One of the surprise hits on the film festival circuit this year is the documentary “Weiner,” the all-too-revealing inside look behind the failed New York City mayoral campaign of former Congressman Anthony Weiner that took home the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Enhancing the aural impact was HOBO engineers Chris Stangroom, Stephen Davies and Julian Angel, who played a key role in the film’s audio postproduction.
“A lot of the audio sources we were dealing with came from old news footage, cell phone cameras and the filmmakers themselves were shooting in guerilla style,” Stangroom says. “We needed to clean all that up – the harsh drones, crackles and blaring sounds of city life. Nobody pays attention to the audio in docs unless something sounds wrong.”