MPSE Wavelength

50 I M PS E . O R G Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing Episodic Long Form – Music/Musical THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT "Adjournment" Netfl ix Music Editor: TOM KRAMER Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing Episodic Long Form – Dialogue/ADR THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT "End Game" Netfl ix Supervising Sound Editors: GREGG SWIATLOWSKI ERIC HIRSCH Dialogue Editor: MARY ELLEN PORTO ADR Recordist: ALEX STYLIANOU What was the biggest challenge you and your team faced? GREGG SWIATLOWSKI, SUPERVISING SOUND EDITOR: We faced numerous challenges, but the biggest was maintaining a full mix session through the entire editorially process. We started our sound edit as soon as the picture department began putting the episodes together. We worked side by side during post and constantly were conforming and updating our mix sessions and then bouncing back fully mixed stems for the cutting room to use while they continued editing the episodes. By the time we reached the fi nal mix for the series, all of the sounds had been vetted and approved by Scott Frank (our showrunner), so it was a little more than a playback to review. Why are the MPSE Awards important to you? GREGG: To be recognized by our peers speaks volumes to the hard work our team put in. It's an honor to be awarded by people who really know the amount of time and energy that gets put into a show such as this. Was there anything specifi c within the story that infl uenced your decision to take on this project? GREGG: Having worked with Scott previously on Godless, I knew any story he decided to tell would be something I'd want to work on. Initially, I wasn't exactly sure how a limited series about chess would be interesting, but after reading the scripts, I realized the show was more about human relationships and a woman's struggle in a male- dominated world—and chess was just a backdrop for that. How did the pandemic change the way you and your team worked on this project? GREGG: We had built the workfl ow around being very tightly tied to the picture department. We had set up a mix room in the same offi ce where Michelle Tesoro, our picture editor, was cutting. We'd pass material back-and-forth daily. When the pandemic hit, we didn't want to break the daily collaborative process, but with everyone shifting to their at-home workstations, we had to fi nd new ways to communicate and interact. We used a combination of Slack, Evercast, Zoom, PIX, and Aspera (among many others) to keep everyone moving and in touch. It's amazing how quickly everyone adapted and in the graveyard scenes could then be echoed by the other unseen lost souls inhabiting the purgatory landscape. To achieve this, we recorded the tail of each of his lines with all of our loop group and I then fed these recordings into sound toys, adding delays, bounce and reverb, creating a ghostly fl avour. We then layered these recordings up, panning the different stems around the room to create scale and immersion. Whilst we were all thrilled with how successfully we managed to realise the concept, we had a moment of realisation in the mix that it was one element too many in an already busy soundscape and ultimately removed it all.

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