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EMMY CONTENDERS www.postmagazine.com 31 POST JULY 2016 that scene. Those two were some of my favorite moments creatively. It was great to see these ideas through, from concept to mix, since so many times these kinds of concepts never make it into the show, or the movie, for a multitude of reasons. This episode had two very interesting moments that we were able to actualize," he says. An Emmy for sound editing also includes Foley and ADR. On the Foley side, Buchholz worked with Foley artist Adam DeCoster and Foley mixer Andrew Morgado. Buchholz notes the scene in which Elliot and Shayla Nico (played by Frankie Shaw) are seated together in a Dominican restaurant when kidnappers violently grab Shayla. "There was some really great production sounds there but they were all over the production dia- logue. Adam and Andrew worked very hard to get that same generic, hollow aluminum type chair sound, to get all the chair scrapes and bumps, and all the grabs to make sure it fit. The production sound was so great, so violent, and that was hard to duplicate," says Buchholz. He gave a crash down of the production effects to DeCoster and Morgado to work against on stage so they could match the tone of the production sounds. "It's so seamless that you can't really tell the difference between what they shot on the Foley stage and what we were able to use from production." DeCoster and Morgado were also responsible for all the footsteps, includ- ing those of the fleeing inmates. "You have one guy performing an entire prison break's worth of footsteps, but that's really just par for the course for the great Foley artists in this town," says Buchholz. In ADR for Episode 6, Buchholz reveals their biggest challenge was building an off-screen conversation where Darlene (played by Carly Chaikin) flirts with a police officer to distract his attention from Elliot, who is hacking the patrol car's com- puter. "It was really difficult because we weren't replacing anything that was re- corded in production," says Buchholz. "We were actually creating a conversation in post to play during that scene. We didn't have the two actors in the room together, so we just shot tons of takes with different inflections to try to have one person play off the other." Very rarely does Mr. Robot use ADR for technical reasons since Sam Esmail (the show's creator/writer) is particular about making sure that the performances given on the day are the ones that make it to air. To prepare the production dialogue for the mix, Buchholz says they start with the FabFilter Pro-Q 2 and notch out any offending frequencies. Then, if necessary, they go for more surgical tools like iZo- tope RX Advanced. "ADR is one of those things that we use only in an absolute to- tal no-other-option scenario. So you have a creator who does not care too much for ADR and the challenge of creating an entire scene in post using ADR lines. We had to script this whole thing happening off-screen, and it was really tricky to make that play naturally." BETTER CALL SAUL There are series spin-offs, and then there is AMC's Better Call Saul — a story so compelling it wouldn't even need to eventually link up with Breaking Bad's storyline. After two successful seasons, Better Call Saul has won eight awards and earned 34 nominations, including an Emmy nomination last year for outstand- ing sound mixing. Series re-recording mixers Larry Benjamin (dialogue and mu- sic) and Kevin Valentine (sound effects, backgrounds, Foley) at Smart Post Sound in Burbank, CA (smartpostsound.com) se- lected Season 2, Episode 10, titled "Klick," for consideration this time around. In "Klick," there are two key oppor- tunities to play with sound in terms of the mix. First, Chuck (played by Michael McKean) suffers a collapse in a photocopy store and his brother Jimmy (played by Bob Odenkirk) rushes him to the hospi- tal — unfortunately for Chuck since he has an incapacitating fear of electricity. As Chuck is being wheeled down the hospital hallway under the flashing glare of overhead lights, the viewer gets a taste of his delirious state. Music, vocal effects and sound effects swim around the sur- rounds in a sonic stew, portraying Chuck's craziness. For the dialogue processing, Benjamin created two-channel mono copies of the line or breath he wanted to treat. Then he panned each copy to a different point in the surround setup, and effected each copy differently, using tools like Avid's ReVibe, Waves Morphoder and MetaFlanger, Serato's Pitch n' Time and Soundtoys Crystallizer. "Larry [Benjamin] does really great work with the dialogue," says Valentine. "For the most part, the dialogue is delivered to the stage unaltered from how it sounded on the set and Larry has the delight of processing the bejesus out of the stuff." On the effects side of the board, Valentine got to craft a three-minute dialogue-free sequence in which Mike Ehrmantraut (played by Jonathan Banks) is posted in the desert, sniper-style, pre- paring to take a shot at Hector Salamanca (played by Mark Margolis). The sequence is built with long shots and Mike's POV. "The sound plays a critical role in terms of informing us how the car horn is treated, and the cicadas and when the ambience comes in," explains Benjamin. Valentine adds that it was important to have just the right treatment of the bugs, and to have the bugs stop and start de- pending on the gunshot. He credits super- vising sound editor Nick Forshager, owner of Wild Tracks, with delivering thoughtful- ly executed sound design and effects to the dub stage. "Nick does such a great job of hitting all the little details. For example, we see a close-up of a paper target and we see this tiny little tab of paper fly out when the bullet hits it. There are sounds for all of that," says Valentine. Valentine and Benjamin mix Better Call Saul in 7.1 surround using an Avid ICON D-Command. "Of all of the shows that we've worked on over the years, there have been no better collaborators than Vince [Gilligan] and Peter [Gould]," Benjamin says. "They really encourage us to experiment and have fun with the show." Smart Post Sound's Benjamin and Valentine (below, L-R) partner on Better Call Saul.