13. The Mix

Finally, after many weeks of sound and music editing—and way too many months of picture editing—Silent Night, Silent Cowboy is ready to mix. Everybody shows up at the dubbing stage (or mixing stage, as it is called in New York). The picture, sound, and music editors as well as you and some of the other assistants are all there with the mixers—everyone except Adam, who will show up later.

The mix involves taking the hundreds of tracks of all kinds—the dialogue and ADR, the sound effects, the score, and the source music—and combining it into one seamless sound track. This involves adjusting the levels and the quality of every sound, every line of dialogue, and every note of music. It is an immensely complex task, often taking weeks ...

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