Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469840
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y I S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 41 for there's this old [Avid] Reverb One plugin that has a setting called "Schoolyard," and I tell everyone about it. It is in my opinion, the best-sounding exterior reverb slap combo out of everything I've ever used. It's very old [and] probably a legacy plugin. It's just so old but I use it all over Ted Lasso, especially in the soccer stadium. It's got just the right amount of echo, slap with verb, and it really just has things sit real good in the mix. Brent, can you talk about your tools? Brent: From a remote ADR mixing standpoint, we were looking for a solution that we could give to the actors to set up their own home vocal booth in their walk-in closet or bedroom, etc. So, actors are not necessarily engineers. Very creative people, but they don't necessarily pick up the details of hardware quickly like engineers do. We needed something that was easy to use but still could pull off the quality that we needed without having to be very complicated from a technical standpoint. The Apogee MiC Plus became really easy for the talent to understand. It is its own audio interface and it could plug into an iPhone. I mean the iPhone is a decent digital recorder. So, the Apogee has a great analog-to-digital converter built in, and now it's just ones and zeros into an iPhone. So, you just ship one of those things to each actor that you want to do home ADR with, and they Zoom call you, and you walk them through it? Brent: Yeah, we built a kit. A nice, solid tripod stand, a reflection filter included with that kit because we weren't sure what their environments were. The MiC Plus, the adapters fit on the stand, a set of headphones, pop filter and took a picture of that and kind of drew a little diagram around it so they could open up the kit in a Pelican case, set it up, and in pretty short order be good to go. [Actor] Hannah [Waddingham] was probably the only one that cursed me out for having too many cables and things—in a fun way. She said she opened the box and said, "What did you send me?" And then, "Oh, okay. It's not that bad!" Did you record ADR remotely because of COVID or was it also because of the distance that you are from the actors? Brent: Strictly because of COVID. I mean, everything was locked down. I feel like, even though stages are opening up, we've kind of established this and we were able to pull it off. It's not good for everything. I will defer to a mixing stage. I'll take people to Jamison's stage in a heartbeat over trying to do it in their closet. Ryan: There was never a moment where we were in here saying, "Oh, this ADR is not great." The ADR we were getting was fantastic. Any re-recording dialogue mixer will tell you how much of a struggle it can sometimes be to get ADR to sit in the mix, but the stuff we were getting, it was amazing that it was done under the circumstances that it was because it sounded like a lot of the ADR that I get from ADR stages. And I think that just having to reinvent the wheel, which is what Brent had to do, lent to a really great product in the end. Next up is Jamison. Tell us about your facility. Jamison: I've been very lucky over the past two years in that I haven't really had to do the remote thing. That's amazing what you guys have pulled off, and I know how hard it is. In the very beginning of COVID, I had to work on a production where I would screen share into the actor's computer and have to control their preamp from there. You still blow it out sometimes because you're also looking at a script and you have to figure out what's coming. I was lucky that it was a pretty standard-issue ADR stage. I believe for the principal stuff I shot, it was an MKH 50, unless there was another request, and a DPA lav. I was lucky to be able to do that on a stage with the COVID protocols and everything. Then, for the loop group stuff, MKH 50's in every room. My favorite mic, by the way. You're having to control what a room sounds like, particularly if you're trying to get exterior sound, which we do a lot of in this show and that MKH 50 just kind of blows my mind in how well it controls a room. And in the loop group stage, I was running those MKH 50's in these X2P boxes. Focusrite makes these Dante-enabled boxes so I have all the control of those 11 rooms, basically, from my control room. And that's kind of a preamp and a Dante interface. It's a ton of fun to do just because of the tech there. Arno, what about your Foley kit? Arno: We use Neumann microphones. Our main close mic is Re-recording mixer Sean Byrne CAS