MPSE Wavelength

off of a server. The resulting internet-based workflow from shifting the work to home "[was] kind of like taking a step back 15 years. You feel like you are kind of doing things underwater… It was very stressful, just as stressful as the fact that we're dealing with COVID, because you're feeling the weight of the project on you and no one has any answers." The stress was compounded by the fact that there was no assistant sound editor pool available to him so the workload of ingest, conversion, conforms, and disseminating materials to the team fell on his shoulders in addition to his supervising and mixing responsibilities. Megregian echoed the sentiment that in some cases, internet speeds dictated the timeline between editorial and mix. "That was kind of the weak link," he said. "I made sure that I let the editors know well in advance when we were planning on starting [the mix] so that we had at least two to three days for them to get material to the vault at Technicolor, so that the vault could then disperse it to the mixers [at home]." Working from home in Los Angeles, editors found themselves at the mercy of the available internet service providers at their home. "Everyone on my crew was running into the same problems with upload and download speeds and getting stuff to the stage," said Winter who changed service providers twice before deciding to upgrade his service to a business plan which afforded him faster download speeds with a slight, but necessary, increase in upload speed. Of course, the bandwidth from their ISPs was only one bottleneck. With all schools closed, and everyone now working from home, the competition of local bandwidth at home with online classes, Zoom conference calls, and simply binge-watching to beat boredom became tough to surmount. For the big data dump of sound rolls at the beginning of his new show, which began cutting in late March, Massey relied on the tried and true sneaker-net and drove to the studio for a PPE-clad hard-drive handoff. Unfortunately, Massey says that since then, "Every episode has had about five turnovers on average … so, you definitely have to plan for it. It's definitely become part of your day and so you do have to allocate time for it." But the most challenging issue for all the supervisors has been discovering reliable ways of recording ADR and Group and achieve the high level of quality that is expected on these A-list productions. Each approached the issue utilizing different methods. With a number of ADR cues needed in April, Babcock built a rig with a laptop that, through start-up items and the click of a single icon, remotely connected him to the actor's rig once it arrived at their location. Connected to the laptop, Babcock also shipped a Focusrite pre-amp wired to a short shotgun mic with a windscreen. While recording, the laptop securely ran an Evercast conference with all the necessary attendees who could hear the quality of the performance and the recording in the moment together. While about 70 percent of the cues were quite successful, the remaining 30 percent came with both sonic and technical challenges. Babcock qualified, "It still ended up in the movie because it had to. The things that they were replacing, they just didn't exist … it was a very crude way. A lot of people are doing it better now, but it was out of necessity." When Massey started on his current project in April, it was still extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get some talent recorded. Rather than push the issue with those actors in April, the production decided to hold off on shooting some of the first few episode's ADR until they begin to mix the final episodes sometime this fall. For his first "group session," Massey sent sheets directly to key loop group members who recorded their lines wild via their iPhones. Takes returned to Massey unlabeled with no metadata resulting in hours spent sifting through audio files and editing them together in time. Determined to find a better way, Massey employed The Virtual Loop Group who are able, through Source- Connect, to record 12 channels coming into their system with everybody in the group at home having their own rig as simple as a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and their own mic. Proud of the results, Massey claims, "When we're really rolling … it feels like it's a normal group session." When it came to ADR for the series, Massey found that he had 35 actors to shoot scattered across the globe. " When you watch a film, you are being hypnotized, lightly. And in a sense, you have leapt out of the chair that you are sitting in, into the screen, like Alice through the looking glass, and you're in that world." –WALTER MURCH

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• 02-03 TOC