Colombia RPCV Mark Berger may well be the only man in Berkeley with a background in rat brain surgery and four Oscars on his mantel



The craft of sound remixing requires near-obsessive attention to detail and a self-effacing approach to the work, Berger says. "Everything you hear in a movie has been manipulated and put there for a reason," he says. "At the same time, you don't want to call attention to what you're doing. One of the contradictions of this job is that you work very hard to make sure that nobody knows what you're doing. It's all very subtle."

Colombia RPCV Mark Berger may well be the only man in Berkeley with a background in rat brain surgery and four Oscars on his mantel

INDUSTRY BUZZ

Hugh Hart

Sunday, July 23, 2006

[Excerpt]

Listen up: Sound man Mark Berger may well be the only man in Berkeley with a background in rat brain surgery and four Oscars on his mantel. After an adventurous early career that included a stint in the Peace Corps and a brief phase operating on rats while studying psychology at UCLA, Berger made his feature film debut in 1974 with "The Godfather Part II." Since then, he's quietly gone about his business as one of the industry's top sound remixers, winning Academy Awards for "The English Patient," "Amadeus," "The Right Stuff" and "Apocalypse Now."

In August, Berger's contributions can be heard in "The House of Sand." Filmed on location in a remote desert region of Brazil by Andrucha Waddington, the movie traces three generations of settlers (portrayed by "Central Station" star Fernanda Montenegro and her real-life daughter, Fernanda Torres) who learn to love the isolation. The picture's exceptionally spare setting challenged Berger to weave simple elements -- wind, water, an ox cart's creaking wheel, straw rustling in a thatched hut, the flapping of a tent -- into a beguiling sonic backdrop.

"To avoid becoming boring with banal wind or constant water, you have to create a lot of variations, the same way you'd make a duet for a cello and bassoon," he says. "Some people are visual. Others of us are more sonically oriented. We don't just hear a sound -- we hear layers of sound."

To Berger's ear, water is rife with tonal textures.

"You hear a general low bass roar, punctuated by occasional waves that crash, or they could just be lapping slowly with their own rhythm and timbre," he says. "It's very much like music."

Though "The House of Sand" lacks an in-your-face score, co-composers Carlo Bartolini and Joao Barone created subliminal layers of music by stroking cymbals with a violin bow and other unorthodox techniques.

"What makes 'House of Sand' unique is that the music was thought of as another element that adds this slow-moving tonal aspect to the wind and the water," Berger says. "When it pokes its head above the background and the audience says, 'Oh, it's music,' then it doesn't work."

The craft of sound remixing requires near-obsessive attention to detail and a self-effacing approach to the work, Berger says.

"Everything you hear in a movie has been manipulated and put there for a reason," he says. "At the same time, you don't want to call attention to what you're doing. One of the contradictions of this job is that you work very hard to make sure that nobody knows what you're doing. It's all very subtle."

Hugh Hart is a Chronicle correspondent.

When this story was posted in July 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:




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