The film version of the Tony Award-winning 2008 Broadway musical, In The Heights, has music and lyrics by Lin Manuel-Miranda, who struck gold with his later musical, Hamilton. Winner of four Tony Awards including Best Musical, In The Heights was tapped for transition to the screen and directed by Jon M. Chu (Rich Crazy Asians) and opened on June 10, 2021 by Warner Brothers with a simultaneous release on HBO Max. There has been a lot of buzz about the film, as well as some controversy about the lack of diversity in the cast (for which Miranda has apologized), and slightly disappointing opening weekend box office performance. But the buzz continues...
The story, set in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City (where Miranda, who has Puerto Rican roots, grew up), follows a bodega owner who has mixed feelings about closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic after inheriting his grandmother's fortune. Sound plays a key role in this musical film, and varies in conception from the stage version.
"In transitioning Heights from stage to screen, our number one goal was to go bigger. 96,000 times bigger!” says Steven Gizicki, the music supervisor for In the Heights. “The music needed to be cinematic and authentic and really embrace all of the musical and filmmaking tools available to us. And a key part of the toolkit was sound effects and design. We incorporated a lot of neighborhood sounds into the mix to give it extra authenticity. The sounds of the street— footsteps, handclaps, cheers— really made the music and film come alive. But it was a tricky tightrope to walk that took time to get right. We experimented a lot to find the balance of music and FX and it was a team effort to get there. To that I credit not just our music and sound teams, but the WB music department who were a great sounding board. And of course Jon Chu's precision and decisiveness that always steered us right."
The following Q&A is with Lewis Goldstein, supervising sound editor and re-recording artist for the film, providing insight into how a Broadway musical morphs into a film from the sound point of view.
Live Design: Where did you start your research for the sound for the film version?
Lewis Goldstein: We did a lot of listening, especially up in the heights (Washington Heights). I spent some time on set, and the great thing about the heights is there’s always music playing. We tried to do a lot of recording atmospherically. We were up there at one point talking to a producer, and music, not from our film, was all around us at that point. No matter where you are, there’s music at all times. As he was saying this, this guy on a bicycle rode by with the biggest speaker I’ve ever seen on the back of a bicycle, blasting music. We tried to build that energy for the film, and there’s points in the mix where there was much more ambiance and I think we scaled it back at points so it wasn’t as distracting when we did go into our songs. We did end up doing a significant amount of recording in the film. We also did use and cut around the things we couldn’t use and used recordings from the neighborhood.
LD: How much, if at all, were you influenced by the sound design on Broadway?
LG: I don’t think the play version was really being used as a model for the film version. I think they were considered to be two very different animals, and sound design in a film is quite different than design for a production on stage.
LD: Is there an intent to keep a musical feel or is the design strictly cinematic; is there a difference and if so, what?
LG: We tried to find a middle ground, and I think the major difference is the level of reality sounds in the movie version compared to the play version. Films can go very detailed and we can add and fine-tune while making sure there’s an exact balance with sound, and have the ability to really make the viewer believe everything is a reality. Everything can be added and massaged into the film whereas a play is not as refined, for the reason that things are just happening in real time in a play. The timings will vary from performance to performance, and we just can’t do it at that level of detail, but we had to find a balance. There were times we had too much and times we had too little, and it was really about working with the filmmakers to find a point that everyone was comfortable with.
LD: How does the miking of the singers work for such a project and what brand/kind were used?
LG: For this film, brands weren’t as important as types. We used high quality studio mics, and made sure to record in the studio with the same types of mics as the ones we used on location. We really tried to use production mics in the studios as well as a high end studio mic just so we would be able to match the studio recordings to the on-set ones and have them sound the same. By doing that, we were able to manipulate the sound of the singers’ voices to sound like they were singing live on location and not so produced.
The studio mics were Neumann U67s, and we also used a shotgun and a Sanken COS 11-D lapel mic, both on set and in studio.
LD: What was the biggest artistic challenge?
LG: It goes back to finding that balance of real-world sounds compared to music and vocals, and really working the different elements to keep people happy and not making the film feel disembodied. Artistically, we wanted it to feel like what moviegoers are used to as far as it feeling like a movie, but not losing the songs’ play characteristics at the same time. It took time and it took finesse.
LD: And the biggest technical challenge?
LG: The biggest technical challenge was keeping the vocals throughout the film matched, and making sure they always sounded live in the real world and not too studio-like. The singing in the film is made up of different components and that was always a technical challenge.
LD: What do you do to keep the spirit of the show alive while transitioning to film?
LG: I didn’t have to do a thing. The songs, every single one of them is just outstanding and the energy of the actors that they cast is kind of perfect. I’m not super familiar with the play, but the play itself, the songs themselves, and the way Lin just crafted this thing works in any medium.
There’s no ability for it not to have energy, and the people that they cast in the film to play all the roles and sing all the songs are exceptional and such a high level that, as great as it was a play, they just brought it to a whole new level. The movie is not short in energy at all, and it’s constant. Once it starts, it just goes. It’s like a freight train.