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March 2013

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this absolute craziness and all hell breaking loose, with burglars, cops' sirens. Mad-action type stuff." POST: What about ADR and Foley? NORTH: "There was a lot of ADR with dialogue, because the fight scenes and car chases are mostly shot MOS. We also had to do ADR for accents because of the many different nationalities of our actors. And there is tons of Foley work because of the MOS fight scenes. It's them running around jumping on cars, and tackling each other." POST: Can you talk about some of the challenges you were faced with? PONSDOMENECH: "It's a four-day mix for us, so we spend two to three days mixing, depending on the episode, and the rest in playback and fixes. It's a very big undertaking in terms of scope and size physically of the show, meaning it's a lot of tracks to sort through. There is a lot of music, and progressively in the series it becomes a bigger player. It's a big wrangle. "There was the challenge of keeping it real for me before I came to the realization that it's essentially a graphic novel/comic booktype of a deal, so it switches to something incredibly over the top. That's a big challenge as well — hyper reality." POST: Can you provide an example from an episode? NORTH: "The beginning of Episode 4 is basically an eight-minute chase scene, where there is a little bit of fighting, there's some gunfire, there's cars, there's foot chases and a lot of that was MOS. Those types of scenes are challenges because you are piecing it all together. We built it all from scratch. Then you have scenes where there is a lot of stuff going on aside from the initial action on screen. We've shot a lot of extra lines for secondary characters off screen to keep them alive. That is a different challenge as well." POST: You must start off with quality production sound. NORTH: "I have to give credit to the production sound team. The production mixer is Mason Donnahoe and Kellen Bloomer is sound utility. For example, in one episode, there was a massive fight scene that goes on throughout the entire show. Those sounded so good that all we did was sweeten it a little bit with a couple of effects to make it a little bit bigger, and a little bit of Foley to fill it out, but it was so well recorded that it played almost by itself. They have their challenges: there were six characters in a creek doing the fight scene while doing principal dialogue." PONSDOMENECH: "The bugs are a challenge in those environments, too. There are lots of cicadas. There are times when it's either difficult or has to be wrangled and not usable because of that, but they do a very good job. The majority of what we get sounds really good. We are lucky that the replacement stuff that is recorded is prepped really well. Brad does a great job and gets that stuff to us in good shape. We are able to match it very well. There are episodes where you would be hard-pressed to figure out what's original and what isn't." POST: It seems like you guys act as a well-oiled machine. PONSDOMENECH: "We are very much on the same page filmmaking-wise in that we listen to each other, and we listen to the directors and our associate producer, Allen Palmer, who is a great translator of what they've done on the set, to Brad, me and Bill. It gives us a really good sense of what the goal is filmmakingwise, which is arriving at a common Scenes featuring the Amish are filled with serene sounds. concept and propelling the story." POST: Can you talk about the gear you use? NORTH: "I am on Pro Tools 10. Luis has a 5.1 system for his design work. Tiffany Griffith and I have the basic dialogue systems. We were not only ISDN for ADR to North Carolina, but we also used SourceConnect, an Internet-based system, which is becoming very popular now." PONSDOMENECH: "We mix on a Harrison MPC-4D film console with 100s of inputs. We source everything from Pro Tools on the stage, and have multiple systems for that — a dialogue system, a music system, a very large effects system that carries effects and Foley, a picture system and a recorder system. The Harrison has the ability to control Pro Tools through a HUI layer. Bill Freesh mixes all the backgrounds in Pro Tools via the HUI layer. We then integrate that through the Harrison and he mixes the rest of his material — the Foley, the hard effects, as well as the dialogue and ADR on the Harrison. "I handle dialogue, ADR and music primarily on the Harrison, though some noise reduction and tone elimination I do directly in Pro Tools. We have the capability to mix things right into Pro Tools, taking advantage of those plug-ins and effects processing if we choose. Outboard gear includes a TC Electronic TC6000, which I use for dialogue, and a Cedar DNS1000 for noise reduction. On the plugins side for dialogue, I love Izotope RX. If I had it my way, I would walk these guys an Emmy myself. We use that for noise removal, ticks, snaps and crackles. "There is some analog in our chain because it sounds fantastic. Focustrite Reds, and the Dolby CAT 430. Plus a Lexicon PCM96 surround for room treatments of source music. ADR mics are Neumann TLM 103 and KMR 81, along with a Sennheiser MKH 50." www.postmagazine.com Post0313_016-17-in the mix2MLV4finalread.indd 17 Gunfights and fist fights offer the audio post team myriad creative options. Post • March 2013 17 3/1/13 1:31 PM

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