Another awards show, another prize for Daniel Pellerin. The 2001 Genie win by the Deluxe Toronto director of mixing services for achievement in overall sound has created chaos on his mantelpiece. The latest trophy, for Love Come Down, must vie for space with his two previous Genies, two Geminis, two Hot Docs awards and one Emmy.

Pellerin was the supervising re-recording mixer on writer/director Clement Virgo’s urban drama about half-brothers, one black (Larenz Tate), one white (Genie-winner Martin Cummins), who harbor a tragic family secret. Pellerin shares his award with Paul Adlaf (recordist), Peter Kelly (lead mixer) and Brad Thornton and Brad Zoern (mixers). A total of nine mixers contributed to the project.

Love Come Down also took the prize for achievement in sound editing, awarded to a team from Tattersall Sound (now part of Casablanca Tattersall), whose jurisdiction included dialogue and effects editing. Steven Hammond was foley artist, and the rest of the key editorial crew consisted of David McCallum, Fred Brennan, Susan Conley, Garrett Kerr, Jane Tattersall and Robert Warchol.

Many of those involved with the audio and audio editing for Love Come Down also collaborated on Sunshine, which swept the sound Genies a year ago. Pellerin says the familiarity helps.

"You depend on [the team’s] ability to bring you what you require because you’ve worked with them for so many hours on so many other projects," he explains. "If you’re supervising sound effects and foley, you expect them to think of the way you would want that stuff presented to you on a final mix."

Pellerin had performed the music mix on Rude, Virgo’s debut feature, and the two tried to reconnect but the timing didn’t click until Love Come Down. The soundman likes Virgo for his hands-on approach.

"He’s very conscious of what he’s trying to say with sound as well as picture, which makes him the type of director I really enjoy working with," Pellerin says.

The film features an original score co-composed by Aaron Davis and John Lang that is often blended with the source sound, creating an unusual yet subtle aural weave throughout the film.

"Clement allowed me to do some fairly daring things," Pellerin recalls. "The great part about him is that he loves to be bold without being overt about it."

Pellerin is quick to note that what is done first with the images strongly impacts what the audio team can add later. "Picture editor Susan Maggi told the story beautifully, forming a visual space for us to create some daring soundscapes," he says.

One of those daring sound moments appears at the end of the film, when what happened to the boys’ father is revealed in flashback.

"Building towards that, the whole music piece underneath had very earthy bass tones which Clement allowed us to push as far as they could go, to almost overwhelm the audience," Pellerin notes.

Although Virgo shot exterior dialogue scenes in noisy Toronto, Pellerin says by adding the right sound F/X the audio team could recreate the environment without the need for much cleaning up of the dialogue tracks or ADR.

"Clement wanted to keep a lot of the original performances and sound quality, even though some of it was borderline unusable – not because [Adlaf] didn’t do his job, but because he was in the middle of a heavy traffic area," he explains. "I’m the type of mixer who loves adding as opposed to removing things. That tends to be exciting in a six-track situation, because you can fill up the theatre with a really natural background."

Pellerin is currently finalizing the release mix of Fine Line Features’ Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a film about a German-born rock singer living in Kansas after a botched sex-change operation. A rough version was screened at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, where the film captured the Dramatic Audience Award and Directing Award. He will soon be going to work on Atom Egoyan’s Ararat, continuing a professional relationship that began with Next of Kin, the director’s first feature. *

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