Special Report: Martyn Zub on The Weight (2026)

Oh he is, folks, it's showtime. People say good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater. They want clothed sodas, pop popcorn in No monsters in the projection Booths. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

Cut it off. Hey, folks, welcome to our special episode of the Projection Booth. I'm you girls, Mike White. On this episode, I am talking with Martin Zubb. He is the re recording mixer of the new film The Weight, which had its premiere at Sundance twenty twenty six, stars Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe.

Very compelling narrative about the Great Depression. I have a feeling it will be opening wide pretty soon. Hopefully people will be able to check this out over the next few months. Had a lot of fun watching it, and I had a lot of fun Tiger mitzer Zub. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you enjoy the interview.

I don't want to sound too much like a nube, but I am so curious. What is it that you do? Can you describe a little bit of what your role is. I'm a sound supervisor, sound designer, re recording mixer depending on who and what studio, what client I work with, and it depends on my role, so wear different type of hats. And then I found, you know, doing that well coming from Australia, like you had to do everything there really to maintain and continually work on a film like whereas it's very segmented and fractionalized.

Here, I jump around and depending on this you know, the chair and then I'm sitting in and at the moment I'm working as a sound designer on the next Godzilla film and I'm mixing that eventually as well. Yeah, so yeah, doing it doing a bit at the moment, and then yeah, I kind of move around as well. Now I have to ask because it God's a little man a zero or is it another god Zella film? Now the Godzilla, Godzilla god and Zilla versus Kong, that universe of legendary of others. All right, awesome, awesome.

How did you decide to get into this field. Growing up in Australia, you know, being you know, like well we did played in bands and punk bands in Southern Australia and then my parents were making you know, TV commercials for their small business. They had kind of small, low budget and then I remember going out there seeing it and kind of nerding out a little bit about the microphones they were using. And then I started talking to more people and realized, oh, what, there's an actual profession here as well. This is amazing.

So I just went down the path and then I started studying sound, and then the natural progression from being in a band to mixing bands front of a house, then into recording studios, recording as a drumming engineer, and into TV commercials, into post production there. It was just a natural progression really, and then I've been living in the US now for nearly thirteen years. What kind of tools do you use in your profession? Predominantly the biggest one we use is pro Tools, which is our industry standard like digital audio software workstation. But yeah, that's predominantly the biggest one at the moment.

Then we use I use sound Minor, which is like a library database software that we use that you know, collect all our sounds and we kind of label it and put it all in folded folders and categories, so we kind of can dig from that pretty quickly, and then we go out and record a lot of stuff as well, depending on the project and depending on the scale and in the needs and the turnaround and the schedule and the budget as well. I was wondering if you got everything delivered, or if you're out there like you know, John Travolta and blowout with the long microphone capturing those sounds. Well, yeah, I'm not doing on location on set as such, like recording the dialogue be more so perfect example we worked on I worked on John Wick three.

It was and there's a big motorcycle chase in that, and we hired a racetrack for the day and board with the motorbikes out there and recorded them and all various different ways, and then ended up getting that material working with one of our librarian sound designers who cut it and mastered it and then gave it to us editors and sound designers to manipulate against the picture, so it all varies all the time. Can you watch a movie like a normal person or are you constantly hearing that and going, oh, that's this particular clip. I've used that before. One hundred percent. To do that, Like the best tracks is when I'm sure that you're in a similar world, like yeah, you're immersed in it and then you're not distracted by the world really, which I think is great filmmaking.

And there's definitely films that we see and watch and I know exactly where that sounds from. I could dig it up off a CD right now. But there's ones that you go, oh, that's a really cool choice. I don't know how they created that or captured that's really cool, you know, And I tip my hat to that type of sound editing and mixing work. How do you get your jobs?

Do they now know you? Do you have a reputation? They go, I want Martin's up on this project? Definitely. But when I first moved here, I didn't know anyone.

I knew only a handful of people. I came about to the US. I worked with an Australian filmmaker that mixed a film in New York and I went to mix it for two weeks over there, then met some people, and then at the time my girlfriend I said let's give this a go, packed up one suitcase and then haven't looked back since then. But then, when I first got here, I was pounding the pavement trying to meet as many people as possible, many peers, people that I looked up to producers, post supervisors and obviously a lot of doors slammed in front of your face. But slowly, over time, I built up a bit of a client lists and a network of people that I kind of hang out with socially and work with professionally.

And then when the strikes hit, it kind of felt like a big reset, and then I felt like I was earning the payment again. Just trying to muster up work to keep it going because it was pretty you know, And still I still feel that Hollywood is obviously feeling the repercussions of that as well. But yeah, quient network and friends and colleagues has been the big thing. And then trying to meet new people all the time, and with the crew that I'm working with right now and Godzilla, never worked with any of these people before, but they're awesome. They're so collaborative as well, and hoping we can continue like a working professional relationship as well.

Yeah, because I noticed, like Dan gil Roy seems to use you quite a bit, you know, the Zach Schneider uses you quite a bit. So it's just like you build up that reputation with these folks. Yes, yeah, absolutely, and and and also and other people in your world as well. They have that contact and go They're gonna drag me in, or I have that contact and I'll drag that ins drag them in. So we have a bit of a close community that we work with all the time.

I know, if you hire, like a say, a production designer, it's like, okay, well I've got the main production designer, then I've got their whole team that they assemble. Are you part of a team overall? Yeah, definitely. I'm with a company called Formosa Group and I've been with them since the inception of the group, and that's it's always been talent focused driven company. And then I felt like a lot of people from Bob Rosenthal who pulled it all together, the CEO, he kind of hand picked a lot of people and they thought that'd get along with everyone.

So that was a massive leg up for me to be invited to join this group of talented people. And then I met a lot of people through that and then outside of that as well, and then we kind of bring it back into our fold because you know, we have crew and assistants and editors. Is that we work with that you know, we know each other's shorthands, we know each other strengths and weaken weaknesses and how to get a job done, you know, as creatively as possible, but also the reality of it is on budget and within a schedule as well. Tell me about the Weed. I know that that just played the Sundown's how did you get that one?

Patrick McKinley the director, and this is his first feature I've worked with in the past. He's was a film editor previously, and I've done i think three or four films with him and two TV series with him as well. And since then, you know, since the very first film we met each other on, we became close friends and we live in the same neighborhood that it turns out, so we see each other, you know, at Thanksgiving pretty regularly. So we're always keep in contact as much as possible because you know, it's such a great collaborative like creative environment as well. I was there when they met the writer at the Toronto film first of all, like eight years ago, of The Weight, and the story was so different than when we read the script and then field to entertainment producing partners who are close friends as well, they optioned the script and then they rewrote it with Ethan Hawke's team, and then Pat was always tagged to actually director because he worked with Ethan on The Good Lord Brn and he worked with Russell on The Loudest Voice, so he had those connections and he wanted to, you know, cool on those favors eventually, so then I was always going to do it no matter which way that it was looking, and it was.

The budget was incredibly tight, and it was an absolute challenge to get green lip and chasing, you know, the taxing centers all over the world, and you know it was shot it's located in Oregon, but they shot it in Munich, Germany for Oregon, and it'd be hard to press tell the difference really with them, you know them the coverage and the B unit and all the overheads. It looks like Oregon to me. It was great. So I was always always going to do it no matter which way. The budget was pretty challenging.

I came on board thinking that I was going to sound design it as well, but I couldn't give up the amount of the weeks that it actually needed, so I just came in at the end to mix it for a month in Berlin with a sound crew that I've never met before. We had shorthand, and you know, we reviewed material as we're going along and mix it on a mixing stage i've never been on, which is always a little bit daunting, never been to Berlin, which I absolutely thoroughly loved. But everyone was incredibly generous with their time and their ability to get it done, because everyone worked above and beyond to create the best sounding track possible. But yeah, it was great, and it was a great collaboration I had, you know, fortunate enough because I have that shorthand with Pat our director.

He sat right next to me on the console every day and we were limited through a time so we could make decisions, create decisions right there and then and move on as opposed to mulling over it and doing notes and playbacks. And then you know, we managed to get through the film in a pretty timely manner to watch the whole thing back and you'd take another big round of notes and talk about ideas and when to let the track breathe and when to push it, and then played it all again, did more mixing, so he managed to play it like three times, which is pretty good on the final mix, as a pretty tight final mix. In my mind. I just watched an episode of Columbo where they're doing this, so nighteen seventy six or whatever.

This says, big old board image up on the screen and they've just got the parts and they're just moving stuff around or bring up the gun, bring up to this. I'm sure it's completely different. In twenty twenty six. We've done pretty much the same in theory, like we've got you know, the full sized cinema with the board. There more computers now than what they had back then.

It was all analog. But yeah, yeah, it's great. You can do so much more and you can do you know, I'm sure back then when they did Columbia, there was a relatively large crew, like not only on the mixed stage but out the back, you know, putting all the machines together and loading the tapes and all the optical material. But now it's really minimally. You know, on the stage we had one mixed tech effects editor or dialogue editor and myself as part of the sound team.

Which is a film at this scale and how many locations there are and the action and the drama, there's a really small type team to be efficient as possible, and that's you know, the advantage of technology, which kind of helps us, but it also hinders us as well because producers know that we can do it quicker and cheaper as well. Are there any issues that come up or challenges that come up when you're doing like a period piece versus a modern piece. There's a car at the opening scene of our film, and that was a lot of back and forth and how that should sound like it's a Ford Model A, and then we you know, cut it to be a Ford Model A. But sometimes they're not that interesting when you like, you know, push it pretty hard.

So we kind of kind of had to sneak and some other sounds in there to kind of beef it up and make it a bit more exciting as well. So that's probably a huge challenge. Is the vehicles, absolutely, but other ones not too much. Like you know, we had like a Folly crew that we've worked within the past. They got the brief, they knew like the area, and then just selecting the ambiences as well, and then the guns.

You know, always, you know, it's always fun to make a big bolden exciting to sound like cannons, but you know, but but you know, you've got to be realistic to the piece as well and find and dance that line of let's make it cool and fun for the audience, but let's also you know, tip our hats to the period as well. So it's finding that fine line and a lot of the places as well. So now with minor films, are you typically mixing it so that I can't hear the dialogue and so that the music and sound effects are way too overwhelming? So I'm constantly like jacking the volume up and down, Like are you doing that on purpose? These days?

You know? Well, yeah, I hear a lot of mixes on you know, TV and on the streaming platforms, and I kind of shake my head why and why he can't understand the dialogue, you know, like, and I think a lot of the time that's just bad mixing, you know, like, you know, the best programs, the best shows, the best films, you can understand every single word because there's a quality track being mixed. So yeah, I don't know, I don't. I don't understand that why, you know. It has been a bit of a hot time topic in our community at the moment, but but yeah, yeah, there's no I see, there's no reason for it really.

You said that the project was very different the first time he read the script. I was curious about how stuff changes over time. What was that original version? Like it was longer, and yeah, the beats it read really well with a story, but then you have to put it into like a cinematic script form had to get the first second, third act. You know, it needed a bit of work through there as well.

And I know Ethan and Shelby they had an idea what they wanted it to be and how they wanted the characters have been betrived or portrayed, I should say, and then and then packed it as well. He had heat and it's definitely got his, you know, his creative input all over it as well. So yeah, definitely everybody that gets who touches it, who's involved creatively, definitely adds something to it as well. So you sit there with the director and your crew and you're watching through this and you're doing this mix, and you're getting it already. Do you ever tea that opportunity to watch it with an audience.

Well, the first time we watched it with an audience any of us was at Sundance Because there's no resources or budget to do like a preview or a friends and family like, it was like we were up against it, so that was always exciting. Like I know Pat was nervous and obviously and excited at the time, but I'm like, man, we've done all we can now, let's put it out into the world, you know, Like and it played amazingly, like I was really impressive with it. And then my fiance was with me, and she was fortunate enough she saw the very firmst cut of the film and she's like, well, okay, this is going to be There's a lot of work to be done, and then at that final product she was blown away, like it just felt like a different film.

Do you do different mixes for different venues? Is there going to be a mixed for the Blu ray release versus what you saw theatrically. Yeah, definitely. So that's part of the deliveries. On the Wait, for example, they only wanted the streaming for which a five point one streaming version, which I was like, Okay, that's great, and I understand why they're saying that, because that's going to be the main market they wanted to sell it to.

But then I'm like, the mixtage we're going to is arguably one of the premiere stages in Europe. It's like in full theatrical app mysel It's got speakers everywhere, a type of things. So I said, we should be mixing in that form WAP and doing our down mixing as we go, like running at parallel, so we can kind of, you know, it's not the most ideal way, but with the resources that we had, you can kind of set up like a signal processing chain to do the fold downs, and we kind of did that. So we're doing our theatrical ATMOS mix, We're doing our theatrical five to one mix, but at the same time, we were doing the versions of our you know, streaming platform versions as well, which is the home app musk version, and at the same time, so there is different different formats.

And then when I mixed TV broadcasts, it's different again because you've got to hit different levels and loudness meters as well, and different studios and different streamers all have different formats and programming as well. You mentioned the guns and the car, and I'm sure you get a lot of people that give you negative feedback when it comes to that car doesn't sound like that. Yeah, definitely, my car enthusiast friends. Even the pictures are on the weight as well. He's a real car guy and he kind of noticed some of the gearshifts it's got.

That's, you know, an added shift in there, but you know, adds excitement. Yeah, but yeah, there is definitely a bit of that for sure. Well, mister, thank you so much for your time. This is great talking with you. Oh you're welcome, Mike.

And I was just looking at your podcast. I've got to go back and see that last episode that you listened to because I know the mix of that mix pandemonium. Yeah, I'm gonna go and check it out. Okay, it looks really cool. The measure what I just please where I can leave my head?

And mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed? He just grin and shook my hand. No, it was all he said. Big a load off, fadny bing a load to freeze. Ting a load off, faddy, You put the load run alad right on it.

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Take a load off, bady, Take a load three, Take a load off, Faddy. You put the Lord right alone right get your cannon ball now to take me down the line. My bag is saking load and I do believe this time to get down of miss Fanny. You know see the only one who sent. Me here with her regards for your one.

Take a load off, take a load. Take a load off, bed. You put the Lord right alone, right on me,