Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1277927
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I S U M M E R 2 0 2 0 37 makes total sense to work this way. Lisle, as he is mixing backgrounds and FX, needs the physical space of the room so, for him, mixing on headphones would be ineffective. It makes more sense for me to be on headphones as most of my elements are dialogue-driven. As we are not stopping, starting, and waiting for the other one to catch up, this simultaneous workflow allows us to work more efficiently and get through more footage in pre- dub—leaving more time to final. Always a bonus! On day one, we like to be left alone to do our thing. Supervising sound editor Mace ensures all editorial is on stage and allows us to get on with it. We've mixed a lot of shows with Mace and have a great trust for each other. Jake Zuckerberg from Warner Bros. engineering would ensure the stage was pinked and ready to go and Greg Ortiz (and later Rick Santizo) would pull elements from the server and any remote links (from, say, the music editor Dan Raziel). Lisle and I are both very hands-on mixers, so we import and build our own sessions rather than have the stage mix tech do it. I like to know what I'm going to be faced with each mix, so I import all my tracks from editorial. This way, I get to see what I have and if I need to re-map anything. Our basic goal is to get through pre-dubbing everything by mid-afternoon on day one. I generally have 20 tracks of principal dialogue, 20 tracks of ADR, 30 to 40 tracks of group ADR, and about 40 tracks of score and source music. It's a lot to get through in six or so hours. That time is spent very concentrated. And on a show like this, that means it's also very loud! I actually have double- thickness ear pads that I sourced for my stage headphones, which help isolate what is going on around me a little more when there's constant gunfire at 83 dB! I am a big iZotope fan, I love that company. The way they've helped change dialogue sculpting is incredible. My go-to is Dialogue Isolate. Because the location production sound was recorded all over the world, on occasion, we had some pretty noisy exteriors. The dialogue was superbly cut by Jivan Tahmizian and always had a very consistent noise floor and great fill. But the best plugin in the iZotope arsenal has to be Spectral Repair. I can go in and remove bird chirps, low-frequency hums, high- frequency 'singing' of production lighting—and all those ticks and bumps we had to live with before. ADR. Well, this came in from all around the globe. Some good, some not so much. I have a couple of go-to practices I like to do with ADR as it's, for sure, the toughest and most challenging part of mixing. I usually have about seven reverbs on busses and then a bunch of offline plugins to help me. For me, it's all about putting those room reflections back in that get lost on the ADR stage. Miguel Rivera worked alongside Mace in capturing ADR from around the globe and ensuring that we got the performances we needed to get us close to matching. If the performance is there, we can usually get things pretty close to the original production sound with all the tools we have these days. We had a great score by Jeff Russo. It just worked perfectly for this show, which meant pre-dubbing and final-ing was so much smoother. The score worked with the action when it needed to and let it breathe when required so it didn't become fatiguing. Live strings were recorded at Warner Bros. Eastwood Scoring Stage and really helped bring the show to life, giving it a more theatrical sound. We also had a lot of needle-drop source music in the show and much of that was diegetic. I'm a huge Speakerphone [plugin] fan, so this is my go-to for putting music in a 'space.' By the end of a pretty full day one, we have the last few hours to come together and put everything up on screen. Lisle and I have a very similar mixing style and sensibility, so we have a pretty good idea where the other is going to be. We'll roll through the first part of the show before heading out for the day. Day two is our day with Mace. We have the morning to roll through the show, just myself and Lisle, referencing the temp tracks to ensure we are not missing any moments that the producers will be looking for. After lunch, Mace has his playback and we get into his fixes. Day three is "Producer Day," which usually starts out with source music and VFX updates that have come in last minute. We'll then have playback with co-producer Steve Welkie to address his notes and then another playback with executive producer Ben Smith and other associated producers, as well as the network. It was a very collaborative process with Ben. He'd come to the stage and we'd listen to source music ideas together and just try stuff to see if it worked. And if it did, it went in. I'd have to say that the best part of this show was the crew. It was a mad schedule and challenge to get this huge show ready in three days. But with such a well- versed and experienced crew and being on such a great stage, it was worth it. " OUR BASIC GOAL IS TO GET THROUGH PRE- DUBBING EVERYTHING BY MID-AFTERNOON ON DAY ONE." –MATT VOWLES CAS