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SOUNDTRACK www.postmagazine.com 28 POST NOV/DEC 2020 or Hulu's new eight-part horror series Monsterland, the Foley team from Alchemy Post Sound (www. alchemypostsound.com) in Westchester, NY, was tasked with creating sound treatments for an assortment of grue- some creatures, ranging from a mer- maid, whose siren song causes a man to experience terrifying hallucinations, to an angel, who slits its own throat and soaks a couple in blood. Created by Mary Laws, the series has drawn raves from critics and been enthusiastically embraced by viewers for chilling tales that use para- normal events as a gateway for exploring human misery. The series' sound team was led by Ric Schnupp, who served as sound designer, supervising sound editor and re-record- ing mixer. Schnupp, who won an Emmy Award for his work on the documenta- ry Free Solo, faced a daunting task, as each episode is set in a different city and features a mostly-unique set of creatures and characters. Despite the challenge, Schnupp says the show's distinctive blend of fantasy, grit and drama opened the door to unusually creative sound work. "While the monsters are real, they are also metaphors for the internal struggles of the human characters," he explains. "For a sound designer, it was an opportu- nity to do something special and unique. What does a zombie sound like? Or a shadow? Mary Laws had a wonderful vision and gave us creative license to realize it…and we did." Key members of Schnupp's team included sound editor Craig Kyllonen, dialogue editor Mike Poppleton, sound effects editor Keith Hodne and ADR editor Jay Fisher. The mix was done at Sim, New York, and remotely at Schnupp's home studio. Schnupp turned to Alchemy Post Sound to create custom Foley sound effects. Foley sound is used throughout the series, but it plays an especially-im- portant role in breathing life into its supernatural creatures, capturing their idiosyncrasies and endowing them with just the right amount of malevolence, hideousness and otherworldliness. "I like to work with Alchemy on my projects because of the creativity they bring to the process," Schnupp says. "For this show, the Foley needed to be realis- tic, while also fantastical…not so fantasti- cal that you don't believe it, but also not too real. It was a fine line." Episode 6 of the series, "Palacios, Texas", centers on a fisherman who was disfigured in an accident related to an oil spill. He ends up falling in love with an- other victim of the spill, a mermaid who has washed up on a beach. This creature is a far cry from the sprightly female featured in The Little Mermaid. It is both mesmerizing and grotesque. It emits a siren song that captivates the fisherman while luring him into a nightmare. "The sound of the mermaid has many layers," Schnupp recalls. "She has a siren song that needed to sound seductive, a scream that needed to sound terrifying, a tail that needed to sound huge and forceful, and eating and chewing sounds that needed to sound guttural. While I created the scream and the siren song, the Foley was particularly useful for the chewing and the physical movements." HULU'S MONSTERLAND BY IAIN BLAIR F FANTASY, GRIT & DRAMA CALL FOR CREATIVE SOUND WORK Alchemy Post Sound created this mermaid's sonic signature.