Directed by Academy Award-winner Anthony Minghella and starring a cast headed by Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger, Cold Mountain is both a love story and an epic. But it would be wrong to think that the array of talent with impressive credits to their names was confined to the screen.

Behind the scenes, long-serving supervising sound editor Eddy Joseph headed up a team that included Martin Cantwell, Colin Ritchie, Simon Chase, Richard Fordham, Alex Joseph (Eddy's son), and Mark Levinson.

Cold Mountain was Eddy Joseph's first movie using Pro Tools - he previously used a DAR Storm system. He bought a Pro Tools|HD early in 2003, whereas Colin Ritchie and Martin Cantwell acquired their HD systems in 2002. All however, chose GearBox as their supplier.

It is indicative of the scale of Cold Mountain that GearBox was asked to hire out a further five Pro Tools|HD3 systems, each with 64 outputs during post production. By the time the systems were assembled for dubbing, the effect was like a cross between NASA and a commercial for Digidesign.

Eddy Joseph explains how the massive set-up worked. "There were two music editors. We had one music editor who looked after the score for the film and another, who was brought in by the executive music man to look after all the songs and hymns – the onscreen instrumentation. So we had a couple of Pro Tools that were specifically for them.

"We had one for the dialogue and ADR, on the left of the desk and one for the effects and Foley on the right of the desk," Joseph continues. "The benefits were that, when we predubbed the dialogue, ADR and crowd or whatever, we could directly rerecord that back onto the relevant Pro Tools system, so we would then have all the original tracks there, plus all the predubs.

"Similarly the effects and the Foley predub would go directly onto the Pro Tools that contained the original tracks of the effects and Foley," explains Joseph. "This could then mean that, if you needed to access your tracks to do an update on a predub, or if you needed to do any alterations – and there were alterations after previews – it meant that you could recut the predubs and all the tracks at the same time. One person on each machine could deal with that – and you could do it instantly. Well, relatively instantly!

"That really worked well and I think that this is the way that it will go," Joseph considers. "I won't say that you will always have two set-ups for music but you will certainly have one for music and one for dialogue and one for effects. That makes it more efficient, certainly to be able to do updates. Also, if you were to go back to the cutting rooms afterwards, you'd have a total record of everything that had been done. Rather than having to remember what you had to update, you were permanently updating as you went along."

Despite the leading edge technology, the process is conceptually similar to predubbing with 35mm mag. "Absolutely, because we're keeping everything as clean as we can," Joseph agrees. "I have to say, I think this is a transparent mix. In places it's quite beautiful. What you can achieve with almost minimalism is that – if you are on top of a mountain – you can keep the air as thin as you want. So when you put a little bird in the distance, you can hear it. It's the kind of thing that would have been much harder to do on 35mm. It's different now, because we can utilise these huge leaps and bounds that we have made in audio."

After 35 years as a freelance, Joseph recently made a leap of his own. He is now running Soundelux London, based in Wardour Street and part of the renowned operation founded in Hollywood by Lon Bender and Wylie Stateman in 1982.

"It was thought that it would be a perfect time to come over to England and – if I may say – improve the audio post production in Britain," Joseph explains. "Over the years, I don't know if we've been getting a bit complacent but I don't think that the quality is as good as it has been. The industry is also embracing new technology and therefore bringing in people who have not 20 years experience as sound editors but are computer operators.

"We are losing a sensibility that we have to get back. When I started there were a few great sound editors, legendary people who could look at a film and think "I know what that should sound like."

Joseph is already involved with two films at Soundelux: Two Brothers (directed by Jean Jacques-Annaud) and Troy (directed by Wolfgang Petersen).

One thing Joseph hopefully won't change is his relationship with GearBox. "I've been working with Richard and Andy for a few years now. I bought my Pro Tools from them. We rent all our equipment from them. GearBox are, I would guess, the principal suppliers of equipment to the movie business in the UK. Richard and the gang are great."

For further information please visit:
Cold Mountain
Soundelux