'Twisters' Sound Mixer Devendra Cleary On Braving the Oklahoma Elements For Sonic Authenticity [PODCAST]

‘Twisters’ Sound Mixer Devendra Cleary On Braving the Oklahoma Elements For Sonic Authenticity [PODCAST]

Twisters sound mixer Devendra Cleary spent many hot, humid days on location in Oklahoma capturing all aspects of sound for Lee Isaac Chung’s summer blockbuster. The shoot was a fast-paced one, particularly so for a large film. Daily safety briefs came first, but the shoot required extensive planning on how to capture live sounds as efficiently and effectively as possible.

With an extensive network of wireless mics attached to each actor, Cleary and team almost needed to be in multiple places at once to ensure they were capturing performed moments as authentically as possible.

“I would set up an entirely different sound system inside the picture car in order to record all the wireless signals from our microphones to that in case I ever had any dropout issues, because sometimes the follow van or lead van would be sometimes over a football field away from the picture car,” Cleary explained. “The typical day was that it was very fast paced and kind of like ‘Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Always on, always grabbing my bag drop, as I would call it, which was the picture car recorder system, and setting it up for the next scene.”

That dedication in capturing the actors’ original heightened emotion and frenzy from the on-location performance meant that the finished product felt as authentic as possible. Even though all aspects of sound went through final tweaking at Skywalker Sound under supervising sound editors Bjorn Schroeder and Al Nelson, Cleary and team wanted to get the highest quality original track as possible.

That would reduce the project’s reliance on post-filming ADR.

“Instead of it making me feel like lazier as if they can just fix anything, it made me really want to always every day get the dialogue as best we can, regardless of if you think you’re going to ADR because there’s so much fan noise,” Cleary recalled. “There are pieces of ADR. I’m told that there’s not a lot of ADR in the film overall, especially for how effects heavy it is. But it’s thanks to tools like that, it’s thanks to our cooperation. Me and my team get it as best we can on the day, like never give up kind of kind of vibe, but then at the same time knowing, OK, they are going to be able to fix that, so it’s still worth us pushing for it.”

Here, in a podcast interview with The Contending, Twisters sound mixer Devendra Cleary gives a master class on how he and his team achieved the incredible sound design that leads to such an awe-inspiring level of authenticity. He reveals the details and lengths to which he and his team went to ensure their body mics would properly capture as much of the on-location dialogue as possible. He also talks about blending dialogue-heavy moments with the large number of country songs that populate the soundtrack.

Cleary also talks about one of the most challenging moments to capture — the intense opening scene where Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones) hides under an overpass from a Category 5 tornado. Finally, he revels in some of the most open and honest feedback he received about the film, feedback that came from his 18-year-old nephew.

Click below for my full conversation with Twisters sound mixer Devendra Cleary. Twisters streams exclusively on MAX.