No doubt the extra time gave Cameron a chance to tighten up the edit, which originally came in at 25 reels and was trimmed to 20 (3 hours, 16 minutes, including credits). And it must have given Digital Domain, the visual effects company Cameron co-owns, time to polish and perfect tremendously complicated sequences. But it also gave the edit and mix crew at TEC Award-winning Skywalker Sound the opportunity to complete a much fuller, richer soundtrack and rely on first-call editors, many of whom were booked on other films based on a July 2 release.  

"What the extra time gave us," says supervising sound editor Tom Bellfort, "was the ability to come to terms with all the material and try to articulate all the possible sounds that would create the sheer size and elegance of the ship before it hits the iceberg. It also gave us the time to approach the job [in the post-iceberg section] in less of a mechanical way. It's easy to do a mechanical job as compared to more of an emotional and psychological rendering of what's going on aboard the ship while it's sinking."  
Of course, the later release also gave more time for the mix. Premixing began in early August and the final mix was finished in late October, in time for the world premiere at the Tokyo Film Festival on November 1. The schedule might seem luxurious in today's film sound climate, but the length made it essentially two movies, and the complexity of the material (127 speaking parts, 4,000 principal loops, intricate water Foley, at least three big, protracted action scenes) was daunting. By all accounts, it couldn't have been done without the stage setup on the new Mix A at Skywalker, which includes the 156-input AMS Neve Capricorn digital console pictured on last month's Mix cover, along with two Pro Tools systems for effects fixes, two Studioframes for dialog and a Sonic Solutions system for music. Premixes and finals were recorded to Skywalker's Sondor mag machines with Dolby SR.  

"With a digital, fully automated console, we were able to audition alternate effects that we premixed, and we could cut elements on the stage," says effects re-recording mixer Gary Rydstrom. "I could take those inputs to the board, and since it's fully automated, I could pan it, EQ it, make it echo, and it sits right in. It's almost like being able to edit, premix and final mix at the same stage. So it gave us a lot of flexibility."  

Working with Cameron demanded flexibility. He makes full use of the four outputs on his Avid system during the picture edit and creates a detailed temp mix (which was used at the first test screenings). The re-recording team would then solo those tracks before going into a reel to isolate Cameron's ideas. Sometimes he wanted the single effect from his temp, sometimes he wanted a different sound or more fullness. And because he was so involved with other aspects of the film at the time, there was really no way of knowing before he sat in for the final, at which point he would inevitably ask for changes.  

"Jim [Cameron] is very good about pacing when he does his temps," says music re-recording mixer Gary Summers. "He is very conscious of where there's going to be effects only, where there's going to be music, the interplay of them, and how dense it is. When you say he likes effects big, well, he also likes music big, but he's very, very selective. I remember that from Terminator 2--at any given moment, there's only certain things you're going to hear."  

  

Sound Designer/Re-recording Mixer Christopher Boyes in his Chris Pelonis-designed sound design room, complete with 40-input Oram BEQ console, Pro Tools and Synclavier (monitoring through Tannoy AMS 10As). Photo: Steve Jennings.

IN THE BEGINNING  

When Bellfort, Rydstrom and sound designer Christopher Boyes flew down to Los Angeles in early March to see the film, it was really "a rough assembly of scenes," according to Rydstrom, and it clocked in at 5,1/2 hours. The job seemed a bit overwhelming; the obvious place to start was field recording aboard ships.  

Many of the water and ship recordings come from four sessions aboard the Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien, an old working vessel with roughly the same engine-type as the Titanic, docked in San Francisco Bay. The Jeremiah O'Brien actually had been used in filming for some interiors of the engine room, so Boyes thought it would be ideal to get the sound of the engine, which he knew would be crucial in selling the size of the ship and the drama of switching to full-reverse when the iceberg is hit. But as is usually the case, he says, "The real sound never really works." (For the curious, the basic building blocks of sound of the Titanic's engine, which was the biggest steam-driven device ever built, are a piston from a racing-engine block, a massive air compressor and a stamper machine, combined and played on a Synclavier.)  

The O'Brien sessions weren't a complete wash, however, as the recordists came back with plenty of metallic door closes, hatch openings, distant engine rumbles (which run throughout the film, to give the sense of movement), bells, clangs and the like. The O'Brien also was taken out into San Francisco Bay, so the sound team was also able to capture a tremendous variety of bow wash, mid-side wash, propeller wake, hull laps and other water movement sounds, which occupy much of the first 11 reels, before the collision with the iceberg. The O'Brien crew even threw the engines into full-reverse about 20 times, simulating the climactic moment, which provided a wealth of creaks, groans, distant rumbles, perspective shifts, and countless backgrounds used to re-create the factory-like ambience of the steerage compartment.  

Water and metallic groans became the signature effects of the film, established in the first half and lending what Rydstrom calls a "sort of haunted house" tension to the second half. Each portion of the film posed challenges: Pre-iceberg, the job was to sell the audience on the size and elegance of the world's largest movable object.  

  

Chris "Bear" Barrick in the central machine room. Photo: Steve Jennings.

PRE-ICEBERG  

"It was Cameron's idea that every time we could, we make use of differences in sound perspectives on different points of the ship to remind us of just how vast this ship is," Rydstrom says. "Steerage obviously had a certain sound that was very mechanical and rumbling, and the pipes are gurgling. Then in first class, it's low but still rumbling to give you a sense that the ship is still moving, but it's very quiet and elegant. You hear clock ticks and the period cloth on the women's dresses--all these audio clues that this is a high-class place, but always pointing out where we are on the ship, both in location and class.  

"Another great scene is when the ship is first launched and the engines kick in. Again, Cameron cuts from a close-up of a propeller starting to turn, with all the churning water and rumbling of the ship, up to someone in first class where you just hear a slight rumble and the clink of a teacup. Playing up those contrasts was really important."  

Out on deck the relationships of wind and water sounds provided the audio clues. The sound of bow wash had to be very different from mid-wash and stern wash. And the wind had to vary, from sea winds to the fateful windless night, when what you hear comes only from the motion of the ship (the source, Boyes says, was wind cutting through telephone wires near the Point Reyes lighthouse). As the Titanic nears the iceberg, the music from a quartet playing in a ballroom adds yet another audio reference: "Jim was always very conscious of where the characters are on the ship and where the band was in relation to them," Summers says. "He always wanted it to feel that the quartet was still playing. Then you have the total destruction of the ship and lives are going to be lost and the despair, and you hear this waltz playing--this really nice counterpoint he's creating."  

  

Marni Hammett, left , and Dee Selby in transfer. Photo: Steve Jennings.

THE CRASH  

The crash sequence was one of the first things Boyes, Rydstrom and lead effects editor Ethan van der Ryn worked on, in order to get a sense of the size of the engine and the size of their biggest effects reel. Although Rydstrom helped design some of the big scenes and collaborated throughout, he passed on taking a sound design credit, saying, "It really is Chris' movie." After working as Rydstrom's assistant on films such as Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, Boyes has gone on to do sound design and re-recording on such films as Mission: Impossible, Eraser and Volcano. Nothing, he says, has matched the scope of Titanic. And few scenes have matched the complexity of the crash sequence.  

"One of the things that Gary once said to me a long time ago, which I've come to learn is absolutely right, is that sometimes when you make sound effects, you can't go for the biggest sound," Boyes says. "You can't go to a really large device that makes huge sound to get that huge sound. Often, it's the smaller things that make the more interesting sounds, that sound bigger than the big things, if that makes sense."  

The night of the crash was moonless and windless, and the Titanic was clipping along at 23 knots. A huge engine is roaring away, and water is thundering past the hull. The sense is that you are moving fast and can't be stopped. Then deck officer Murdock spots the iceberg, issues the order to full-reverse with a turn, and sets up an intense audio drama, culminating in the lethal rip along the hull.  

"Jim really wanted to tell the audience with audio how difficult it is to take this massive engine from full-speed forward to full-speed reverse," Boyes explains. "I found a recording from one of the cargo holds of the [Jeremiah O'Brien] during the ramp-down/ramp-up of the engine--not a straining, but sort of this steel moaning, crying sound. I started applying ramp-down square waves to it and came up with these sounds that feel like a tremendous amount of power winding down, then later winding up."  

Boyes took that sound, along with the piston, compressor and stamper effects, but still wasn't getting the rhythm he wanted. "So Gary and I sat down and basically created a loop on the Synclavier keyboard that I was able to apply speed to," he says. "I could slow these four main sounds down so that they came apart and you could hear each of the sounds distinctly from one another, and then as we sped it up, they would sort of blend into each other and reach full syncopation. It felt like you had the throttle to the engine of the Titanic in your hand right here on the Synclavier."  

Then the engine came to a two-beat "equipause," as Cameron called it, before the reversing lever is thrown and the ramp-up begins, setting up a thunderous, warbling torquing sound in the hull of the ship. In between are cuts back to the bridge, where things remain calm, underwater shots of the propeller churning, dampers being closed to cut down the fire and, always, the bow cruising toward the iceberg.  

"I can't honestly say what raw elements went into the ship hitting the iceberg," Boyes admits. "Basically, I got out every powerful steel impact sound I had and came up with probably a combination of ten different sounds, explosive-type deep, echo-y impacts. Obviously, I wanted a deep cracking sound, too. I had recorded a bunch of footsteps on ice up in Yellowstone, and from that I made a very sharp, articulate ice-crack sound, which I combined with the metal impact to become the iceberg hit.  

"But that's only the beginning of the iceberg hit, because it continues to bounce along the hull from all different perspectives," he continues. "Jim said, `You know, it's been described by passengers as the sound of somebody running down the side of the hull with a sledgehammer and hitting it.' So we had this string of very articulate, metallic, echo-y impacts." Meanwhile, up in the bridge, the hit barely registers, the only real clue being the slight rattling of the ship's wooden wheel.  

Then a 1,500-ton chunk of ice shears off the iceberg and lands on the deck; the camera cuts to the huge rip in the hull and a tremendous amount of water rushing in; watertight doors begin to seal, trapping boiler-room crew members inside; and there's a huge rush of steam, subtly played--the last gasp of the engines. Then Cameron cuts to an interior, first class.  

"We've just been through an amazing amount of noise--articulate, but nonetheless powerful," Boyes says. "We go to first class and a woman comes out of her door and says to the steward, `Excuse me, why have the engines stopped?' I felt a shudder. In that hallway, we have literally nothing but her dialog and the cloth movement of her dress and her footsteps. And those three elements alone make you realize why it's so incredibly unsettling. Suddenly, with the absence of the rumble and in the absence of any air at all, you realize something's deathly wrong."  

  

Mark Pendergraf at the Sondor dubbers. Photo: Steve Jennings.

POST-ICEBERG  

The iceberg hit occurs in reel 11, and the ship splits in two and sinks in reel 17. That meant a slow build back to chaos and climax, with appropriate room to breathe. Pacing became very important. "From the moment you hit the iceberg to the time it sinks is a long period of film time, at least an hour-and-a-half," Rydstrom says. "So you have every different type of effect in the water category--everything from drips to the sound of water building up behind a wall, water seeping under a door crack, then building up to three inches in the room, then several feet, then climbing to the ceiling, then the big explosions and crash through the glass dome. It was very important for that long hour-and-a-half stretch that everything--creaks, water--have a real sense of progression.  

"My first law in terms of sound is to have variation," he continues. "A steady blast of sound tends to lose interest. So my instinct is to mix so that the water has splashes and explosions--the water I'm talking about here is the type of water that floods through a hallway and comes rushing at the two main characters and just sweeps them off their feet. But every once in a while--and this is Cameron's idea, really--you just go for the firehose effect. We just hit every speaker with a roar of water with no modulation, and the lack of modulation in those few scenes gives you the sense that this is more water than you can believe coming at these people."  

Many of the more intricate water effects, and all of the ones that involved people moving, were done by Foley walkers Robin Harlin and Sarah Monat, and supervising Foley editor Tom Small, on the Paramount stage in Hollywood. That particular team had just come off The Flood, had use of a heated, 30-foot-diameter Doughboy tank, and had developed specific water-miking techniques. Effects sources came from everywhere, including geysers at Yellowstone, a "geothermal mud and water bubbling cavern" that Boyes recorded in a blizzard-wracked Yosemite, a sea cave, water treatment plants and an aquarium that dumped 1,000 gallons in one fell swoop.  

But it is the creaks and groans that most dramatically inspire terror, the sense of impending doom, from the first distant creak when Kate Winslet goes below deck to find Leonardo DiCaprio, to the final rip in two.  

"The groans have to constantly change in character, and they have to be moaning, squeaking, straining, twisting, breaking--the whole gamut," Boyes says. "I tried to stay away from the classic sound design technique of mixing a metal impact with a lion roar or some animal vocal. That sort of gives you that classic high-tech dramatic sound that we've come to hear from action films of the '90s. I had this notion that it's 1912, and I wanted it to sound like you're living in a giant steel chamber that's coming apart. This is the height of the Mechanical Age.  

"Actually, the most powerful elements for the groans came from my assistant sound designer, Shannon Mills, who went down to a pier at the San Francisco Maritime Museum, where this ship was tied to the dock with large steel chains and ropes," he adds. "The dock has this sort of steel pinion and ramps, and he came up with these recordings of the most powerful straining, moaning, twisting steel sounds. He thought they were okay, but not great, because of background crowd noise. But once I started to play with them--applying all sorts of pitch bends and certain amounts of reverb and EQ--I found that by going way down in the sections where there were voices, the voices themselves added this ghostly quality. That, combined with straining steel, became the basis for the metallic groans and the ship sinking."  

The scene of the ship sinking, Rydstrom says, is as big as anything he's ever done, and this from a guy who won Oscars for T2 and Jurassic Park. But for Cameron, and for the sound crew, this is a dramatic film, not a disaster movie. So the rush of the people, and the chaos of the last few hours onboard, form the heart and soul within the horror and cacophony.  

"The loop group [Mitch Carter and Mad Dogs, recorded at Todd-AO] was a very important component in this film," says supervising sound editor Bellfort, "because from the time the ship hits the iceberg, the people occupy the main dramatic element of the film. And you can't have people screaming for nine reels, so you create these ebbs and flows, these spikes, and decide when to use them. Compounding the problem were the problems of languages. The Titanic was a very international ship, insofar that first class was primarily made up of British and American passengers. The crew itself had to be made up of various British classes--the waiters, for instance, were not as `lower class' as the stokers. And you had the international makeup of steerage, so you had Russian voices, Lithuanian, Arab, Polish, Swedish, Irish--the range was phenomenal. The loop group was truly one of the threads that linked the last nine reels, from the time of the impact to the scenes in which there are fewer and fewer survivors screaming in the ocean at the end, until you reach silence."  

The silence was actually pegged in notes as "the presence of water." Cameron wanted the feeling of being surrounded, without really having an effect, which proved challenging. It was a sound Boyes didn't come up with until the final mix, and he has his 10-year-old son, Tyler, to thank.  

While mixing the trailer for the film, Boyes received a call from Tyler saying he was going to Hog Island for one of the last nights they would allow camping in Tomales Bay, an hour-and-a-half north of San Francisco. Having worked a grueling six months, he decided to skip out and spend time with his boy, so he got a ride in a motorboat and arrived at the island around 9:30 p.m. "I woke up about 2:30 in the morning," Boyes recalls, "and I just crept out of my tent and set up my rig. It had become calm and we were surrounded by water. It was tough because it was one of those recordings that was just on the edge of technically what a preamp can deliver without applying noise to your recording. I got this sense of feeling surrounded by a mass of water without really feeling surf. No lapping. More of a presence.  

"The other sound came from the Foley crew down at Paramount," he continues. "I had requested that they record the sound of frozen hair, because toward the end of the film, Rose is left on a raft in the middle of the Atlantic and you can see the icicles in her hair. So I asked them to try freezing celery or green onions or something of that nature and give me a crunchy effect every time she moves. Between the frozen hair and the presence of water, I think we leave the audience with an absolutely chilling emotional moment. And it worked out magically."  

  

Jonathan Greber in dialog transfer. Photo: Steve Jennings.

EPILOGUE  

So much more could be written about the tracks for this epic, which is not so much a disaster movie as it is a love story, on a scale with Doctor Zhivago and Gone With the Wind. The dialog edit alone could fill an article, with its 127 speaking roles, more than 4,000 principal ADR lines (masterfully handled by supervising ADR editor Hugh Waddell, Boyes says) and the fact that it sits in a frequency spectrum that competes with water and wind. Or the Foley, with its frantic action and its quieter moments, such as the scene in which DiCaprio sketches the nude Kate Winslet, and she removes a barrette as he sharpens his charcoal then sketches on paper--a favorite of Boyes'. Or the dramatic score (composed by James Horner, recorded by Shawn Murphy, with synthesizer sweetening delivered LCR), which at times moves from sweeping, panoramic love themes to driving, action-packed, pulsing rhythms.  

As surprising as it may sound, both Rydstrom and Boyes spoke of the sound design for Titanic as an exercise in restraint, in pulling back and building to the proper big moments. It's not always about big sounds or a massive number of tracks, they say. ("I don't know what I would do with 120 inputs for effects," Rydstrom says.) It's about choosing the right sounds and articulating them. They are aware that films are getting bashed for being too loud. In a film as long and heavily dramatic as Titanic, they say, there has to be time to breathe. And in a sense, the most memorable sounds of all may be two key moments of silence: when the engines shut down, and when a final survivor slips into the icy ocean.  

Tom Kenny, managing editor of Mix, wishes to thank Ellen Pasternack of Lucas Digital Ltd.  

L to R: Mix Technician Tony Sereno; Re-recording Mixers Lora Hirschberg and Gary Rydstrom; Sound Designer/Re-recording Mixer Christopher Boyes; Supervising Sound Editor Tom Bellfort; Re-Recording Mixers Tom Johnson and Gary Summers; Mix Technician Gary Rizzo. Photo: Steve Jennings.

Re-recording Mixers: Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson, Gary Summers, Christopher Boyes, Lora Hirschberg  

Supervising Sound Editor: Tom Bellfort  

Sound Designer: Christopher Boyes  

Assistant Sound Designer: Shannon Mills  

Sound Effects Editors: Ethan van der Ryn, Scott Guitteau, Christopher Scarabosio  

Supervising ADR Editor: Hugh Waddell  

ADR Editors: Suzanne Fox, Harriet Fidlow Winn, Richard G. Corwin, Cindy Marty, Lee Lamont  

Dialogue Editors: Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Claire Sanfilippo, J.H. Arrufat, Richard Quinn  

Supervising Foley Editor: Thomas Small  

Foley Editors: Scott Curtis, Tammy Pearing, Dave Horton Jr.  

Supervising Assistant Sound Editor: Scott Koué  

Supervising Assistant ADR Editor: Jonathan Null  

Assistant Sound Editors: Beau Borders, Jessica Bellfort, Mary Works, Michael Axinn  

Paramount Foley Mixer: Randy K. Singer  

Foley Artists: Sarah Monat, Robin Harlin  

ADR Mixers: Dean Drabin, Brian Ruberg, Tony Anscombe  

Composer: James Horner  

Scoring Engineer: Shawn Murphy  

Supervising Music Editor: Jim Henrikson  

Music Editor: Joe E. Rand  

Recordists: Cary Stratton, Ann Hadsell, Joan Chamberlain, Scott Jones, Darren McQuade  

Re-recordists: Ronald C. Roumas, Scott Levy, Al Nelson, Mark Pendergraft  

Machine Room Operators: David Turner, Steve Romako, Christopher Barron  

Mix Technicians: Gary A. Rizzo, Tony Sereno, Sean England, Kent Sparling, Jurgen Scharpf  

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