The Greatest Showman Home Again Choreography

Greg Wells has worked with everyone who's anyone in the world of music — only nothing could prepare him for mixing a moving-picture show soundtrack!

Greg Wells has nearly xxx years of top-level feel equally a musician, songwriter, engineer, mixer and producer. He works in a wide range of genres, and plays drums, keyboards, guitar, and several other instruments, with A-list credits including Elton John, Katy Perry, Adele, Timbaland, Pharrell Williams, Celine Dion, Pink, Dua Lipa and many more. However, until he began work on the Original Motion Pic Soundtrack for The Greatest Showman, Greg Wells had never worked on a movie before. The feel would force him to completely alter a production arroyo adult over decades, and left his cherished collection of vintage outboard gathering grit.

"In the middle of 2016," says Wells, talking from his Rocket Carousel Studio in Los Angeles, "I had a meeting with motion picture director Michael Gracey, here in my control room. I believe I got on his radar because he was a fan of my work, and he felt that what I did musically corresponded with the visual aesthetic he was pursuing with the pic, which was to make a modern contemporary moving picture near events that happened in the mid-1800s. It had to look like a period piece, yet they also wanted it to be fresh. He best-selling it's potentially a dangerous concoction, because it's easy to exist goofy and ridiculous when you have modernistic choreography and popular songs in a motion picture set in 1850.

"Co-ordinate to Michael, the things I practice as a tape producer pay homage to the classics, but they besides are fresh and contemporary, without being gimmicky. This is indeed important to me. I've never gone for contemporary sounds that are going to be dated in ii years from now. Post-obit the fickle trends of fashion, whether in clothing, music, or any, has never actually interested me. Things date well when you try non to follow that stuff. Instead I just try and present music in the most vital, true style, and Michael liked that about my approach. While he was hither, he stood in forepart of his small laptop and acted out the unabridged movie for me in ii hours, orating the lines of the different characters. It was an amazing, crazy meeting, and I was completely sold. I loved it, and him!"

Insanity Beckons

Greg Wells in his own Rocket Carousel Studio, where most of his work on The Greatest Showman took place. For almost a year, all the same, Wells heard nothing more. Somewhen, afterward a brief hold-up to finish some other project, he received the Pro Tools session for a song chosen 'From At present On', which he produced and mixed using his established manner of working, incorporating the enormous amount of classic analogue gear in his studio and his Eric Valentine-designed 24-channel valve Undertone Audio desk. It was at this bespeak that things began to become more than complicated...

"20th Century Fox had hired several very talented music producers, who were all at the tiptop of their game, but the motion-picture show producers plant that as much every bit they loved what these people had done, they did not stop up with the choices and changes that were required. From my stop, I have a broad range of experience as a musician, playing in symphony orchestras, punk bands, weddings, then on. I retrieve once, when I was xix, driving 10 hours due north of Toronto to perform with a Dixieland band playing at the opening of a take-out French Fries counter. I was dressed in a goofy tuxedo and had a guy dancing next to me in a French Fry costume. Naturally, people my age were walking past shaking their heads. Just I loved it!

Team photograph: from left, composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, player Hugh Jackman, Greg Wells, and director Michael Gracey. "So I accept all these diverse experiences that I bring to situations similar this, and I indeed needed every bit of experience that I accept, because they had been working on the songs for this movie for four years, and had kept everything that had been washed. As a consequence the average track count of the sessions was 350-400 tracks! When they gave me the outset vocal, the manager told me that I had total command and that I could use everything that was in the session, or some of it, or nothing and beginning again — anything, as long as I kept the vocals.

"Every session was very organised, and the height tracks would exist from demos recorded years and years ago, done by one producer, and then there would be orchestral session number ane done by another producer, then orchestral session number two past yet another producer, a horn section, some other horn department, maybe a third horn section, plus different choirs from dissimilar sessions recorded in different cities, so on!

"It was absolute insanity, and what was required was for me to brand big choices and sweeping changes, rather than only say: 'That snare audio is not brilliant enough.' Instead, I concluded upward doing huge things similar rewriting string parts, deleting entire sections, replaying a bass guitar because the chords in the song had been changed since the original bass part had been recorded, adding guitars, pianoforte, lots of live and programmed drums, and so on. I brought all those skills to the tabular array, considering for me information technology'due south all office of the same brush stroke. Thankfully they liked what I did on that first vocal, because they then gave me some other two songs to work on, and then four, and then vi, and somewhen I produced and mixed most of the anthology."

More & More

A month was spent in Sweden, working at Riksmixningsverket, the Stockholm studio of Abba super-producer Benny Andersson. Justin Paul (left) and Benj Pasek debate a signal of arrangement. Wells completed his analogue mix of 'From Now On' in June 2017, and then set to piece of work on the other tracks in a process that lasted one-half a twelvemonth. This took place entirely in his own studio, apart from a calendar month spent in Stockholm (considering his wife is Swedish), at Benny Andersson'due south Riksmixningsverket Studio. When Wells embarked on work on the second song, information technology became clear that he could not go along the way he had washed, and that his entire approach needed to exist overhauled. The almost unmanageable corporeality of tracks was one reason, the vociferous needs of what he calls "the moving picture animate being" another.

"Actually, a few songs had much higher track counts than 400! I was very intimidated past this for about a week. But one time yous start to understand something, information technology becomes smaller and easier to assimilate. Merely the over-the-top, macro nature of it all remained really daunting to me. I remember saying to the two songwriters for the pic, Justin Paul and Benj Pasek, 'Normally I find that less is more,' and they laughed and said, 'Greg, we call up that in this project, you'll discover that more than is actually more.' And so that kind of became the motto of the whole project.

The console at Riksmixningsverket, with Benny Andersson's custom white Minimoog. "At that place is so much going on in these sessions, and I had to wrap my head around the all-time way to go on everything organised, where I could speedily plough all the drums off from, say, [producer] Ricky Reed's element of a production, or plow them back on, or solo something. Often when working on these songs I could hear a track, but just couldn't find information technology in the session, because in that location were hundreds and hundreds of tracks. It was then disruptive. Sometimes that happened every five minutes, and anybody would be laughing: 'Greg tin't observe the track once more!' But hey, they couldn't either! Nobody could! Plus some producers had used incredibly complex, insane routing, particularly on some of the orchestral elements, and the only solution was to leave those routings, and build my own mix template effectually them."

Loftier Tension

The procedure of getting the songs into shape was, of necessity, a collaborative one. "Alex [Lacamoire] was very involved during the Summer, and then he had to go back to Hamilton-country and deal with the opening of the musical in London. The person who I worked nigh closely with throughout was Justin [Paul] who is more than the musician in the writing duo, while Benj is more on the lyric side. At that place was no regular way in which we approached things. We all merely showed upwards in the morning and said to each other: 'What shall nosotros work on today?' Sometimes we worked on several songs on i day. Justin drove the project in terms of what nosotros focused on, non only because he had worked on this project for iv years, but also because he has a fine-tuned brain that allows him to remember everything they had recorded. He has folders inside of folders inside other folders on his laptop, and he'd remember every single element of every single version, even if it was done three years ago.

"A lot of the time information technology was Justin and me hunkered down, glued to the screen, trying to create something neither of us could on our ain. Plus, he plays like a high voltage cable is running through him, and I wanted the music to sound like the way he looks when playing. I felt that the musicians on some of the recordings did not always deliver the kind of intensity that is naturally coming through him, and and so I got Justin to overdub guitar and keyboards. In terms of how I approached the music production, I did not think of the 1850 setting of the movie. But I did always work to picture. I insisted that the film was e'er playing while we worked on the music. I imagined that I was in the movie theater and I was trying to brand the music match the visuals. The visuals are stunning and the performances of the actors are incredible and full of vitality. Director Michael Gracey is a genius with visuals. The music that was sent to me did not quite friction match that, and much of what I did was to endeavour to make things feel energetically right coming out of the speakers.

"Speakers are fell, and we had to jump through all these hoops and do all these crazy techniques to make the music zing with electricity and make it sound like a neat live performance. Looking at a live performance of a beautifully shot, beautifully edited, beautifully directed big-budget film dictated the superlative of the bar. It took a while to match that, but we got there, even though information technology was a Herculean project that kind of drove me a fleck crazy by the end. The stress level was much higher than I am used to, though information technology got to the point where that was kind of normal, and afterwards it took me nearly a calendar month to come downwardly from the intensity."

Star Turn

To illustrate the hoops he jumped through and the "crazy techniques" he developed to get the music to the required standard, Greg Wells focuses on ane of the singles from The Greatest Showman, 'Rewrite The Stars'. (The album's atomic number 82 single, 'This Is Me', winner of the 2022 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, was produced by Wells and mixed by Manny Marroquin, who had already been working on the vocal earlier Wells was hired for the film). The final Pro Tools mix session of 'Rewrite The Stars' contains 333 tracks — plain a modest total by the standards of this album. Describing all these in detail would have up the rest of the magazine, merely a broad overview from top to lesser (or left to right in the Mix window) begins with 23 grey tracks containing "all kinds of stuff, including stems from the original demo", 30 tracks of orchestra (in blueish), 10 tracks of demo mixes and other mix reference tracks, 43 tracks of drums and percussion, six tracks of bass and 63 tracks of guitar. These are followed by five tracks of piano, sixteen tracks of strings, nine tracks of low percussion, v tracks of pads, some other 13 tracks of percussion, 28 tracks of synth and piano, another five tracks of bass, 6 various, 10 more than guitar tracks, a few miscellaneous tracks including a demo bankroll vocals rail, 8 tracks of Zac Efron lead vocals, nine tracks of Zendaya lead vocals, six tracks of Wells' bussing, four auxiliary consequence tracks, and four master tracks. Remarkably, nothing seems to be muted, so one wonders what choices Wells fabricated. Surely he can't have used everything?

"They shot all the moving picture footage to demos," explains Wells, "so nosotros needed to brand sure the demos were in the session, with everything lined up sample authentic, to the nanosecond. And so there are all the dissimilar stems that were used on set to play for the actors when the cameras were rolling. A lot of the stuff is from producer and composer Joseph Trapanese, including his routing, which is fashion over the top, with dozens of track outputs with names like 'TRA', '05RG', '06LG', '07PU' and then on. Joe joked about information technology to me, and said that his routing besides was designed to make information technology easier to create stems for the movie people. You solo 1 thing and it allows you to give them the stem they desire in the super-particular manner they need it. So instead of trying to supervene upon it, I built around the routing that was already there, including his.

"Typically the sessions were given to me with audio arranged chronologically, with audio at the superlative from earlier sessions and at the lesser from afterward sessions. There always were multiple versions, and every time they gave me a new song information technology came with very detailed explanations. They shared all their knowledge and all their experiences, like this was the day we did information technology and this is what the weather was on that solar day, and this is why we did it, and so on. The reason is that they really plow every rock, and endeavour everything. I had then much information coming at me, it was similar I was hit by iii or iv tsunamis at once, well-nigh all the time!

"I had to go used to the enormous sizes of the sessions and could non easily pare them downwards, considering, as I mentioned, Justin was actually forensic in his noesis and was sitting adjacent to me all the fourth dimension. I thought I was into details, simply he made me look like I'm blind. So I could not consolidate tracks, because he would e'er be chasing down the smallest nuances. The feeling of dealing with these enormous sessions became like conducting an orchestra. I think the fact that I played classical piano when I was a little boy was great grooming for an over-the-acme projection like this, because you learn to deal with a huge repertoire with long compositions and lots of information."

Tough Choices

In the example of 'Rewrite The Stars', Wells was told very early on that opinion within the production crew was split betwixt two favourite versions, with no-one existence able to work out how to arrive at an end consequence. The way Wells cutting this particular Gordian knot would have fabricated Alexander The Groovy proud. "The original version of this session was much bigger, with every different version of the song in it. I managed to whittle it down to some degree, including the material of their two favourite versions, which besides were my favourite versions, with 1 being very orchestral and the other more pop-sounding with lots of programming and no orchestral stuff.

"Neither version was entirely correct. So I started experimenting and experimenting to come to some sort of resolution, and 1 solar day when Justin and Benj were in New York, and I was on my own, I merely thought: 'At present that I take the pb vocals sitting where I want them, permit's come across what it sounds similar if I just play the two versions at the same time.' To my happy surprise, they worked beautifully together. It actually sounded like they were office of the same track, which was a wonderful discovery, as these were 2 totally different versions washed by different people in unlike years. I spent two more days adding some production elements, and mixed it from that point."

Twin Lead

There are, in general, relatively few plug-ins on the individual tracks, with whole sections having no plug-ins at all. This is partly considering many of the tracks are stems created by other producers, with effects already applied, and as well considering, says Wells, "There also aren't many plug-ins on the orchestral stuff, because I like that to sound really open up. For me the orchestra sound is near microphone selection and placement, and having corking arrangements and groovy players in a bang-up studio. That's a sound I hardly ever mess with."

The exceptions to this rule are to be found amidst the lesser 30 tracks of the session, where many plug-ins beautify the 2 pb vocals, Wells' nine mix effect busses, titled 'A' to 'F' and 'Verb/Delay', 'Drumcrush' and 'Fatso', and his mix master bus. The structure of the lead vocal tracks by Zac Efron and Zendaya, and the plug-ins used on each of them, is almost identical. In each instance information technology starts with a lead vocal audio rail, which is so sent to a 'Lead Vocals' aux track and a 'Lead Vocal Pultec' parallel compression aux track. Both these aux tracks are sent to a 'Atomic number 82 Vocals Combiner' aux, with the OEK Soothe plug-in in the insert and four sends to aux effects tracks with treatments titled 'Crush', 'Verb', 'Filibuster' and 'Spread'. Unpacking this construction reveals that some of Wells' venerated hardware had, afterward all, seen some activity.

"The vocals were tuned, merely I definitely got into tuning them myself. I'm very particular about tuning, and frequently request the raw vocals if I don't like how they have been tuned. If needed I will pitch-shift or tune a tuned vocal again. I don't like the audio of Melodyne, and instead utilise Waves Tune and Antares Auto-Tune. They're both great, and each can do something the other tin can't. I go dorsum and forth between them all the time. Vocal timing is a large one as well. I'yard constantly moving things around timing-wise. Timing a phrase or a word a millisecond or ii earlier or afterwards can make a huge difference. I do this by hand, in the Pro Tools edit window. I'll create a region and will motion it by mitt with the nudge button.

"The vocals likewise were recorded without much compression, and from the sound of it they probably had been singing 5 feet from the microphone — the stuff y'all exercise in movies, but you'd never do for a record. For me the sound of a modernistic record is the mic an inch in front of the singer, with compression. I as well similar the proximity effect. I wanted that modern sound on this vocal, as it's so conspicuously a popular song. Zendaya is 21 years old, and definitely the pop gene in this movie. So I really was after a Serban Ghenea-blazon popular vocal audio, and it took a while to go there.

"To get the vocals to sound more energised, I used my interpretation of the Michael Brauer vocal thing, and sent each lead song to a range of different tube compressors, each of them on an analogue insert. These were my RCA BA6B, my mid-'60s UA 175b, my Retro Instruments 176 — it's a new version of the 175b — the Chandler EMI RS124, the Unfairchild past Undertone Sound, the Retro Instruments Sta-Level and a Neve Shelford Channel. Every one of them is not compressing more than 2-3dB, and each of them sounds quite unlike. I blend the outputs of all of them to ane vocal track, and I usually end upwards favouring one or two of the compressors over the others. This process winds up sort of EQ'ing the vocal in a really cute, musical fashion, without really using EQ. I and so print that back into the session, and this becomes the new vocal runway, which are the tracks chosen 'Zac Lead' and 'Zendaya Lead'.

"Each of these sound lead tracks goes into its ain aux called 'LeadVocals', on which I have a signal concatenation on the inserts of the Waves Scheps 73 virtual Neve 1073, Crane Song Phoenix II tape emulation, and Waves Rvox. This is all based on Andrew Scheps' technique, and sounds big and full and natural with a tiny bit of pinch. Each audio lead track also goes to its own 'LeadVocalPultec' aux track, which has a betoken chain of a UAD Pultec EQP-1A, a Waves CLA-2A, a 2d Pultec EQP-1A and over again the Scheps 73, and here the EQ has more of a disco smile, with lots of 100Hz and elevation cease added, and tons of compression.

"I blend these two tracks until they sound correct, and and so they get to the 'Pb Vocals Combiner' aux, which has a new plug-in called Soothe, fabricated by a Finnish visitor called OEK Sound. It's really astonishing. When you employ information technology sparingly, and set up information technology to the oversample pick, the upshot is phenomenal. It only takes out all the ugly harmonic stuff. Microphones are weird and unnatural, and some singers' voices respond beautifully to a microphone, whereas others don't. Information technology'southward like some people are photogenic and some people are not. Nosotros have all read well-nigh people like Mutt Lange getting his engineer to EQ every single syllable of a vocal, and I have done that as well. You can brand a vocal sound more natural similar that, as if in that location's no microphone and the singer is correct at that place in front of you. The Soothe does the same matter, but it tin can make fifty different moves in ane syllable. It is brilliant. Information technology is actually incredible. Information technology's on both lead vocals, and it really helped to give me the popular vocal sound that I wanted on both of the singers.

"Each 'Lead Vocal Combiner' track has four sends, which become to a 'Vocal Beat' aux track, with a UAD 1176 actually slammed and a fast release, a 'Vocal Verb' track with the McDSP Filterbank EQ and some overnice, open up reverb from a UAD Pure plate, a 'Vocal Delay' rail with the Waves H-Filibuster, and a 'Spread Vox' aux with the Eventide H910 Harmonizer for some spread. I confidently use the same indicate chain structure and plug-ins on both vocals, considering my setup is a catch-all. When I did my VoiceCentric plug-in for Waves, they asked how a male song chain can likewise exist used for a female vocal chain and I explained that information technology tin: it is but a framing of the vocals in the rails. I actually apply VoiceCentric all the time, simply the reason that it's not in this session is again considering the motion-picture show globe wanted me to stem out dry vocal stems and stems with each individual effect, and they lose their minds and yell if they don't get it! And so I had to take a tweak-y, lifting-the-hood manoeuvrability with the vocal furnishings that the VoiceCentric intentionally doesn't have, because I wanted that plug-in to sound incredible, just also be really uncomplicated to use with a minimum of control options."

On The Busses

Underneath the vocal tracks are Wells' nine mix upshot aux tracks, or busses. Wells: "This is inspired by Michael Brauer's multiple bus approach. I call up he has four or five, merely I wound up with nine mix busses in this session. All the lead vocals go to 'Bus A', which has a very pocket-size amount of UAD Neve 33609 pinch and a niggling bit of UAD Pultec EQP-1A, adding 2dB at 16kHz and a piffling chip of 100Hz. All drums and bass get to 'Passenger vehicle B', which has an Empirical Labs Arouser, followed by Fabrice Gabriel's astonishing Eiosis AirEQ plug-in, which I adore. I apply it to tweak some key frequencies for some more presence.

"'Double-decker B' too has some sends to three other busses. The showtime send goes to the Fatso bus, which has UAD Fatso Jr pinch. Information technology's a glorious-sounding plug-in, which gives more than weight in the lower mids and the low end. The second send goes to 'Bus Eastward', which has the UAD Thermionic Civilisation Vulture and the UAD LA-2A. I take an outboard Civilization Vulture, only the UAD version sounds fantastic. The LA2A does some slow optical compression to give it a little bit of that Alan Moulder lesser end, which is an amazing way to give your drums and bass extra depth. The third send goes to the Drum Crush bus, which has the UAD Fairchild 670 compressor, which slams the signal quite hard, with a release that is ready to the second fastest setting. I just blend that in to gustatory modality.

"'Bus C' has the actually incredible Stephen Slate FG-MU, which is their version of the Fairchild, the Slate Virtual Mix Rack, and and so the UAD SPL Vitalizer. Again, I also accept the hardware version, only the plug-in sounds great. I transport guitars to 'Bus C', sometimes piano, anything that'southward pretty natural-sounding but needs a picayune fleck more zing. I don't utilise 'Jitney D' very much. It has an quondam Focusrite compressor plug-in and the Gorging AIR Stereo Width. That is another Michael Brauer trick. He always has a bus with a widener. I know there are many other stereo wideners, but I call back that the AIR one is great.

"I also send orchestral drums to 'Jitney E', which I mentioned to a higher place, which I use for anything that needs that glorious Alan Moulder lesser end. Strings and annihilation orchestral goes to 'Bus F', which has a trivial fleck of UAD SPL Vitalizer, with the tiniest bit of stereo expansion, a tiny bit of the Process knob, and adding some upper mids and a petty scrap of low end. After 'Motorbus F', the next bus is the 'Verb/Delay' return. Any effects that I don't want whatever [boosted] processing on will evidence up at that place — the 4 vocal furnishings aux tracks go through this, for example. Then there'due south the 'Drum Crush' bus, with the UAD Fairchild 670, and finally the 'Fatso' bus, with the Fatso Jr and the LA-2AG. There's a feed track that controls the level going into that 'Fatso' coach, which is an Andrew Scheps trick. I got that directly from him and I love it."

Principal Processing

Wells: "All these nine busses are sent to the 'Mix Bus Level' runway, which feeds the 'Mix Passenger vehicle' rail with all the plug-ins. This is another thing I got from Andrew. The 'Mix Bus' point chain starts with the UAD Neve 33609, and we both love the sound of that on the mix coach. It can provide some really magical-sounding glue, but it besides is very grabby, and if you send too much level to information technology, it simply sounds ridiculous. You have to pull the input signal down until it is almost doing nothing, then that is what I am doing with the 'Mix Bus Level' runway. Later the 33609 I have the Black Box Analogue Pattern HG-two tube compressor, which sounds groovy. I added a little bit of all the different choices that information technology offers, and I backed off the output level. I do the latter as a dominion, considering something that sounds louder instantly sounds better, so I set it so that when I bypass a plug-in the level is the same. This means I tin can make a genuine comparison, and brand sure information technology actually sounds better at the aforementioned level.

"Next is the Brainworx bx_digital V3, which is a wonderful surgical EQ, which besides has a great stereo width knob, and and then I again have the Slate Virtual Channel on a Neve setting, which gives some more definition downwards in the boot-drum area. I take the Slate Virtual Tube Collection, and I have the New York Tube selected with a little bit of saturation and the mix knob set up to 80 percent. Afterward that we take the UAD Brainworx bx_subsynth, which is adding some super, ultra-depression motion picture rumble, with the mix knob gear up to 26 percent. Afterwards that I have a plug-in that I don't use that oft, the UAD Precision Maximizer. It is a beautiful plug-in, but I don't similar the sound of the limiter so I always plow that off. For the residuum I have it prepare to three bands, and the mix is at 100 percent and the shape is set to 63 percent.

"I had not installed [iZotope] Ozone viii yet, and so I am still using 7 in this session, and it does some very gentle stuff here. The Maximiser is bypassed, and at that place'due south a petty bit of a multiband dynamic matter happening, with the parallel blend set to 52 percent, so information technology's non doing very much. There besides is some low roll-off in the EQ at 40Hz and some upper mid heave. Finally, there's the Sonnox Oxford Limiter. I honey the Enhance fader on that, and information technology is set to 59 percent. I besides do a slightly eccentric matter, which is to alloy in parallel compression on the entire mix omnibus. I accept a send from the Mix Charabanc to a 'mix parallel' double-decker side by side to information technology, on which I have one of these Focusrite compressor plug-ins, and I'm squashing that pretty difficult. I blend that in with the principal Mix Coach, with the 'mix parallel' set to -17dB.

"In that location are well-known mixers who say that you should not put a lot of stuff on your mix bus, simply I put tons on, and some others do as well. Everything I put on does a tiny little bit. Information technology is cumulative. I read a quote by Daniel Lanois many years agone in which he said that he thinks an EQ sounds ameliorate if you send a lot of stuff through it. Rather than EQ'ing private elements, he likes to send 15 different things to the same EQ. For him that helped get the sound that he was hearing in his caput. I know exactly what he means. I think I am very influenced by the fact that my very first studio was a four-rail Fostex cassette machine. I yet accept it at my studio to remind me how this all started. Because I had only iv tracks I always had to process the terminate event, and I am still influenced by that. Everyone has their own mode of arriving at the terminate line, and for me non being conservative with processing on the mix autobus is key."

The Greatest Evidence On Globe

Having arrived at the terminate line at the end of 2017, Wells recalls that he had no idea how the movie and the soundtrack anthology would be doing. With The Greatest Showman being director Michael Gracey's start feature motion picture, and the whole project having taken seven years considering the studios considered taking on a musical high risk, the movie and soundtrack album could have disappeared without trace. However, the motion-picture show'southward success pushed the soundtrack anthology to the top spot in the Uk and the Usa, and information technology also was the iTunes number one in a whopping 65 countries.

Aught Is Ever Finished

"Nosotros went down such a deep rabbit hole producing and mixing this stuff, information technology actually made me a little bit crazy," says Greg Wells. "There are tons of people in charge when making a movie, and I'm not used to that. I'm a producer and sometimes a mixer, and when working in the studio I normally deal with the artist and maybe an outside mixer, and that'south it. I'grand happy for managers and record label people to have their input, simply non in my workplace, considering it is kind of a fragile surround. But with a movie there are all these different generals and colonels and lieutenants and foot soldiers, and everybody is exerting their opinion.

"For example, we finished the album soundtrack at the finish of November, and information technology was on sale the kickoff of December, while the movie had non come out however. The soundtrack sounds exactly the style I want it to audio, after months of spending time on it in close collaboration with the director, the two songwriters, and executive producer Alex Lacamoire, who also had a huge hand in the mode the whole matter is shaped. We finally got information technology right, and I'm thinking that they will utilize the album mixes for the picture show. Merely they didn't. Three days earlier the film was to be shipped internationally, I got an email saying: 'This afternoon at three o'clock Zendaya will be arriving at your studio, from New York, because she wants to replace iii vocal lines.' And I'thousand thinking: 'What is happening?!'

"Similarly, correct at the end I got an email saying: 'Hugh Jackman is making another movie right now in Miami, but he went into a studio and he replaced one word that the executive producer wants replaced.' Crazy stuff similar that was happening all the time, and it was driving me a little bonkers, because I am a control freak. I was like: 'No, nosotros are washed, the vocal is for sale on iTunes correct now, please don't replace it!' Just in that location were so many cooks in the kitchen and I did non have full control. Plus it was already such a circuitous procedure for me to get annihilation I recorded here to 20th Century Fox, because after me, first a second sound editor had to procedure it, and then the master audio editor, and finally the flick mixer, Paul Massey, would exist able to actually incorporate something in the pic."

The way that the moving picture industry handles all these endless and ofttimes last-infinitesimal changes in the dialogue, sound effects and music departments is through using stems. Nothing, however, had prepared Wells for the often extreme manner these were handled. "Stems were function of the reason why this is so intense," he explains. "The movie animal needs stems and stems and stems and stems and stems and stems and it never fucking stops! Information technology'due south like an insatiable black pigsty, because the film studio starts previewing early edits of the film to exam audiences around the country. Even three weeks later nosotros had delivered everything to Trick and the motion-picture show was done, merely earlier Christmas, I got an email from Fox asking me for still more stems. My poor engineer, Ian MacGregor, almost lost his mind!

"They also want the stems in a very particular style. It'southward not like nosotros normally practise information technology in the music world. Instead they wanted me to break down the entire Pro Tools session into something akin to a multitrack session, only with all my mix settings on each stalk. And they wanted all the furnishings as separate stems, and so for case I could not send 2 unlike lead vocals to the aforementioned aux effect rail. Each lead vocal needed its own effect stem. The whole process was so exhaustive, and it took so long to exercise that I had to enquire them to buy me a second Pro Tools rig, with another set of plug-ins, another UAD box, and some other stuff, but so that my engineer could be in my front lounge, making stems. That freed me up to be able to continue working in the control room.

"Past the time I began piece of work on the second song I realised that it would simply be incommunicable to handle all these tracks and make all these stems unless I went fully in the box. It meant that I had to invent a completely new way of working and mixing for this projection, abandoning all my cute, analogue Holy Grail compressors and EQs and so on. Built-in of out necessity, I ended up mixing very happily in the box, which I had never washed before. It actually sounds ameliorate and this was sort of mind-bravado for an counterpart fan similar me. Information technology's how I mix almost everything now, even though I may sometimes send my Pro Tools busses through my Untertone Audio panel."

Level Heads

Greg Wells' mix of 'Rewrite The Stars' used almost all of the 333 tracks that were supplied, making one wonder almost gain staging. As many outset, at-dwelling mixers have institute out to their detriment, even though modern DAWs have internal headroom that is theoretically almost unlimited, too many tracks can nonetheless add up to digital overload, even if the levels of the individual tracks are not likewise hot. It turns out that proceeds staging can be a headache for seasoned professionals, likewise.

"I ever take a trouble with proceeds staging," says Wells. "Information technology's something that never goes abroad. In the case of this session, you lot take to realise that some of the stuff was recorded really quietly. If you looked at the waveforms of many of the tracks, it seemed similar there was zippo there, and I had to accident upwards the waveforms to encounter if they independent silence, or whether something was actually in that location. And so that helped, only gain staging is nonetheless something that's always important, and when working in the box you too have to keep an eye on it because digital distortion is then unforgiving.

"I don't call back in a subtractive mode, but in an additive way, and when I'yard mixing I am pushing and pushing and I can hear the moment it starts to overload. The low end starts to go away and information technology starts to feel compromised. At that moment I create a huge grouping with all the tracks I want to pull downwardly, and I take them downwards five or 8 dB or something, turn my monitors up, and go along working. That process may repeat itself as I continue to build a mix. I take $50,000 PCM MB2S-XBD monitors in front of me, which are like the Hubble Telescope of speakers, so there's no hiding identify. I can hear everything, and I love that. They are a vital part of my music-making procedure."

Vocal Recording

Derik Lee. Derik Lee made an advent in the September 2022 issue of Sound On Sound, describing how he recorded the soundtrack album for Hamilton: An American Musical. Lee also recorded the soundtrack for The Greatest Showman, including Zac Efron and Zendaya'southward vocals in 'Rewrite The Stars'.

Lee explains: "The song chain to tape Zac'due south vocals was a Neumann U47 mic going into an API 3124 mic pre and a Tube-Tech CL1B EQ, while Zendaya was recorded with the aforementioned chain, merely a Sony C800 mic. I had lavalier and shotgun mics gear up upwardly as well, as I had for the recordings of all songs. All the recordings we did for all tracks, whether it was the band, orchestra, or vocals, lived in dissimilar modes: 'album mode', which was for Greg, and ' moving picture mode', which was the cloth for the dub mixer. Each mode had different structures, times and even dissimilar vocals! For most of the on-set shooting they used pre-recorded vocals, but in that location nevertheless are spots in the movie where they used live vocals to get in and out of scenes. At that place likewise are some vocals in the picture show that were never pre-recorded. For example, the scene where Zac is in the hospital has Zendaya singing live on set."

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Source: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/inside-track-greatest-showman-rewrite-stars

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