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TV SeriesAudio for Big sounds for the small screen. By Brian O’Connor Talk to any television sound mixer and he’ll tell you how the march of technological progress has created new channels of opportunity, streamlined workflow and provided greater creative choices. But the same technology that has liberated so many sound mixers from anti- quated Moviolas and single stripe audio can pose a new set of chal- lenges, be it single-camera comedy, hour-long drama, or Emmy-winning musicals named Glee. COUGAR TOWN When correcting anomalies and adding sound effects,ADR and Foley to ABC’s Cougar Town, Universal Studios Sound’s (www.filmmakersdesti- nation.com) Paul Tade often performs a sort of sorcery — a power that would stir the envy of any Angelino who’s ever inhaled carbon monox- ide for lunch while stuck in Freeway traffic, which, for the sake of accu- racy, includes everyone in Los Angeles. “One of our sets is a dry dock for the character Bobby, for his boat, where he lives, and it’s actually a parking lot across the street from the studio,” says supervising sound editor Tade, a 20-year veteran of shows like Baywatch and Scrubs.“They shoot with a portable greenscreen so they can backplate it with a beach scene, and the object for me is to fil- ter out the West Side traffic noise and buses, and turn it into a beach scene, with seagulls and ocean noise and people playing on the beach. The main sets are meant to be residential,so we put in residential traffic, birds, children playing, lawnmowers and the occasional garbage truck, to denote an early morning scene.” Basic techniques used for either a comedy or a drama, to be sure, but with a single-camera show like Cougar Town, producers bring different expectations to the stage than they would with a multi-camera comedy. “In a single-camera comedy, it’s very rapid fire and there’s no room left for the imagination; they’re trying to get as much fun and comedy into 22 minutes as they can, so dialogue and music are featured more so than in an action drama, like a 24 or Lost.We have to make sure that no matter what goes on with music or sound effects, it doesn’t obscure the comedy and the storyline.” 26 Post • April 2011 www.postmagazine.com Joe Earle from Technicolor uses the Cedar DNS to clean up dialogue for Fox’s Glee. The show is mixed on ICONs.