Les Mis Filming Has Started — Page 18

Great insights on sound mixing details - posted on another board by Simon Hayes, Production Sound Mixer for Les Miserables:

http://jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/topic/13657-les-miserables-live-singing/

>>Hi Guys,

Thanks for the interest in this amazing project.I was very fortunate to be asked to record this movie as Tom Hoopers vision from the very beginning was a live musical,using the on set vocals as masters for the film and a very serious attempt not to replace any live vocals with ADR,as he feels the original
performances hold a truth and energy that can be lost during a re-record.

From the outset the whole movie was planned to avoid re-records and ADR,from set design to special FX. The Production Sound/Post Production Sound and Music depts were all one team who collaborated from the beginning to help Tom achieve his vision.

We had many tricks up our sleeve to achieve the highest quality singing possible on a movie set including 3 Boom Operators on main unit at all times who were part of a 7 man Production Sound Team.

What I can tell you is that there is zero ADR in the 'Extended Trailer' being spoken about on this thread and if we are to look at just one difficult sequence shown,which is Samantha Barks singing in the rain I can tell you how we achieved what you hear.

Every roof top and every piece of floor not in shot was covered with rubberised horse hair to deaden the rain hitting it.
Camera was covered with a 'horse hair roof' attached over the top of it to stop the noise of the droplets hitting the polythene bag keeping it dry. The camera dept were wearing ponchos made from black 'bolton' fabric over their wet weather gear to 'soak up' the sound of the water hitting them.Samantha Barks was wearing 2 radio mics,and they were changed on every take for fresh dry ones to eliminate possible moisture affecting the lavaliers.

The Special FX team made sure that the actual droplets falling around the camera were adjusted into a fine spray to reduce impact noise.

Every scene was approached with this level of attention to detail and when a Sound Dept has the director and the actors working with them and backing them up to try and achieve something extraordinary a lot can be achieved.

I really hope all the members here thoroughly enjoy the movie!

Regards to All

Simon Hayes
Production Sound Mixer
Les Miserables <<<

Such attention to details!

Since dialogue is frequently looped in any movie, it would be odd if the Les Mis team categorically refused to loop any singing.

The shots of Anne in that trailer are heartbreaking. I'm going to be a blubbering mess during her parts.

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I wouldn't read too much into predictions made by someone with a 1-year track record, but hey, here's hoping the movie really does follow through on its promise that way.

As much as I hope it wins a ton of awards, I just really want the movie to be good. Some recent stage to screen adaptions have just been such flops...

Hugh was interviewed re the new song SUDDENLY --

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/insider/les-mis-song-just-for-hugh-jackman/story-e6frewt9-1226495023480

>>Les Mis song just for Hugh Jackman

Angus Hohenboken
The Daily Telegraph
October 14, 201212:00AM

HUGH Jackman has received one of the greatest honours in musical theatre. Not another Tony, a Drama Desk or a Laurence Olivier but a song.

Not just any song, but his own song; written by the creators of the Les Miserables stage show, tailored specifically to his voice, for inclusion in a film that could change big screen musicals forever.

And he is finally ready to reveal its subject.

Jackman drops down into the interview chair at Pinewood Studios, straight from the gym and still in his tracksuit and trainers. Though he is looking better fed now, he had to shed 14kg to sculpt his character Jean Valjean's tortured convict physique in the initial scenes of the Les Miserables shoot.

He has since regained 11 of those kilos and aged considerably his hair is tinged with grey.

It is this incarnation of Valjean, by now a prosperous but charitable mayor, who sings the much-anticipated new solo created by Les Mis lyricist Alain Boublil and composer Claude-Michel Schonberg.

They watched Jackman's one-man show on Broadway before putting pen to paper.

"It's kind of an amazing honour they came to see the show and I was singing for 2 1/2 hours so they saw every possible colour of my voice and they said 'right, now we're going to write it for you'," Jackman, 44, says. "I'll do my best not to screw it up."

He leans forward and tells in excited tones how the song reveals the inner emotions of the kind-hearted Valjean when he first meets Cossette (played by Amanda Seyfried) the orphaned daughter of the prostitute Fantine (Anne Hathaway).

Valjean fulfils a promise to take her under his wing after rescuing her from an abusive foster family. The Victor Hugo novel on which the musical is based describes how he suddenly finds himself overcome with a new emotion.

"Meeting Cossette is the first time he's ever experienced love," Jackman explains. "It's the most beautiful passage, because he says he never knew the love of a mother, a father, of brothers or sisters and vice versa, never loved anyone. So he meets this little girl who's in his care, he experiences this flood of emotion that for a 50-year-old man has never occurred. It's a pretty amazing invention of Victor Hugo and it's never really been dealt with in the stage musical."

For Schonberg, the song's sentiment is best summed-up by the line from the original text that inspired it. "There is a wonderful line by Victor Hugo where he says that two unhappy persons together can create one happy person," he says.

Lyricist Boublil brought this feeling to life with the lyric, "two hearts can beat as one".

During a quiet moment on the set, a rain-soaked 19th century Parisian street producer Debra Heyward describes Jackman's delivery of the heart-wrenching words as "absolutely amazing".

"He deserves 50 Oscars for what he's done already," she says, only half joking...<<<


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*The article mistakenly identifies Amanda as the Cosette to whom the song is meant for -- Valjean must have been thinking of young Cosette ( Isabelle Allen) when he was inspired to sing the song.

*Oscar hopes for this song -- and hope Hugh sings it at the Oscars!

Updated On: 10/14/12 at 01:48 AM

Sorry to go slightly off topic but did anyone go to the Russell Crowe/Samantha Barks et al gig last night at the Gramercy Theatre?

Photos/video previews/singing snippets on the Facebook page of the band.
Russell Crowe and the Ordinary Fear of God

Anne will not have her role of Fantine be submitted as Best Actress. Warner Bros. will have her role as Catwoamn/Selina Kyle in 'The Dark Knight Rises' submitted in the Best Actress category. Apparently, she is the only actor in that film, who has a chance of getting an acting nomination.

Hugh Jackman will be the only actor submitted into the leading categories. Everyone else will be submitted as either Supporting Actor or Supporting Actress.

http://www.goldderby.com/films/news/3465/les-miserables-oscars-academy-awards-entertainment-news.html

http://www.hitfix.com/in-contention/anne-hathaway-tom-hanks-and-halle-berry-get-lead-oscar-pushes-for-dark-knight-rises-and-cloud-atlas

It looks like the movie was already previewed presumably with a test audience --

http://www.awardsdaily.com/blog/2012/10/15/les-miz-takes-imaginary-lead-at-gold-derby/

>>UPDATE: The tally shifted a bit this morning. SLP lost a supporter who defected to Les Miz. Tom O'Neill says there was a test screening of Lez Miz at the Arclight Hollywood last Saturday, Oct 6, that went extremely well. It's possible his poster "Snuggle4" may have attended that event. It doesn't appear any journos have seen the film, but persistent buzz from the Arclight screening could be triggering this new stampede.<<<


I wonder if this is a rough cut...and have they added the orchestrations earlier than scheduled?

Nice. From where?

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Here is the poster with the Thenardiers:
and a clear version of the Marius/Cosette poster

I hope they will release a Enjolras and Eponine poster..