When Sound Mixer Ray Beckett, an Academy Award winner for The Hurt Locker, came to VFS last week, Sound Design for Visual Media students got to spend a considerable amount of time with him. John Born was among them, learning from Ray throughout the week and even joining him for lunch. In this guest post, John shares his experiences with one of the masters of production sound.

Sound Design student John Born (left) with The Hurt Locker Sound Mixer Ray Beckett

By John Born

Hot off his Oscar win for Best Sound Mixer on The Hurt Locker, Ray Beckett visited the VFS Sound Design campus for a week of hands-on instruction. It was a great opportunity to learn firsthand about his career working as a Sound Mixer and about his recording techniques used to capture the highest quality on-set dialogue.  Even more exciting, I attended a lunch for Ray hosted by the Sound Design department, which gave me a chance to learn one-on-one with Ray about his extensive experience in sound that spans over 30 years of filmmaking.

In the classroom, Ray took us through his sound pre-production, production and post-production checklist for sound mixing. It was a master class in preparing for every aspect of the mental and technical aspects of running quality recording and mixing live. Ray talked about the importance of meeting with the Director, taking part in location scanning, on-set working relationships, recorders, microphones and microphone techniques, and the importance of the meticulous organization needed for an on-set mixer. Before the day was finished, we had an opportunity to go out into the field with Ray and test out his personal recording system that included a 5.1 surround sound microphone.

Ray talked about his background in documentary filmmaking, and specifically about working with director Ken Loach, who goes by the “no ADR” (Automatic Dialogue Replacement) philosophy. Loach’s approach taught Ray to realize the importance of capturing live dialogue on location; this documentary-style on-location dialogue recording method became the base for the very real and intense dialogue used in The Hurt Locker. It was fascinating to find out that nearly all the dialogue used in The Hurt Locker were the actual recordings captured by Ray and his sound team live on set.

During lunch, Ray stressed the importance of collaboration to the film process, where the best experiences result from all departments sharing a unified vision of what it will take to create a great film. For example, Ray described how the sound team and the costume department must work together to place lavalier microphones on, or inside, the actor’s wardrobe, which would make proper recording much easier and cleaner.

In another example he also discussed the important collaboration needed with the boom operator and mixer to capture the cleanest sound with a strong focus on capturing the right sound “perspective”. His examples from The Hurt Locker were fascinating and changed the way I think about how recording live sound can enhance the film narrative.

A big thanks to Ray and VFS for hosting such an incredible week. It was a great opportunity to learn the art of sound mixing from one of the best in the business!

Ray Beckett (middle) on a field excursion with VFS Sound Design students and Instructor Curtis Wright (left) – Photo by Leonardo Barragan