03/31/2026
I haven't had the opportunity to do sound for a musical, but when I do this is how I want to do it.
Part 1
I'm often asked how we record live vocals on set. It really started here.
Before Les Misérables, film musicals were built around pre-recorded tracks. Actors would go into a studio months before shooting and record their songs in controlled conditions. Those recordings then became the foundation of the film.
On set, the actors would perform to playback. The tempo was fixed. The phrasing was fixed. The emotional shape of the performance had already been decided.
That system gives you control. It gives you consistency. But it separates two things that, in performance, should really be one.
Acting and singing.
If an actor wants to take time, they can’t. If they want to pause, they can’t. If the emotion of the scene shifts, the music does not move with them.
As a sound department, our role was traditionally to work around that system. Playback dictated the rhythm of the scene, and we captured dialogue within those constraints.
Tom Hooper wanted to challenge that.
The question was not about sound. It was about performance.
What happens if the actor is allowed to lead everything?
Not just emotionally, but technically. What happens if the entire filmmaking process is built to follow the performance, rather than asking the performance to fit a system?
At the time, that was not how musicals were made. And there was no established workflow to support it.
