Telling ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ Through Sound – with Renee Tondelli and Julian Slater:

At first glance, Netflix’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, directed by Aaron Sorkin, is a historical courtroom drama that retells the events surrounding the trial of several anti-Vietnam war protesters charged with inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. But it’s not your typical “trial” film. Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay as well, deftly weaves the accounts of those on trial with scenes of their courtroom hearing, creating an exciting, emotional, and powerful film that is relevant in today’s political and cultural climate of the US. The film is not just about these riots that happened in the ’60s; it’s about injustices that still persist in present-day society.

WB Sound‘s supervising sound editor Renee Tondelli (who earned a 2017 Oscar nom for her work on Deepwater Horizon) and two-time Oscar nom’d re-recording mixer Julian Slater (who earned both in 2018 for sound editing and mixing on Baby Driver) discuss Sorkin’s direction for sound, how he didn’t want to rely on the sound of the sixties to characterize the film so that The Trial of the Chicago 7 would have a timeless feel. They talk about the challenges of COVID-imposed remote ADR recording, creating riot scene sounds that felt brutal but not “Hollywood,” using sound to enhance the emotion and power of scenes, and much more!

The Trial of the Chicago 7 | Official Trailer | Netflix Film

It’s not easy to do an exciting courtroom drama, but director Aaron Sorkin pulled that off with The Trial of the Chicago 7. It was exciting.

The courtroom scenes are intercut with this protest and riot, and also the retelling of the event from different characters’ POVs. What were some of your challenges in cutting these sequences together?

Renee Tondelli (RT): In terms of sound, the courtroom represents the controlling, authoritarian hand of the Federal government. Through reverbs, EQs, and sound effects, we worked on creating the feeling of an environment in which individual voices seem small in a cavernous space, except for Judge Julius Hoffman’s voice and his gavel, which are magnified and enhanced. We used both Judge Hoffman’s plant mic and boom to give his voice a resonance that is different from everyone else. We used his gavel like a shotgun.

For every shot and scene, we needed to establish the presence of the crowd and jury and follow the emotional twists and turns of the trial. We needed to create the sensation of sitting in the courtroom as these historical events unfolded. Every shift, creak, offscreen page turn, and offscreen vocal was meticulously placed.

By contrast, everything outside of the courtroom – especially the riot scenes — reflects the point of view of “the people.” We developed the sound design as increasingly unstable chaos, with multiple points of view told with layered aural elements.

Aaron, as a director, likes to hear the music, the dialogue, a person in the background, helicopters, tear gas, foley — it all has to play. It creates a very dynamic mix. Julian and Michael Babcock (our SFX re-recording mixer) had to really keep the balance of articulation going with the dynamics and the power and the emotion.

Julian Slater (JS): When you say “emotion” there, Renee, that’s the thing that tugs at me because I didn’t know the story. Being a Brit, I didn’t really know that this had happened.

Aaron was very particular about wanting to get this film out to as many people as possible, before the election, because it was partly a reflection of what is happening in the States today. I feel there’s probably a lot of younger Americans who don’t necessarily know about this and what happened. And so, I was very much led by Renee in wanting to get the emotion and the power of what was happening, because it was a big thing. And it’s a big thing that’s obviously reoccurring today. It’s all about getting that emotion across.

The music track is going at a pretty slow pace, but builds into a crescendo. You’ve got dialogue that’s written by the grandmaster himself: Aaron Sorkin. And he wants to hear everything — every nuance, every detail — come through, but you also want to play on the emotion so that the audience (who doesn’t necessarily know what actually happened), can get a sense of it. They don’t just hear what’s going on; they feel what’s going on. We worked hard to get that raw emotion of what was happening across to the audience.

RT: Because of COVID, Aaron and I emailed and talked on the phone and occasionally Zoomed, but we never met in person until the final playback, at which he said something I had never heard from a director before. He said, “I have no notes.”

Julian, has that ever happened to you?

JS: I’d like to say yes, but…

RT: What made it so wonderful to work on this film was that you really connected to each person on that screen.

JS: The devil’s in the detail, right Renee? That’s what we always felt. The story was almost macro in places, and the way that Alan Baumgarten (picture editor) works is extremely micro.

RT: He’s wonderful. It’s just wonderful to cut sound with Alan as an editor because he really gives us the pace to go with.

And a lot of this movie is about pace. There are lengthy courtroom scenes, but they are very exciting.

The production mixer, Thomas Varga, recorded with 15 mics placed throughout the courtroom, and there can be a degree of difficulty matching these reverbs because of the natural reverb of the room.

That courtroom was the first note I got from Aaron. He wanted it to be very alive so when people stand up, it’s hundreds of people standing up and sitting down. It was a very complicated background scene, even though it doesn’t seem like it. The reactions were very specific and very isolated. You got to feel the drama of what’s going on by the people’s reactions.

 

Julian, as far as reverbs for that courtroom, how did you handle that?

JS: We were very deliberate and different people perhaps had different sounds to them. For example, Judge Hoffman — who was a tyrant — we wanted him to be slightly boomier whenever he shouted. Boomier as in more reverby, but also had more weight to it. We EQ’d his voice so that anything he said had much more gravitas to it. It did anyway because of the performance and because of the words, but to reinforce that we always made sure that Julius had a very heavy presence in his voice.

I think we did that with Ramsey Clark as well.

We EQ’d his voice so that anything he said had much more gravitas to it.

And you want it to flow. It’s an interesting film, this one. Renee and I, we work on different kinds of movies. We work on loud movies and frantic movies and we work on movies that are fast-paced and movies that are slow-paced and the craft is kind of the same. The challenge is how you crack the puzzle; it’s different depending on each movie.

You’d think that because it’s a courtroom drama it’s less work but that’s not the case at all. It’s just that your efforts are concentrated in a different area or different areas.

So a lot of time was spent on matching. There was a fair amount of ADR and, of course, you want it all to work. When it’s just someone talking and they don’t have a thunderstorm behind them, or it’s not a car chase sequence, you have to make that dialogue work perfectly. You’ve got nothing to hide behind.

You’d think that because it’s a courtroom drama it’s less work but that’s not the case at all.

That was half the fun, making sure that not only is there clarity in the performances and gravitas where needed, but matching all the mic angles and making it sound like a whole organic thing.

Then, of course, there’s the “fun” of working in COVID times. I got to deal with the results of it, but thankfully Renee was very proactive in regards to recording everyone at their homes. It was definitely an interesting project from that regard, that it was ADR shot in various people’s bedrooms. And, like I said, we had nothing to hide behind. It was just the raw dialogue that was coming through so everything had to be millimeter perfect.

 

In addition to the single ADR lines, were you shooting group at home too?

RT: I was really concerned about the riot scenes. There were thousands of people on screen that we had to voice.

I started editing in March, which was a week after the first COVID lock down. The stages were all shut down and there was no plan in place yet. I had to quickly figure out how to record all these actors. I figured everyone has an iPhone or a smartphone, so we sent all the actors a microphone — the Shure MV88 — that plugs right into their phones.

There were thousands of people on screen that we had to voice.

The loop group coordinator, Ashley Lambert, was just amazing. After all the voice actors were cast, I FaceTimed with each one and had them take me through their house to find the most suitable places to record. They would send me test recordings until we got it right.

We had to reinvent the way we did everything during COVID. Everyone had to learn how to be their own recordist; that took about two weeks to develop and refine.

It was a reinvention of all of our procedures. And fortunately, it worked out, but it took a lot to make it happen. The actors really stretched during this as they had to become technicians and recordists in addition to being performers.

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The Sound of The Trial of the Chicago 7 – interview by the Soundworks Collection
Before I started the film, I watched Haskell Wexler’s movie Medium Cool which included documentary footage of the riots. We heard the sound of the chants, the people screaming, of what police batons really sounded like.

It was really important to Aaron and me to make the batons sound real. We wanted them to be identifiable and painful.

In Wexler’s film, in the documentary, the screams that I heard from a woman getting beaten were so visceral; it was so important for me to recreate exactly what was happening at that moment.

JS: You sent me that documentary before we did the mix.

RT: I sent this documentary to our entire crew.

It was remarkable that this small crew (during COVID) was able to complete this film in a fairly short time span and to do it so well. I was very lucky to have this team.

It was one of my favorite crews to work with because we all worked so closely and so perfectly with each other — especially Julian and me. I would be about to say something and he would say, “I know.” We had a great shorthand.

And Mike (Babcock) is very talented. He was really involved in implementing the design. He was fantastic.

 

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Did you experience the same kind of issues with foley as you did with ADR? Or was the foley team able to do their thing as normal?

RT: The foley, thank God, was done in Canada. I always work with Footsteps in Canada when I can.

And fortunately, they had a different lockdown date than we did. Andy Malcolm and his crew worked within those two weeks before they locked down. So it was kind of a perfect storm.

JS: It was very strange. I’m lucky I don’t live too far from Warner Bros. Every day in my car I’d drive down Barham and I’d be the only car driving along this normally insanely busy road. There’d be times we’d have our lunch on the Warner Bros. lot outside and we were the only people there. It was the weirdest feeling.

We didn’t have the normal infrastructure around us to implement what we normally do.

It’s almost like making it guerrilla-style in some of the ways that we had to do stuff. We didn’t have the normal infrastructure around us to implement what we normally do.

RT: We’d ask people, “How do we do this?” And they’d say, “I don’t know.”

I created these elaborate recording instructions. I remember at one point, Eddie Redmayne said, “You’re doing the job of five people.” And I thought, “We are!”

The funny thing is this came full circle when in September, I was doing a film and the post-production supervisor handed me my instructions and said, “Here’s a good way to record remotely.”

 

That is so funny, that you were handed the instructions you created! And so you found some success with using the Shure MV88 mics? That got you the sound you were looking for?

RT: It’s a sophisticated little mic. You can record in stereo, mono, boom or cardioid. It plugs right into your phone. And that’s it. One actor had trouble but, thank God, he had a teenager around to help him out.

We were all trying different approaches. ADR stages were doing remote setups. This just seemed to be the easiest.

JS: Most of the ADR stages were closed. I didn’t realize this at the time, but it was all to do with SAG. SAG wouldn’t allow anyone to go onto the stage. Now there are stages that have got the green light to record.

…it was literally the only way to get the ADR done, to get the show done in a timeframe that fit Aaron’s wishes.

So I don’t think this is going to happen again but it was literally the only way to get the ADR done, to get the show done in a timeframe that fit Aaron’s wishes.

That’s just not going to happen again in that way because now we, as a world, have developed the protocols and the infrastructure to do this.

RT: Thank God! And I want to make this very clear, I’m really happy to go back to a stage. I would ask each actor — just a quick little private survey — “If you had to do this again, would you choose to do this at home?”

Because some don’t like to leave their home. But pretty much most of them said, “No, I like to go on a stage.”

Working with the principal actors one-on-one allowed a connection that was different than it would be on a stage.

 
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Let’s look at the mixing side of things. Because you had all of these challenges in editorial — like building loop group one person at a time — what challenges did that pose during the mix?

JS: Well, it took a little bit more time and effort but under the circumstances, there’s no one I would rather have corralling everything than Renee because she did an amazing job.

But normally when you have ADR from various places around the world, there’s a direct line that runs through them of quality or a specific sound — a very plain-vanilla sound.

That’s not necessarily the case all the time so it’s really just a question of taking each thing on its own merits and working on them and bringing out the best of each recording. It takes a little bit more time, for sure — time that we didn’t necessarily have.

We kept recording because we wouldn’t get someone in time.

RT: And the lines kept coming too! We kept recording because we wouldn’t get someone in time. I was always throwing stuff at Julian at the very end, “Julian, I’m sorry. Here’s some more.” He’s like, “Oh God.”

JS: Renee would preface a piece of ADR with “I’m sorry about this…” before I mixed it, which always piqued my interest.

But you want to do the best that you do, anyway, on any production. But of course, when it’s words that have been written by Aaron Sorkin, there’s a gravitas of working with the dialogue. I was certainly aware of that before I even started the job because this was my first time working with Aaron. This dialogue has been written by Aaron on a show that was, to me, an important show. It was an important show to do.

I said quite frequently to various people, “It’s good for the soul to do a movie like this.”

…when you’re taking these ADR elements from various peoples’ homes from around the world, it should not make any difference to the end product.

Both me and Renee have been lucky to work on a whole variety of different movies. Some of them popcorn movies — which are great and I love taking my boys to see them — some of them that are dark and a bit sinister. This was important because there was a reason why we were working in a crazy situation under a certain time constraint because Aaron wanted to get it out before the election. And we felt that it was an important piece of cinema for that reason.

You want to make sure everything is as good as it can be. So when you’re taking these ADR elements from various peoples’ homes from around the world, it should not make any difference to the end product. And hopefully, that’s the case.

For the viewer when they’re watching this, there’s no indication that there’s anything less than standard. Renee has been very lucky to have emails from fellow sound people saying how great this sounded, which is great anyway, but certainly, under the circumstances that we worked on this it’s even more rewarding.

 

Was there a particular scene that was the most challenging to mix?

RT: What about the interrogation with Kunstler and Tom Hayden?

JS: With the cutting back and forth between the riot? Absolutely. You have that raw energy of what was happening on those streets back in the ’60s yet you want to preserve the delicate subtleties of what the performances are. And you’ve got a very energetic soundtrack from the composer, Daniel Pemberton, who did an amazing job.

It’s a tough thing, mix-wise, to thread those three things together and keep clarity and keep energy going the whole time.

It’s a tough thing, mix-wise, to thread those three things together and keep clarity and keep energy going the whole time. That and the first riot sequence were tricky and dicey to do and to get the balance right so that it’s not fatiguing for the audience yet it has that energy of what a riot and/or demonstration is.

RT: Plus, I think there was an element in the climax of the mock trial between Kunstler and Tom Hayden, where they were both overlapping and talking at the same time, and cutting back and forth, and Julian had to weave in words so that when we were on the defense attorney William Kunstler, you would still hear Tom.

I watched Julian and Mike weave this beautiful tapestry between the mock trial, the riot, and the bar scene where there was a TV with the convention going on.

I watched Julian and Mike weave this beautiful tapestry between the mock trial, the riot, and the bar scene…

In the bar, there were specific people talking; Aaron gives dialogue to the extras in front and it’s recorded and it’s specific so he wants to hear them too. It was a very quick, complicated scene. It took many scenes to make that half of a reel.

JS: It’s probably worth noting that our picture editor Alan (Baumgarten) — who is quite rightly getting a lot of attention for his editing on the show — has an attention to detail that was extremely forensic in his approach to the sounds. He was a constant voice for us and what we were trying to achieve and how we were trying to achieve it.

RT: He’s amazing. I’ve had the opportunity to work with him before, and he has a really good sound sense. He will have a really good idea of what he wants things to sound like. Aaron’s main focus is always the word and the story, and what’s going on in the movie in that way. And he’ll have an idea, but Alan will say, “I know, but what if we just did it this way? I know it’s not what you want, but what if we did it like this?” And it will open up Aaron’s eyes.

Aaron’s main focus is always the word and the story…

This film was so fun to create and all of us were a little bit radical, so we were really into this.

I’m going to give a little shout-out to Julian for the end of the movie when Eddie Redmayne (as Tom Hayden) reads the names of the soldiers that had died since the beginning of the trial.

Aaron wanted the reaction of the courtroom to build in a very specific way. We had to figure out how to keep the build going, to have energy, and be exciting — not to peak too fast or too slow.

Also, the score from Daniel Pemberton was very powerful so Julian had to get the clarity of Eddie, the music, the crowd… everything had to build. It was a composition really that was being built. It was quite lovely.

 

What would you want other sound people to know about your work on The Trial of the Chicago 7?

JS: One of the things I would like to get across is how potentially complicated something is. It’s a little beguiling to say that it’s a courtroom drama because it’s not; it’s more than that. And there’s an awful lot of sonic work going on under the hood that isn’t necessarily appreciated. I don’t know how you would even say that or how to get that across.

It’s a little beguiling to say that it’s a courtroom drama because it’s not; it’s more than that.

On one hand, it’s great to get people emailing me saying, “Hey, man, it sounds really great,” because on the surface it’s a courtroom drama. But it’s not; it’s more than that.

Between the amazing work that Renee has done and the interactions between the different things that are happening in the flashbacks outside of the courtroom, it’s actually quite a complicated piece of sound. But that’s not necessarily picked up on the first go-round. I’d love to get across that there’s a lot of stuff going on, even though on the first go-round you don’t necessarily appreciate it.

RT: I agree. And COVID is one factor but if you remove COVID and just said, here’s the film and do it the way you would normally do it, it would still be a complicated soundtrack because the elements to create it were both detailed and broad in scope.

The movie cuts in and out between historic footage and shot footage; we had to make that sound seamless and cohesive.

The movie cuts in and out between historic footage and shot footage; we had to make that sound seamless and cohesive. We wove so many sounds together to make all of those shots work.

It’s more intricate than it seems. It wasn’t a big SFX movie like Deepwater Horizon or Baby Driver. It’s the kind of balanced and articulated sound that supports the emotional impact of the ensemble of this historic event.

 

A big thanks to Renee Tondelli and Julian Slater for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of `The Trial of the Chicago 7` and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

 

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