98 degree discography

Byline: MAUREEN DRONEY

Dennis Sands loves his work, and it shows. A three-time Oscar nominee for Best Sound (Cast Away, Contact and Forrest Gump), a TEC Award nominee and a winner of two Golden Reel Awards for Best Sound Editing-Music, he's reached an enviable place in his career: working daily with the best composers and the best musicians on the best stages. Sands has more than 100 feature film scores to his credit, and he's adding more all of the time. As either music, scoring and/or re-recording mixer, he's worked on such high-profile films as Erin Brockovich, American Beauty, Pleasantville and Good Will Hunting. He's also accumulated an impressive album discography with projects for luminaries such as Joe Pass, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and the Count Basie Orchestra, along with numerous soundtrack albums.

Yes, life is good for Mr. Sands. It's also good for the people who get to work with him. His years of experience and relaxed style make for smooth and even - dare we say? - fun sessions, a talent that's prized in the high-pressure world of feature films.

I first sat down with Sands on the Warner Bros. scoring stage after he'd spent a day mixing music with composer Alan Silvestri for Showtime, the Tom Dey-directed buddy cop spoof starring Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy. The huge control room was filled: a big synth setup in one corner, a wall of converters, signal processing and computers in another, and behind that, a jam-packed machine room. Every fader of the 96-input SSL 9000 J was in use. Outside the control room, the stage was set for the next day's session with a 98-piece orchestra. As we wandered among the maze of microphone booms, baffles, music stands and chairs, Sands clued me in on his philosophy and techniques.

It looks like you're doing pretty much back-to-back sessions.

We finish here Saturday night, then I start SpiderMan with Danny Elfman on Sunday at Sony - two quite massive projects, but it seems like most projects are massive now. Even this [100-input] board is sometimes too small.

There do seem to be a lot of machines in here...

We're recording to a 48-track digital - a Sony HR machine. There's usually an additional analog machine for synthesizers, and I also record orchestra to analog. Then we'll probably have another machine for choir. So, we're using at least three analog 24s and a digital 48, and even that...

...isn't enough?

There's a lot going on - a hundred and some odd tracks, and it can be more. When we did Planet of the Apes, I had to have three additional DA-88s running. We did that at Fox, which has the same board as here, and they had every single fader filled, plus I had to bring in sidecars. Projects are just expanding.

Why is that?

Some of it's my choice because I like to have flexibility and control; not so much with the orchestra, but certainly with synths. And if I'm working with Danny, he uses a lot of stereo samples, so every sound requires two channels.

Also, mixes are expanding, and I like to have the ability to create surrounds. Then, of course, they'll want elements separate for the dub: percussive elements separate from pads, which are separate from orchestra. And if you have choir, that's separate. It's more and more complex. Here's a board that's relatively new in design, and it's right on the edge of being obsolete. It's not the manufacturer's fault. It's just so hard to keep up with the demands. Then you add in the fact that the typical post-production schedule has shrunk down a lot. Directors are continually editing and changing. That affects us, and we have to allow for it.

It's just part of the job these days.

It's the way the business is now. There's so much money involved, and there can be so much tension. But when you understand everybody's issues and problems, you can't really get angry with anyone. Everybody's under the same time pressure and everybody's trying to do the right thing. You have creative people who want to maximize what they do, and there are time constraints. It's a frustration that everybody has to deal with.

I've heard it suggested that things will improve when everybody is on the same computer system, getting the changes at the same time.

[Laughs] Actually, I have this great fear. I was thinking about digital distribution of movies, whether over the Internet or whatever, when it dawned on me what could happen: A movie would not necessarily have to be completed by the release date! The director will be able to say, "Okay, the movie's done, but there's a cue in reel two that really bothers me and I want to replace it." The release print was always the cutoff, but that doesn't mean anything if you're downloading digitally. You can have endless new versions.

You could spend your whole life on just one movie.

[Laughs] Actually, sometimes it seems like I've done that already.

You're all set up for tomorrow, except for the mics. I guess you take them down every night.

If mics are left up, there literally has to be a guard in the room with them all night. A lot of the mics are irreplaceable; you can't even put a dollar amount on them. Like my four M50s. I use them on every orchestral project. If anything happened to them, I would be heartbroken.

The M50s are your main overhead mics?

Yes, for the orchestra. They're wonderful microphones, and they only made 600, of which there are probably 400 left in the world. They were the first purchase I made as a mixer, and I treat them better than I do my children.

Can you describe your setup of the musicians?

There are two basic setups I use. This is a traditional one: [audience left to right] first violins, second violins, violas toward the center, cellos with bass behind them, piano to the right, or sometimes I'll pull a piano out of the orchestra so it's right in front. Harp is in front, also. French horns in back, woodwinds in the middle, brass and trombones over to the right, percussion in the back.

You have the percussion more baffled.

There are two Latin percussionists, and I kind of isolate them. If percussion is too much out in the room, it gets washed out and you hear a bit of delay. It just doesn't sound good, so I try to contain it as much as possible.

The rest of the setup is very open.

I don't use many baffles for orchestra. I prefer to control the dynamics out in the room. And I don't use a lot of microphones. I have a fair amount set up, but most of them I use just for spot if I want to reach for something here or there. Mostly for orchestra, I use about a dozen. Usually five room mics: the three M50s and two Klaus Heyne-modified Brauner VM1s. Dirk Brauner, who's German, makes a contemporary tube mic that Klaus modifies fairly extensively. I've had them less than a year and I think it's the best-sounding contemporary tube microphone. It's also very expensive.

You can buy it stock, but modified is much richer-sounding. Klaus handpicks them. Dirk sends him 20 or 30 mics, and, for example, if he has a client who wants a great vocal mic, he'll go through them and find the one that's best for that. In my case, he found two mics that matched as closely as possible and, in his opinion, were best suited for scoring, left and right wide.

Where else do you put overheads?

I like percussion overheads. I'm not big on percussion in your face, and if it was a classical recording, I probably wouldn't use the overheads. But for film, where you're dealing with sound effects and dialog, you want a little more presence to help it cut through. You still want to keep it in the room, in the same perspective with some nice depth to it, but a little more presence and texture helps. It's subtle, but it makes a difference. So I'll use B&K 4006s on left and right; in the center, I have a U47 over the timpani.

I like to put the timpani in the middle, particularly with Alan Silvestri. He often writes a lot of it, like in last year's The Mummy Returns. It was in everything, very rhythmic, almost like a drum kit, and I love the sound of it in the middle. Some classical composers have it set off to the side; it's a personal taste. To me, in the center, it gives a nice power - both in the room and coming off of the screen.

So your setups change, depending on the style of the composer.

To a degree. The other setup, which Danny Elfman likes, is, we'll split the violins: firsts on the left, seconds on the right. Violas go mid-left, cellos mid-right and basses in the middle. Danny's orchestrator Steve Bartek orchestrates for this setup, giving it a beautiful quality where the violins answer one another. Sometimes it's harder on the musicians because, typically, violin players want to sit next to one another. It helps their intonation. But they've been great, and it has really worked on the last few movies. Also, having the basses in the middle, there's something nice about having that low stuff right in the center.

What are your other mic preferences?