Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1152266
Will Poulter as Bandersnatch working out what needed to be done and what didn't need to be done, and that was an absolute lifesaver. I think it was pretty hard to do, to be honest, but to his credit, he just fed me what I needed to know and what I needed to mix, and then dealt with the rest. THAT'S A HUGE FEAT. I use backgrounds, even if not significantly identifiable on their own, to make a cut feel like it was a time cut versus a repeat of the same time or vice versa. An up-cut car or too repetitive office phone could change a scene significantly. So that type of detail, I would imagine, would be absolutely imperative for this type of work, because you really have to use the same part of the backgrounds in certain spaces and then make sure that you don't use that same part in other areas where you're moving through time. DOUG: That was the fundamental challenge of working on an interactive show; it is exactly what you've just described. Just making sure that the things that should sound the same, if you're in the same place or you're at the same time, as the action repeats, that the audio cues tell you that you're in the same place. They're not telling you that now it's nighttime or now you're in a different environment or whatever. It is a fundamental issue of making sure that, for example, every time that the computer crashes because our lead character is having a programming meltdown, that that sounds the same. All those kinds of details. And part of the thing that I would take from all of this is, okay, now we know the technicalities of what we have to deal with and how we're going to have to deal with it. That sort of frees you up then to focus back on the creativity behind it and how to tell the story as far as you can using sound and what the sound can do to help the narrative. IN PRODUCTION, WAS THERE ANY CONFUSION WITH DIRECTION? For instance, were the actors trying to either remain ambiguous as to what they were thinking of doing next so that the choice was more open for the audience or did everybody have clear motivations? It seems like that would be highly confusing as one set, you know what I mean? Because you don't know what you're alluding to in the scene. TIM: Yeah. Well, you would think so. I mean, the actors we were dealing with were so on the ball they weren't fazed by that at all. Obviously, it's hard work switching and changing and seeing subtle differences on what appears to be the same scene and slightly different actions. It was frustrating and a little bit confusing at times when something is almost identical—however, with subtle changes. But they were top-class actors and there wasn't really much of a problem. The rest of the crew had more of a struggle because [for example], the art department had to keep on top of it. Our sound team had to sort of be aware of all the different subtle dialogue changes [as well]. We really had to be on top of the script. Normally you would get, let's say, half a dozen pages for the typical Netflix drama. But with Bandersnatch, you'd get a big book of say, like, 30 pages. It was more or less the same scenes repeated but with subtle changes. It was a case of keeping on top of all that. HOW DID YOU IDENTIFY your reels and your audio files besides meticulously? TIM: Well, yeah, it's a matter of file management. So, what I would do is try and give as much information in the metadata, in the notes to sort of help, sort of ease that in the post- production stage. So yeah, I kept the scene numbering within the notes, which hopefully was used and could easily be sorted with a file manager. Allowing the dialogue editor to sift through and find which shot was supposed to match each choice variation. HOW BIG WAS YOUR TEAM ON THE SET? I believe you folks call them first