Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1277927
38 S U M M E R 2 0 2 0 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y Re-Recording Mixer Lisle Engle CAS on FX Mixing The FX side of the mix starts with a massive delivery of elements for sound effects, Foley, backgrounds, and walla. The track counts are roughly 256 for effects, 32 tracks for Foley, 96 for backgrounds, and 24 tracks of walla. In addition to the traditional effects, backgrounds, and Foley stems, I also prep an ALT stem where any walla tracks with discernable English in them are split off for the benefit of the M&E mixer. All of the editorial and design effects are done by the amazing Alex Pugh. How he is able to prepare all of the elements for such an incredibly busy show as Treadstone in a week is truly an amazing thing to witness. This group has done several shows together at this point, so I am very familiar with how everything will be organized and pre-dubbed on Alex's end. Setting up is then just a matter of playing a giant game of Tetris to pull all of the elements into their respective groups in the SFX mix template. I use eight main effects groups and four background groups, but nothing is exclusively dedicated to any specific type of sounds as there is so much going on in the show. We sometimes have to put things wherever we can shoehorn them in. We try to maintain as much continuity to the track arrangement as we can, but sometimes it's just impossible to make that happen. I do my first FX pass without hearing any dialogue. We usually do a quick level check at the top of the first day to be sure we are monitoring at 83 dB and Matt will play a couple of bursts of mixed dialogue so that I can hear where things are sitting. And then it's off to the races mixing separately. Some people may wonder how we do this and end up with a mix that holds up. Well, we've each mixed hundreds of hours of television and it seems to have become second nature to us at this point. Being able to work independently gives us both much more time to tweak and we usually can get through our first pass of the show by 3 p.m.—not always, but most of the time depending on how busy the show is (it's always busy). Then we do a playback for ourselves and address our own notes. That gets us ready to play back for Mace on day two. It's a highly refined dance between all the members of the team. We completely rely on each other's expertise and experience to be able to get through such a complex –LISLE ENGLE CAS " IT'S A HIGHLY REFINED DANCE BETWEEN ALL THE MEMBERS OF THE TEAM."