Senior rerecording engineer Paul Shubat mixes music, dialogue, and sound effects to bring shows like Heartland and Flashpoint to life
At 50 years old with a smile on his face and a glint in his eyes, Paul Shubat, a senior rerecording engineer at Technicolor, can mix a 45-minute-show like it’s second nature. Dressed in a white button-down shirt and black pants, he turns in his leather chair to his computer where he opens up the sound mixing program Pro Tools, and sits in front of his mixing console — a long, polished desk that can hold up to 400 audio tracks.
Today, he’s working on the popular Canadian show, Heartland, a family drama based on the Heartland books by Lauren Brooke. In a chic and open studio, he’s focusing on a scene of a couple strolling around town. At first, the scene is mute in front of you, but not once Shubat starts adjusting the knobs and volume dials in front of him.
All of a sudden, the sound of gentle wind starts. Shubat swivels a small joystick, and the sound of wind moves from the back of the room to the front, slowly blending in both directions. He adds more sounds, like people whispering and sparrows chirping, to create the atmosphere of the city.
He looks at the screen again before pointing out the traffic on the right and adding the sound of cars driving by. The traffic doesn’t seem important at first, but once the sound is added, you realize how little sense the scene would make without it.
“It’s starting to feel like a scene,” he says, but it’s not over yet. He looks around his console until he finds what he’s looking for: the sound of footsteps and the friction of clothing to match the walking movements of the actors. It’s a steady clinking sound mixed together with the rustling of fabric.
Besides the dialogue and the music, the majority of the work is finished for this one scene, which has taken him only a few minutes.
The process takes up to five days altogether: one day for the dialogue, another day for the sound effects, two days for the final mix, and one final day for revisions.
During those five days, audio engineers work on smoothing out the sounds of the show and eliminating any external noise picked up on set. In the last few days, Shubat makes sure every audio track for the show forms one cohesive picture that producers and directors are proud of.
Sound mixing is hard work, but for every hour Shubat spends mixing a show, he is paid roughly $350, not including any editing before the mixing.
The high prices may be one of the reasons why the film and television production business made about $1.26 billion last year in Ontario, and up 31 per cent from 2010. With Ontario being the third-largest film production location in North America, the post-production industry has become highly competitive in Toronto these last few years.
Steve Munro, professor of sound in film at York and owner of Trackworks Inc., says mixing theatres have grown rapidly.
“[Back then], there were really only three or four mixing theatres in the city,” says Munro. Today, there are over 1,000 post-production companies in Toronto that offer services for programs, advertisements, and films.
Shubat has had six nominations for Gemini awards and has won a Grammy for working with Steve Winwood’s album, Roll with It. He also had the opportunity to work on television shows like Degrassi: the Next Generation and X-Men.
Awards seem to be the only way to acknowledge a sound mixer’s work in film and television.
“It’s a thankless job at the end of the day,” says Shubat.
The only time his work is ever really acknowledged is when he does a poor job of it, he says.
“They know when it’s bad; they don’t usually know when it’s good,” he says.
But that’s the least of the engineer’s concern. He worries more about how his work is currently being broadcast. Since broadcast technology has evolved, the transition from standard definition to high definition has left television shows lacking dynamic range.
Popular programs like Flashpoint that need quiet, intimate moments as well as loud, booming explosions to make an impact are sometimes presented at the same volume throughout the show.
Shubat says consumers sometimes believe post-production companies are to blame. “They’re [broadcasters] trying to make our product dynamic and cinematic, but always at the same loudness, which is just wrong.”
And it’s not just television shows. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced last year that broadcasters must manage the loudness of advertisements on television after receiving more than 7,000 complaints about loud commercials.
In response, broadcasters like Bell Media blamed the production side, saying that is where the problem starts and that networks like CTV wouldn’t be able to solve the issue if production didn’t do its part. Though other companies like Rogers Communications Inc. have committed to using equipment to measure and manage audio volume levels, the solution is still a work in progress.
With the market changing and more people turning to the internet to watch their favourite shows, Shubat says it’s important that broadcasters deliver their product at its highest quality or their days will be numbered.
Shubat wants movie-goers to experience films the way he does in his office, with large speakers positioned around the room and a 20-foot tall, 52-foot wide screen.
At the moment, Shubat is working on season six of Heartland. Though the show will probably demand hours of his largely unappreciated work, he doesn’t see himself leaving Technicolor anytime soon. Films and programs aren’t going anywhere, so neither will he, he says.
“People need stuff to watch, whether it’s film, or television,” he says. “[Storytelling has] existed since the start of mankind; it’s just going to take different forms and come to you in different venues.”
The newest advancement in sound technology, the Dolby Atmos system, uses up to 64 speakers in the whole theatre, projecting sounds from every direction, even from above, making for an incredibly realistic experience.
Unfortunately, there are no mixing theatres in Toronto set up for Dolby Atmos at the moment, and there is only one theatre in the city where you can experience the newest sound technology, according to Munro. But that will most likely change in the coming years, with the success of films like Life of Pi and The Hobbit, which are mixed using Dolby Atmos.
And at the forefront of the latest technological advances, Shubat will be not too far behind learning and perfecting them to be a better mixer for clients.
By Victoria Alarcon, Senior Staff
