Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469840
34 S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y 34 34 34 S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y TELEVISION – ONE HOUR YELLOWSTONE S4 EP.1 "HALF THE MONEY" by PATRICK SPAIN CAS Yellowstone is a family drama that focuses on the trials and tribulations of the far away Montana town, Darby. The town's leading family, the Duttons, led by patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner), just happen to own and operate the largest cattle ranch in the United States. This comes, as one might imagine, with a great deal of long-term struggle, intrigue, and action! Case in point; this Season 4 premiere opens with a gunshot Costner belly-crawling across a highway in a pool of his own blood. What happens next can't be properly relayed with the word "shootout." You'll understand when you hear it! It was so remarkably put together that the show's audio mix team, production mixer Andrejs Prokopenko; re-recording mixers Diego Gat CAS and Sam Ejnes CAS; and ADR mixers Michael Miller CAS and Chris Navarro CAS, won this year's CAS Award for an hour-long television series. To get a sense of how it was done, I spoke with the show's re-recording mixers. [Andrejs, Michael, and Chris were unable to participate due to scheduling conflicts and turnaround time.] Honestly, I was shocked by the amount of gunplay at the top of this episode. Has that been par for the course on this show? Sam Ejnes CAS: Not that level. What's interesting about the way the episode starts is, it's an extension of how we ended the previous season. So, in the season finale, we see men breaking into Kayce's (the Dutton heir-apparent's) office and shooting up the desk. We see what happens to John Dutton to get him into that position on the road. And we pick up moments after that. Diego Gat CAS: The aftermath. Sam: Normally, we don't have a 15-minute run as the cold open, because, as picture editor Chad Galster put it, "I want to grab the audience by the head and just throttle them for 15 minutes until the main title starts and everyone realizes they haven't been breathing." Right! I counted; it was something like a minute and a half before a single word was uttered, and even then it was very cursory. It wasn't a conversation. Which was surprising to me because I was expecting a Lonesome Dove-slash-soap-opera-type situation. Which it sort of is, I guess, except for this particular scene. Diego: It's kind of the general structure of the show with a sprinkling of big action moments with either trucks, horses, or guns. Happening sometimes in pairs. Ha! Yes, when I was watching the show, I wrote down some quick impressions, which were: guns, trucks, a woman in shock. Sam, that's really heavy for you for this first 15. Did it take you longer than normal, or did they allot you extra time? Sam: We got a little bit more time because the episode was a little longer than usual, and it was the big return! The filmmakers all knew that it was important to get those first 15 really tight. A lot of work went into it before it even got to me, which made it much easier to work with. Our supervising sound editor, Jason King, took a pass through the guns. He's very "on" the gun stuff. He knows how to make that stuff punch, and he did a lot of good work that he was able to hand off to me. MEET THE WINNERS