Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1383074
Lawrence Manchester: I grew up in Maine, playing and studying music all through high school and enrolled at the Peabody Conservatory of Music for college, where I pursued music performance and recording engineering. My internship at NYC's Power Station got my foot in the door of recording music professionally. I eventually found my way into the world of film music, working with composers John Corigliano (The Red Violin), Elliot Goldenthal (Frida), Howard Shore (The Departed), Danny Elfman (The Girl on the Train), and Carter Burwell (Howl). Upcoming releases include The Woman in the Window and Steven Spielberg's West Side Story. In addition to recording and mixing film music and Broadway cast albums, I am the music mixer for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on NBC. How did you come to be attached to The Queen's Gambit? What was your approach? Leo: I became associated with The Queen's Gambit by having worked as an editor/designer on [creator] Scott Frank's previous series Godless. From the start, my focus was on sound effects and design. Early into the project, after watching rough cuts and taking notes, I knew that my goal for the show was to audibly reflect Beth's world and really bring to life everything encompassing her journey that we see on screen, like her roller coaster of internal struggles and maintaining an "aged" '50s, '60s feel. We knew right away that we wanted to spend as much time as possible mixing each episode. The most significant factor to our success in accomplishing this was the ability to go back-and- forth on sound concepts with the picture editor early on in the post process. We were getting sound approvals on heavy design moments (ceiling chess, flashbacks, chess matches, etc.) well before we hit the final mix, allowing us to really dial in and make the most out of each episode. We took this approach when working together on Godless and knew it would prove effective again for The Queen's Gambit. Eric: I was on the show very early in the process; from the initial turnover of the sound rolls before the picture assembly had even been completed. Having the mix run the entire length of the post-production process allowed us to always be working toward the completed soundtrack and never forced the director and editor to have to listen to temp material that they knew would be replaced. It's also a job where there was a very blurred line, if the line existed at all, between editing and mixing. Wylie Stateman likes to say that the mantra is "always be mixing, always be editing," and as a result, we could start thinking about the creative vision for the sound while the picture department was cutting. We basically had a small mix stage (Avid S6, 5.1 speakers, and a projector and screen) set up down in the picture department. This was so Scott Frank and [picture editor] Michelle Tesoro could always be listening to the sound in its proper environment. And since their cutting room was steps away, they could very quickly use the insights they gained from watching the cut in our mix room to make further picture changes. We were all on the picture department's Nexis share system, so that streamlined the process of turnovers significantly; we didn't have to spend time