By William Kallay

Disney’s “The Lion King” is a phenomenon that keeps reign over the imaginations of movie lovers almost a decade after its 1994 theatrical release. The studio has kept the story of a young lion cub’s journey into adulthood in the public eye through a successful video release, an award-winning album, merchandising, a worldwide Broadway touring company, television spin-offs, and a recent IMAX/Large Format re-release. This fall will see the release of the film on a two-disc DVD. As has been the case with many of Disney’s recent DVD releases, this is a high-content and high-quality disc set. Included on the disc, to name a few of the special features, are two versions of the film, deleted scenes, storyboards, games, bonus documentaries and numerous other features.

One of the most interesting aspects of the new “Lion King” DVD is an “All-New 5.1 Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix.” Terry Porter, the film’s original re-recording mixer, came up with the idea to essentially place home theater viewers right into the 5.1 mix. Viewers of this DVD will have the opportunity to hear “The Lion King” in its original 5.1 theatrical mix, or in Disney’s Enhanced Home Theater Mix.

Porter, who was Oscar-nominated for his work on this film, is a Disney veteran in sound. Some of the films he has mixed include “Freaky Friday” (2003), “Dinosaur” (2000), “Mr. Holland’s Opus” (1995), and “Aladdin” (1992).

William Kallay, Widescreen Review: What motivated you to come up with the idea for the home theatre mix for “The Lion King”?

Terry Porter: It’s actually been kind of an interesting journey. I had done the original mix back in the early ’90s, and we did that in 5.1. And 5.1 at that time was fairly new, so we were all kind of learning. We did what we could on that mix. And then later on, [Disney] had decided to take “The Lion King” into the Large Format, which consists of Large Format [70mm] theaters and IMAX. They asked me because I’ve done a few Large Format films, those being “Fantasia/2000” (2000) and “Beauty and the Beast“ (2002). What I found with the IMAX theatres is you have a very controlled environment, more controlled than the average theater. You have to be careful when you mix for a regular theater, because you can’t always mix for that sweet spot. You have to make sure that the movie is heard properly from all over the theater. You do have to make it good for the entire audience. In a Large Format theater, the sweet spot of the audience is quite large because of the way the speakers are set up. You have left, center, right channels, just like in a regular theater. But the big difference is in the surrounds. In a regular theater, you have a wall of left surrounds and a wall of right surrounds. But in a Large Format theater, you have a single surround up in the left corner, and a single surround up in the right corner. Those speakers are of equal quality to the front [speakers] . When I started doing that mix, I realized that we could start doing something a little more exciting dimensionality-wise. Instead of just a pan over your head, we could do something real dimensional in the audio. Speed ahead a few years, I heard that Disney was going to be re-releasing “The Lion King” and it got me thinking about home theater systems. If you set up your home theater system the way the book says, and I don’t care what book it is, from Yamaha to Rotel to Onkyo, what you have is a left, center, right channel and a single left surround up in the corner and a single right surround up in the corner. I started to think; Wow! This is really similar to Large Format as opposed to a real theater. I was quite astounded with some of the results I started to get. My goal was to, instead of steering the sounds coming out of the speakers, try to create a sound field that would emanate somewhere in between the speakers and the person listening to it. And it works. The hardest thing about the process was making sure that the integrity of the mix wasn’t changed. We spend so much time when we mix a film with the directors, the producers, and the studio making sure that the internal balance is exactly the way people want it.

WSR: You’ve mixed “The Lion King” for its original release, the IMAX/Large Format release and now for the DVD. You can basically recite most of the movie’s lines and songs.

Porter: You know, that’s okay. It’s “Lion King.” Our animation. Our 2D conventional animation and it is the best. It’s funny. I brought home the DVD and I have a 22 year-old daughter and a 20 year-old daughter. They haven’t seen it since they were little kids. To this day, they can sing every word of every song. It still amazes me the impact that this movie had on them.

WSR: Did you have to go back to each and every element of the soundtrack (dialog, music and effects) and re-build everything from scratch?

Porter: Absolutely not. That would be a remix and I think that it would be disastrous to try to attempt, because the original mix process involves so many points of approval from the picture editor, sound editor, the director, even the head of the studio. When we created the original mix, we created three 5.1 stems: one being dialog; one music; and one sound effects. That always gave me a point of reference to go back to as I started to manipulate the sound field with each of those elements. I could always reference instantly back to the original balance of the mix. That was very important to me. Even though I did the original mix, I didn’t feel I had the right to take it upon my own to remix something. That‚s just not right. Going back to the stems ensured that I was able to keep the integrity of that original mix.

WSR: And that made your job less difficult not to have to remix the whole film?

Porter: Absolutely. I wouldn’t have that kind of schedule. We probably spent 8-10 weeks on that original mix, then an additional three on the IMAX mix. I couldn’t ask the studio for three months! [laughter] Plus, I didn’t need to. Intellectually, what my process involved wasn’t remixing. I actually don’t like the word “remix.” Remix to me sounds like I’m taking the elements and re-balancing them and changing them. It wasn’t. I was changing the sound field within the original mix. Normally in a 5.1 mix, if you were just to listen to the musical score, the feeling you get generally is if you’re listening to an orchestra from 15-feet away. And it’s in front of you and the reverberant and the acoustical sounds are slightly behind you, but the image is clearly in front of you. What I attempted to do, and I think I accomplished that, was to put the listening body right in the center of that orchestra. The instruments tend to come off the speakers, floating somewhere in between the speakers and fully enveloping you from behind. There’s even one song that I went the whole nine yards on. I tried to pull out every trick I’ve ever learned on “Can You Feel The Love Tonight.” Because it was appropriate for the film, the characters are not on-camera when they’re singing. It’s a montage with the voices. The voices are emanating right in front of your face when they’re singing. When I did it, my intention wasn’t really to do something better. I do not want to use the word, especially since I did the original mix. [laughter] I don’t use the words, “It’s a better mix.” It’s different. Some people might love this, other people might not love this. They might like the original mix, and that’s why Disney, rightfully so, offers up both soundtracks on the DVD.

WSR: Do you have a preference between the two?

Porter: I think this new mix is exciting for a home theater. You know, you go out and buy a home theater system and you install it in your house. I think it is pretty exciting for a lot of people to sit down in their living room and hear this fully enveloping sound throughout most of the film, where you hear stuff behind you just as much as you hear it in front of you. It’s not out of balance. The original mix sounds the way it did, it’s just around you a little bit more.

WSR: How did you set up your mixing stage to optimize the sound field?

Porter: I work in the main theater at Disney. I’ve been here 18 years. That’s where I mixed the original film. It’s a 420-seat theater. Big theater. I asked them to bring in some Genelec Speakers on stands. And I brought in my Rotel book from my own home theater system, and we set up the speakers exactly by specs. We put a monitor in front of me. We put the left, center, right channels and the surrounds on stands, just as if it was a living room. I had my board set up. If I sensed that maybe I unbalanced something or something was askew, I could just throw a switch and listen to my regular theater mix, and go, “Okay, the dialog’s a little low in this sequence. I’m doing something wrong.” And then I’d go back to the home theater mix and make sure that I didn’t overdo something or have to re-balance it to achieve the original balance.

WSR: Was there a consideration to enhance the mix with additional channels?

Porter: No. I’m a realist. I can try to do something really cool and special for Surround EX for somebody who has a rear-center speaker. But I think at this point in time, we’ve made the leap to 5.1 in home theater and there are quite a few people who have that. My main goal was to serve 5.1. Plus, the original mix was in that format. I didn’t really want to open that can of worms, yet.

WSR: I heard that you’re quite a home theatre enthusiast. What is your home theatre like?

Porter: I’ve got kind of an eclectic group of things. I’ve got a Rotel DVD player and power amplifier. Instead of having all matching speakers, I got different kind of speakers. I’ve got Klipsch in the surrounds. And I’ve got B & W’s. I’ve got several different speakers.

WSR: So you have some high-end equipment?

Porter: Definitely some high-end ones. And generally speaking, and I highly recommend that everybody gets matching speakers, but this is my business. I can get them to tune the way I like it.

Special thanks to Terry Porter, Tara Conrad and Michael Coate