CAS Quarterly

42 S U M M E R 2 0 2 1 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y Tap shoes seem like a very specific task. I would imagine that they're a hard thing to record since they must be so transient. How do you control that? We actually have a dance floor that was made for our work on Mary Poppins. We open that room up and Marko will sit and perform the scene! Then I take two, maybe three different mics to record the different perspectives of what is happening [on screen]. Also, I don't use any compression. I use different miking techniques to limit peaks and get a good recording. That being said, I don't like to record too much ambient noise, so I'll switch for one fader to another. And whenever there are different shots, say a medium shot to a close-up, I'm able to make the changes on the fly. If I'm late, we just roll back and punch it in. And when you are done with it, where does your recording go? It goes to our Foley editor and our supervising sound editor who look at it, approve it, and put it into re-recording mixer Ron Bochar's template. And in terms of that tap dancing shot, I think the happy outcome was a result of collaboration between everyone involved. Because the person at the end who has to put it all together is Ron, he does his magic and that's why the show sounds the way it does. DAVID BOULTON: ADR Mixer For this episode, with the scene in the Apollo, I would imagine that you did a ton of work recreating that environment. We did! Well, the way that we do stuff like that is we let the loop group actors record the first time they see [the footage]. In other words, they don't get any direction—we just want them to watch it and react like they would in the real world. So, you know, whether it's [Midge] in the little nightclub or at the Apollo, [we get a realistic reaction]. Was there a different approach between the small club and the Apollo? Well, just that I had 25 actors for the Apollo scene and had two days of group to get it done! You know, the different approach is the way I mic it. A little tighter for the intimate club and less so for the Apollo. And we always find out what mics they used on set [so we can find the same, or mimic what they were using]. Is there an overall approach you take to getting a good performance on the ADR stage? Is it setting a mood or is it technology; how do you go about it? It is setting a mood. But I also think it's being flexible to work the speed and style the actor wants to work in versus trying to impose my will. So, we do a lot of staying open after the cue and getting two or three takes in a row, or we do a lot of sampling. Sampling, what's that? [It's] the modern equivalent of old school looping. The term "looping" came from that fact that it was a physical loop of tape. So, you'd hear it, and there would be a blank piece of tape with the same timing, and the actor would say it. Now-a-days with Pro Tools, you can cut in a take to see if it will fit, where you were kind of running blind before that. But if you did enough takes, eventually you would find something. You know, in the immortal words of Mel Brooks, "Keep it light, keep it fun, keep it gay." STEWART LERMAN: Scoring Mixer What is your role on the show? I ask because I get the feeling it is a "multi-hat" situation, given the scope of the show. I am the music producer, which involves a ton of pre-records and a ton of live stuff. Depending on where or how we record, I engineer and mix everything as well; anything that involves new music. So, whenever the germ of an idea arrives, they come to me and say, "Here's the task at hand. Here's the scene." If it's something in pre-production or something we're doing while we are shooting, I'll go on set with the music and do that. Then there's the whole post-production [music] thing, which doesn't involve going on set. As they are editing, they might call for a piece of orchestral music here or a band to do something there. So, I'm kinda involved from soup to nuts. This particular episode has some big on-camera music moments. There's the club scene with the smaller band and there's the big number in the Apollo. There are two numbers in the Apollo! There's the tap dance thing and Shy's song. Those were very difficult. Listen, our director and show runner is really awesome and she's pretty adamant about recording in the space. If we're in a nightclub, let's try to record in a nightclub. If we're in a bar, let's do it. If we're in a concert hall, let's do it. In fact, at the beginning of this one, she sent me a message saying, "Don't try to talk me out of it!" That was risky; we only have so much time at the Apollo. Also, the Apollo is a union hall, so my team couldn't touch a cable! The technical part was I had to record it there. Typically, what we do is the night before we would record a master, and we would try to shoot to that master. But this was even more complicated because of the tap dance thing. Amy wanted it live; she wanted the band to play live. I spoke with David about that and it sounded really tough. Right! So, I need to record this sophisticated piece of music live, Scoring mixer Stewart Lerman

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