Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1124770
47 Q2 2019 / CINEMONTAGE up with some sounds that would give a sense that the boys were struggling in an alien and very unfriendly environment. "This developed to include scene transitions from incarceration to freedom, and also emotional transitions for some of the other characters," the sound designer explains. "Since a lot of the story takes place within some context of the criminal justice system, I used cell doors, sirens, dark metal drones and things like that to create sounds that helped fulfill John's request." One of Tanis' biggest sound effects challenges came from the director's need to "hear a lot of the nearby but off-stage world from wherever we are," he explains. "If we are in an office, there are people down the hall doing things; if we're out on the street in Harlem, there are all kinds of layers and distances to make it vibrant and alive. The prison scenes are full of all kinds of voices. In effect, by having these full layers of detail, we cut the show a couple of times over." For the interrogation scenes during Part 1, and again during the solitary confinement in Part 4, Tanis developed some metal- and glass-based tones and swells that play very quietly in the mix, but suggest a sense of something uncomfortable. "There's just an edge to them that makes these scenes a bit darker and lonely," he says. "At one point, while still in solitary, the air conditioning goes out and the cell becomes a sweat box; the heat is intense and there's just no air coming in. I made some tones created from insect buzzes, and incredibly slowed-down metal impacts, to play up the heat aspect of the scene. Whenever the character touches something in his cell, which is basically all metal, there's a soft, low sizzle effect to play up the sense that everything he touches is burning. When the AC finally comes back on, there's a stream babble added to enhance the feeling that not just cool air is coming out, but that wet, lush, life-giving air is flowing again." In terms of plug-ins, Tanis elected to use his regulars. "Mostly they were used to create solitary confinement tones and 'heat' tones," he explains. "Some of the work was on creating the 'fear' tones for specific parts of scenes. Some of the gate buzzers, L train sounds and other things were sort of 'outdoor-ized' using Audio Ease Altiverb presets. A few things used multiple passes of several plug-ins to really push them into making a dark, foreboding presence." According to the sound designer, it was the time crunch to complete everything by deadline that proved the most challenging part of his job. "Both Ava and John had specific things they wished to bring out in the edit, in addition to all the regular things like wallas, cell doors, 1989-90 period things, etc.," Tanis reveals, and thanked his sound effects editors Mark Larry, Elliott Koretz, MPSE, Matt Wilson and Suat Ayas, MPSE. DIALOGUE GUIDES THE MIXING Given that dialogue intelligibility was of paramount importance, "It was vital for the audience that the dialogue was clear and present," re-recording mixer DeAngelis says. "After all, it's the vehicle by which the story is told. Principally, there are three ways in which we can protect the dialogue: volume, clarity and physical location. The production mixer was able to get us a fair bit of volume in some really tough situations, and that was quite valuable. I attempted to match angles from take to take with volume and EQ, as well as some subtle reverb. Once I got it in the ballpark, I'd use iZotope to clean out as much noise as I could without causing track degradation. It's really easy to overuse iZotope and I'm always double- checking the work to make sure I'm not digging in too hard. "Lastly, but importantly, we are fortunate to be able to mix When They See Us in Atmos, which lets When They See Us. Netflix