MPSE Wavelength

Spring 2020

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42 I M PS E . O R G SOUND EDITING for Quibi BY ERIC MARKS MPSE EM: As you were beginning work on the show, did you communicate with supervising sound editors on other Quibi shows that were already in post production? How much knowledge share was there in terms of how best to approach the new format? MD: I didn't reach out to supervisors who work on other Quibi shows. With our mix and creative team, we discussed translation between devices. The main concern was about the translation of the mix on cellphones since we were mixing primariy in a 7.1 format on a large stage at Deluxe. I had the pleasure to work with re-recording mixers Colette Dahanne and Brad Zoern on this show. They had recently fi nished working on a Facebook Watch series called Sacred Lies, where they had experience working on a primarily mobile-viewing format. Facebook Watch shows have a dialog norm at -18 dB LKFS. I think it really helped us to have Colette and Brad's confi dence in how their mixes would translate to the mobile format. That was huge. After the end of the fi rst day of pre-mixing, we sent out the stereo mixes for everyone to listen to so that we could get instantaneous feedback on how the mixes were translating on people's phones. The creative team got to hear how things were translating early on in the mix, and that really helped us narrow in our focus for the remainder of the mix. One thing about this show was that we apporached the mixing schedule similar to a traditional feature fi lm. We did four straight days of pre-mixing, and then we did a playback day with Veena Sud, the creator of The Stranger, where we reviewed all of the episodes. Then we had about a week off as they were fi nishing up some of the visual effects shots. We came back and did one more day of updating the mix for vfx changes and addressing notes based on phone playbacks. In between those playback days, the sound department and creatives were able to go back and listen to the mixes on iPhones, different Android phones, and headphones. It really helped us on the last day to have that time in between mix days for people to test the phone playback. Usually you don't have the fl exibility of having mixed something and then having a week off before coming back to it. EM: Back before you started work on the show, what were you most looking forward to exploring? MD: I was excited about fi nding effi ciency in storytelling with sounds. There isn't as much range in dynamics or frequency to play with on cellphones as you would get when designing primarily for a larger speaker system. So it was a challenge in being effi cient with sound in storytelling, and realizing ERIC MARKS: We're joined today by Marcello Dubaz, supervising sound editor for The Stranger on Quibi. Marcello, what were your initial conversations like with the head creatives on this show? Did the format come up at all when chatting early on about sound? MARCELLO DUBAZ, SUPERVISING SOUND EDITOR: Defi nitely. One of the main focuses of the initial discussions we had was about the need to mix it in 7.1, but also to be able to play back on phones. We talked a lot about the Quibi delivery spec, which initially outlined an Atmos delivery. We ended up mixing it in 7.1, 5.1, and LTRT stereo.

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