Portuguese among the distinguished members of the Cinema Audio Society
Joana Niza Braga is among the distinguished members of the North American Cinema Audio Society (CAS) Awards, which awards films based on sound only, with work as a ‘foley mixer’ in the documentary ‘Free Solo’, was announced today.
‘Free Solo’ won the award in the category of documentary, distinguishing, in addition to Joana Niza Braga, Jim Hurst (‘production mixer’), Tom Fleischman (‘re-recording mixer’), Ric Schnupp, Tyson Lozensky (scoring mixer) and David Boulton (‘ADR mixer’), was announced at the 55th CAS Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, United States.
The National Geographic documentary, in which filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi accompany American climber Alex Honnold on the rope-free or protective climb of the 900-meter El Capitan granite wall in Yosemite Park, in the United States, also has in the technical file with another Portuguese: Nuno Bento.
Joana Niza Braga and Nuno Bento, both 27, are, respectively, ‘foley mixer’ and ‘foley artist’ for the documentary.
The work of the two Portuguese was “all done remotely“, starting in Lisbon, in the post-production company Loudness Films, where there is “a quite big foley studio,” she told.
Foley allows you to create sounds that are sometimes not picked up at the shoot. With foley, you can “create the illusion that there is such a closeness to the characters on the screen.”
“For example, we have Alex climbing and we can hear the wall and all his stuff, when in fact it’s all false. It’s all created by us: the foley artist and the foley mixer. to be able to make that sound true to what we are seeing, ” he said.
The process is done with the ‘foley mixer’ in the régie and the ‘foley artist’ in a studio next door, with the two separated by glass.
“Foley artists, who are playing the noise, often say, according to Joana, that ‘foley mixers’ are the ears, because the sound picked up by the microphone is different, a bit, from normal auditory perception. ”
‘Free Solo’ is also nominated for the Oscars in the category of Best Documentary, and for the Golden Real, the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) awards.
