From Price of Kings director Richard Symons.
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A President's dry mouth tells you just as much (perhaps more) as what he's saying. Getting that sound to be heard over the noise of a helicopter taking off on the screen has taken us from Los Angeles, to Pinewood and finally London - but it was in Los Angeles at Bob Clearmountain's studio that the sound of 'The Price of Kings' documentary film really took a turn and finally came together.
From left to right, Brandon Duncan, Bob Clearmountain of Mix This and Richard Symons of Spirit Level Film with Bassam Abu Sharif looking on (no doubt in horror at what we're doing to his voice)
Bob had never mixed a documentary film; his background reads like a who's who of the music industry (check out the astonishing 47 pages of his discography), but that's why we wanted him. As the music from composers Stuart Briner and Tom McFarland came in we realised it was much more than background padding, and needed to be woven through the films. To do that and still hear the faltering dryness in a Presidential voice needed someone used to mixing vocals in with the music without losing any clarity.
If Bob looks a little scared, that's because Bassam's not someone you'd want to upset... he's the guy who trained Carlos the Jackal
For gear-heads only: Apogee converters were used from beginning to end of the audio chain as well as Sennheiser HD650 headphones across the multiple locations, for reference.
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Fresh from the edit suite in the final preparations on the film on President Arafat...some notes on the agony of editing from Price of Kings director, Richard Symons...
Price of Kings director Richard Symons and Director of Photography Jake Corbett film at Karameh, Jordan
They say it's like killing your baby.
The final stages of editing are a brutal thing. Often the sequence you love the most just doesn't work for the film as a whole, and in the end, the film is king. The most painful of all baby killings is where you have to choose between two good kids to save the film from being just a fraction too long.
With The Price of Kings: Yasser Arafat, "The Battle of Karameh", and the hijacking sequence/exploration of terrorism scenes went head to head. Terrorism won, Karameh sacrificed. Agonising. Both showed key elements of President Arafat's leadership but it felt like excising an exploration of terrorism would have been a more gaping omission.
Our interviewees explained Karameh was the key point where President Arafat turned his people from refugees into fighters - consolidating his power. Against the might of the Israeli Army (they'd just decimated their surrounding neighbours in no more than six days), President Arafat convinced his troops to stand firm and fight whilst other factions (George Habash's PFLP) felt it was bordering on suicide.
Perhaps outside of a democracy a suicidal confrontation is the best/only way of consolidating power. Yasser Arafat proved in no uncertain terms he was prepared to stake his own life alongside the lives of his men against a far superior force. Crucially, because he was able to show Karameh as a victory (Israel contests this) - the process fused any Fedayeen doubts and transformed them to loyalty. Arafat could see what they couldn't, so only he could lead them where they didn't think they could go.
After the battle of Karameh, Arafat's high led to hubris, a lack of discipline, and bad-behaviour in Jordan, culminating in what became known as Black September - both the civil war and the fearsome organisation responsible for numerous attacks on civilians. There was a fascinating flow to how events unfolded, and taking this tack would allow us to include in the film his escape from Jordan as witnessed and retold by Munib al Masri (sitting at Yasser Arafat's side as he bullshitted, blustered and charmed his way through roadblocks manned by the Jordanian troops he was escaping from).
It's easy to forget President Arafat was a revolutionary leader, a military man, for most of his time - and it's essential to take this on board, so we couldn't quite kill off our baby sequence and kept it for viewing as a DVD extra.
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