Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/987065
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 8 39 What was the most challenging aspect of working on this show? The biggest challenge was in dealing with unfinished VFX. It's always a factor in VFX-led films or TV shows that, at some point, you'll hit a sequence which is unfinished. Keeping up with the VFX updates and keeping on top of the conceptual sound changes was challenging. But the results are clearly worth it. We now have a CAS Award to show for it amongst others. What was it like collaborating with the producers and directors of this project? Toby, Charlie, and [producer] Annabel [Jones] were great. Full of ideas, concepts, and enthusiasm for the process. Toby really drove the mix and always pushed to get the best out of us and our tracks. William Miller: Re-recording Mixer What is your background and what other shows have you worked on? I've been working at Twickenham Studios for the last three years as a mix technician. I have worked on movies such as Baby Driver, Murder on the Orient Express, and Alien: Covenant. More recently, I have been mixing, with credits that include Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars and Black Mirror Season 4. Both of these mixes received CAS Award nominations at this year's awards, with Black Mirror going on to win. How did you get involved in this episode of Black Mirror? We mixed all six episodes of Season 4 of the show here at Twickenham. So, between all the mixers here at the studio, we all had opportunity to work on a few episodes each. I mixed FX on two out of the six episodes in this season, "USS Callister" and "Hang the DJ." Please describe your workflow and any problems you encountered. My usual setup is a hybrid between Pro Tools mixing on a D-Command and console mixing through the DFC Gemini. I usually do all my premixing in Pro Tools and then have tracks coming up DFC faders for the final mix, along with a small amount of hardware, typically a Lex 960 and dbx 120A. On "USS Callister," I shared the FX mixing with my colleague Dafydd whilst Tim Cavagin mixed dialogue & music. Have you been surprised by the popularity of Black Mirror internationally and how the sound community is viewing your work on this project? I've been a huge fan of the show since it began on TV here in the UK. I'm not at all surprised how popular it has become. It's great to see it growing more and more with each season that gets made. We are all very proud of the hard work that went into making these episodes the best they can possibly be, and it's always a great feeling to have our work recognized by our peers in the sound community. Is there anything unique about this project's workflow or treatment? Even though this show would technically be regarded as TV, what is being made is more like mini-feature films. So, we took a more theatrical approach to this mix, which took place in our large dub stage, Theatre 1, here at Twickenham Studios. What was the most challenging aspect of working on this show? This episode involved a large amount of VFX, which wasn't finished at the time of the final mix. So, trying to imagine what the final VFX is going to look like whilst mixing FX was definitely a rather challenging aspect of the mix process. How much of the sound design for the creature vocalization was delivered from sound design and how much was created in mix? It was a mixture of both. Kenny Clark, the sound effects editor, had done such an amazing job creating the sound of the creature, but the character of these sounds did change quite dramatically throughout the mix process and went through a number of iterations. During the mix, Toby Haynes, the director, got in the ADR studio to record his own voice, along to the creature. Which we then re-pitched, re-speeded, and processed to combine with the animal vocalizations that Kenny had made. What was it like collaborating with the producers and directors of this project? Working with Toby Haynes was a fantastic experience. He had such great energy and vision for this episode and made us all work hard to achieve a fantastic mix for an epic episode. Charlie Brooker and Annabelle Jones were also a pleasure to work with. They have such a talent for creating a beautifully dark and thought-provoking show. It was a privilege to be able to collaborate with them and be part of a show I'm a huge fan of.