Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1259912
52 S P R I N G 2 0 2 0 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y CAS Award Winner – Limited Series MEET THE WINNERS Chernobyl "1:23:45" by Devendra Cleary CAS After watching every episode of Chernobyl last year at somewhat of a "binge-worthy " pace, I grouped it all together as a captivating movie. These four sound mixers are being honored for episode one of this series, but I really feel it was a fine, single piece of moviemaking and it deserves to be thought of as such. From start to finish, this show displayed top-notch quality. It was a tremendous honor to meet some of the people who represent our craft that were responsible for this work. Mid-February was a different world and scheduling interview time with these colleagues across the pond was challenging with busy schedules in mind. By the time we all connected, the world had changed. Not a single person on Earth avoided being touched by the COVID-19 crisis. I couldn't help but take note of some of the parallels of Chernobyl and our current crisis, but that's an article for another time. For this article, I made contact with production mixer Vincent Piponnier, ADR mixer Gibran Farrah, Foley mixer Philip Clements, and re-recording mixer Stuart Hilliker. VINCENT PIPONNIER: Production Sound Mixer How did you first get into production sound mixing? I started to play with sounds when I was a teenager—with microphones and tapes. And as I am a guitar player, I started to play with pedals, etc. And then I started to study law—but after a lot of self-questioning, I decided to go into sound. I first wanted to work in music, but after my first film shoot, I decided to just continue in film. It was very interesting and a big discovery for me to be working on films. How did you get involved in the Chernobyl project? Almost six years ago, we worked on a series directed by Johan Renck. It was not so easy at first because Johan told me that he didn't like sound departments. It was the first day of shooting with a hundred days left, so the first contact was not very warm. After two or three weeks, our relationship changed a lot because he understood that we could work very fast. So, after the sound editing and mixing, he wrote me a very kind email and told me how much he liked our work on this series. And then he wanted to add the three of us for Chernobyl. Did you shoot all the episodes in a row or did you guys have breaks? It was 17 weeks. And, yes, no breaks. So, it was quite long. We filmed it Lithuania, mainly, but did two weeks in Ukraine. (L-R) Boom ops Nicolas Fejoz and Margaux Peyre with production sound mixer Vincent Piponnier.