All we can do, and it is something, is to tell the production sound mixers who provide the tracks we work with what we do with their work and what we would like differently from them when possible, and they can take what they can from that and go forward with it. Remember that they do grueling work under very difficult conditions to get anything at all resembling useful sound, so are generally deserving of our great appreciation, even when the results are less than pristine. Feedback on this sort of new requirement for their tracks would be appreciated by most location recordists. I will have the good fortune to meet up with our production mixer on some pickup shooting to be done next month and will let him know what we are doing with his tracks so he will understand and do the best he can to improve isolation between characters. An email from the cutting room to the location mixer with thanks and constructive criticism (where warranted) is a courtesy I try to provide on all my shows these days.

I love panned dialog where it is appropriate, as in POV films like Cloverfield and Elephant where it adds to the immersiveness of the film. More conventional mise-en-scene requires a more conventional center-channel-centric approach.

VR now is in a kind of R&D phase of development. Where possible, you could have a lot to say to the location recordist about separation. Here’s hoping you and the production can connect early enough to have an influence on your next VR show.

It’s definitely an increasing problem, Doug. I’ve been fortunate enough to not have to deal with panned dialog in most of the films I’ve worked on in my career…though I know it does happen. I just don’t see any way to avoid doing it the VR/360 space, because there’s such a clear need for it to support the immersion. We really do need the opportunity to start interfacing with production mixers for these projects…if we can ever get brought in early enough.