Montreal: One has to work in both film and television, English and French, to accomplish what Hans Peter Strobl, vice-president of Marko Film, has achieved in the past year.

A former senior mixer with the National Film Board, Strobl is the first Canadian craftsperson to be honored with an award in each of the three Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television competitions, the Geminis, Genies and Gemeaux.

Won for Boys

As the first winner of ‘the triple crown of sound,’ Strobl took home the 1994 Gemini for best sound in a dramatic program or series for the John N. Smith miniseries The Boys of St. Vincent, the 1993 Genie for best achievement in overall sound for the Paule Baillargeon feature film Le Sexe des Etoiles, and the 1993 Prix Gemeaux for best overall sound in all categories of drama for the Jean Beaudin miniseries Shehaweh. (These awards were shared with a number of people, among them veteran sound editor Marcel Pothier, sound editor Antoine Morin, sound recordist Serge Beauchemin, sound recordist Richard Besse, and foley and adr artist Jocelyn Caron).

22-year veteran

At 52, Strobl is a 22-year veteran of the film business. He began his career as the recording studio director of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, moving to Canada in 1972.

In Montreal, he worked for Yordan Nicolav’s Cinelume before moving to the nfb in 1979. During his 13 years at the film board as senior mixer in charge of Studio 1, Strobl worked on literally hundreds of documentaries and feature film coproductions.

At the board, Strobl’s associates in the sound remixing area included Jean-Pierre Joutel and the late Adrian Croll.

He says he was unsure about his ability to continue to work on features at the nfb, so in the fall of 1991 Strobl joined up with Jean-Charles Tremblay, president of Studio Marko, to open Marko Film, a professional film rerecording and mixing facility.

Three-week process

Sound remixing on feature-length films typically takes three weeks to complete and is the final creative step in the making of motion pictures.

The high-quality delivery of all the sound elements – location, foley, adr, music and editing – are contingent on the quality of the final mix, a phase of production where the sound mixer normally works side by side with the director.

At Marko, Strobl’s recent credits include Deux Actrices, Garden of Eden, Kabloonak, C’etait le 12 de 12 et Chili avait les blues, Octobre, and La Vie fantome.

In designing the $1 million facility, Strobl says he and Tremblay put the emphasis on cost-efficiency.

The work begins with the dialogue, which is premixed in a ‘cleaning up’ process of the live location sound. Strobl then proceeds directly to the final mix.

On the large Marko Film mixing stage, films are projected via an image-enhancing line-doubler and Barco 800 high-resolution video projector onto a 20-foot wide (3.5 meters by six meters) screen.

The 35mm print is transferred to Betacam sp because projecting tape is much faster, and less expensive, than projecting 35mm film, says Strobl.

Euphonix console

The advantages of video projection include the use of a fully automated Euphonix console capable of ‘still’ projecting a single frame, and ‘scrolling’ pictures, backward and forward, at a rate 24 times faster than film.

According to Strobl, the Euphonix mixing console is less than half the size of the big mixing console used at the nfb, but considerably more powerful.

The Marko Film console has 168 audio lines coming in with 56 stereo input positions. The big mixing board of the nfb has 36 input positions.

‘Because it is reduced in size, it’s more flexible and allows me to work alone if necessary and still do complex mixes,’ he says.

The Euphonix is a digitally controlled analog mixing board featuring a high-powered control panel with 56 parametric equalizers. What makes the console’s control panel so powerful, he says, is its integrated switching capacity, which reduces a 560-position instrumentation panel (10-button positions for each of the 56 eq parameters) ‘to a single switch.’

The Euphonix console is hosted by a 486/66 MHz computer located behind the soundstage. Inside its own structure, the console contains eight additional computers.

‘When we built the place, we decided to purchase 24-track Dolby sr machines rather than go digital because it is still a more reliable technology, and in terms of signal and noise reduction, is still a better technology,’ says Strobl.

thx specifications for Marko Film’s audio loudspeaker system include 4000-watt JBL Dolby Stereo four- or six-channel speakers. All tape machines are synchronized by Lynx time-line.

All formats

Marko Film handles all formats including 35mm and 16mm, with a support environment that includes Otari MTR 90, MX 70 and MTR 100 tape recorders, a two-track, quarter-inch Studer A820 tape recorder, and a Lexicon Opus e digital workstation used for editing additional source material.

Strobl is modest about his reputation in the industry.

‘I’m lucky to get all the good projects,’ he says. ‘With a film that doesn’t go anywhere, there’s very little chance of winning an award.’

Over the years, Strobl has won six acct awards including Genies for Jean Beaudin’s Mario, Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Un zoo la nuit and Denys Arcand’s Jesus de Montreal.

One of the biggest problems in the sound remixing business is training new people.

Strobl says the profession, centered in Los Angeles, is restricted almost exclusively to older craftspeople in their 50s, 60s and even 70s.

He says having to work with experienced directors, who know every detail of their films, makes film remixing a daunting experience. One has to have the total confidence of the client, the director, and as often as not, new people in the field are not willing to go through the tough times.