black cap, with actor Michael Pitt) to build the award-winning soundtrack for Last Days.
Van Sant photo courtesy HBO Films/Picturehouse
Shatz says he and Van Sant designed the audio to be “the opposite of the typical cinematic idea for sound design, which usually means super-loaded tracks and amazing technical feats. We wanted to stay within Gus' vision of minimalism — light and streamlined.
“We just used evocative sounds not necessarily tied to the image — just production sound and music, almost no foley — an ambient feeling. The production sound was recorded [by Felix Andrew] onto two Fostex DAT recorders. The first DAT used an MS stereo boom mic [Schoeps Hypercardiod mic] for the middle, and a Schoeps figure-8 mic for the sides. The second DAT captured the wireless mic sound.”
Shatz and Van Sant cut, mixed, and edited the audio in Van Sant's screening room in Portland, Ore. They used a Digidesign Pro Tools HD single-card system, decoding the MS stereo tracks internally within Pro Tools using a DigiRack single EQ plug-in as a phase inverter.
“Often, the MS and wireless material was mixed together, which created interesting phase relationships, giving the ambient feeling to the soundtrack,” Shatz explains. He adds that the soundtrack incorporated bits of production sound captured in the French musique concrète style.
“Essentially, musique concrète is the idea of recording ordinary sounds and playing them back as music — sort of a documentary way to create music,” says Shatz. “We used that style to record production sound. It gave the soundtrack a phasey, spacey, ambient feeling.”
