Working on the sountrack to the feature film Into the Storm and the forthcoming The Equalizer. Academy Award-winning re-recording mixer Steve Pederson used Penteo 4 Pro stereo-to-5.1 plug-in to create multichannel surround mixes from stereo recordings by Moby and Eminem.
‘I upmixed both films [Into the Storm (5.1), The Equalizer (7.1)] to surround formats and was very pleased with the results,’ he reports. ‘Penteo is the most clever upmixing tool I’ve encountered to create interesting surrounds and musical bass – it opens up the theatre sound richly and with great detail. It’s the perfect tool to unlock a stereo file and fill the theatre with surround in a very interesting way. I’m impressed how it can isolate channels so cleanly, so discreetly and then spread them through the surrounds.’
‘What I like about Penteo’s subwoofer is the definition,’ he explains. ‘If you mute all the full range speakers in the theater and just listen to the sub you’ll hear a nice, tight, punchy bass. Penteo is more musical, it defines the beat of the music better. It doesn’t rumble and roll, it rocks and rolls.’
In the creation of a soundtrack, ‘temp’ mixers are often used before the final music is composed and produced. ‘Another area where Penteo can really help is during the early stages of postproduction,’ he says. ‘I take stereo tracks and run them through the Penteo plug-in to immediately give the temp score a full and rich 5.1 feel that emulates a proper mixed final score and really elevates the quality of the temp mix.’
Pederson has been nominated for numerous awards including three BAFTAs, and twice for an Academy Award. He won an Oscar for Apollo 13 for Best Sound. He has worked mostly at Warner Bros Studios for more than 15 years, where he enjoys the community, the historic setting and the facilities. Throughout his career, he has seen the contribution of film sound evolve with more and more channels, greater dynamic range, and higher fidelity to give the audience a more powerful experience to express the story.
‘I love this work and I’m a fan of this plug,’ he concludes. ‘I won’t go into a mix without it being part of my toolkit.’
More: www.perfectsurround.com
