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EMMY CONTENDERS 100 Foot Wave The HBO docu-series 100 Foot Wave returned for its second season in April, with stops in Portugal, Hawaii and California, where big-wave legend Garrett McNamara and his surfing peers pushed the bound- aries of the sport. These extreme athletes lead an unpredictable lifestyle in which big waves affect their personal stories. The show uses a mix of intimate in- terviews, verité scenes and personal archives, as well as aerial, surface and underwater footage. Keith Hodne served as supervisor sound editor on the program, which spanned six hour-long epi- sodes in Season 2. "100 Foot Wave is by far the most intense proj- ect the team and I have worked on," says Hodne. "When (executive producer) Chris Smith showed me the footage for the first time, I knew it needed to be set in reality, but cinematic at most times. You don't just pull 100-foot waves from a sound effects library! The biggest challenge was to create a sonic villain, that grows with twists and turns, and has emotions, essentially from scratch." Hodne says the team began by recording waves at Rockaway Beach in both the morning and night using a Zoom H4 360 ambisonic recorder. "We converted them down to 5.1 .wav files and then manipulated these sounds to all heck in Pro Tools with plug-ins, like Reformer Pro, Lo-Fi, Lowender (and) other saturation plug-ins." In addition to adding layers of wind, avalanche and sub frequencies, the team introduced rain- storms and cat hisses to help on the high end. "Anything to help create the character of the wave," he explains. "In the end, it was about 40 layers of effects with our manipulated ambisonic recordings of the beach. We tried to manipulate the tone and texture of the wave, and for it to evolve as the story evolves." When cuts were handed over in Season 1, they were empty, with the exception of dialog and mu- sic, Hodne recalls. "For Season 2, I delivered mono and stereo ef- fects that were banked from Season 1. The picture editors used some of that to cut [and] give us a head start. My team of effects editors and sound designers then created all else that you are hearing." Sound effects included jet-ski engines, water lands and sprays, a mix of skis on snow and in water, manipulated wave and water sounds, explosions and animal roars, Foley'd neoprene for wetsuits, and ambiences from each surf location. Moonage Daydream Neon's Moonage Daydream is a documentary fea- ture about David Bowie, who passed away in 2016. The film gets its title from Bowie's 1972 song of the same name, and features unreleased footage from the performer's personal archive. Brett Morgen wrote, directed and produced the feature, which received Emmy nominations for Directing (documentary/nonfiction), Picture Editing (nonfiction), Writing (nonfiction), Sound Mixing (nonfiction), and Sound Editing (nonfiction/reality). David Giammarco served as the documentary's sound effects re-recording mixer, working along- side dialogue and music mixer Paul Massey. "As the sound effects mixer, my tasks were to take all sound effects, background ambiance and crowd tracks, and build a spatial acoustic space for the project," Giammarco explains. "Our direc- tor, Brett Morgen, wanted this soundtrack to be completely immersive — a soundtrack that would support the vivid imagery and David Bowie's phil- osophic and introspective narrative — something that would make Moonage Daydream a truly-pow- erful experience." According to Giammarco, the director reached out to Massey after he heard a concert sequence of the IMAX mix of Bohemian Rhapsody, which he had mixed a couple years prior. That concert mix was the sound that Morgen was after. Massey assembled a team that included su- pervising sound editors John Warhurst and Nina Hartstone (from Bohemian Rhapsody), then brought Giammarco on board to mix the sound effects. "We mixed the film natively in Dolby Atmos, and then mixed 7.1, 5.1, stereo and IMAX versions," Giammarco recalls. "Paul mixed the dialogue using a combination of a Harrison MPC5 console and a Neve DFC console, with the music mixed through the Neve DFC. I mixed the sound effects and back- grounds with an Avid S6 console. Pro Tools was used for our playback machines and our recorders." Some of the documentary's biggest challenges came early on. The team was used to mixing narra- tive features, so their approach to tackling this film seemed simple enough — start working through the tracks, like any other project, collaborate with the director and follow their instincts. "Then, Brett pushed us beyond all those safer plac- es, and we celebrated the excitement of taking the soundtrack to places beyond where we might nor- mally go," notes Giammarco. "That meant exploring the freedom of taking sounds that might normally be played on-screen and moving them all around the studio. The acoustic space was to be completely utilized. Embracing that ideology gave the feeling that there were no rules, no mistakes, only oppor- tunities. Paul did that with the music and dialogue, and I did it with the sound effects. It opened the film sonically and gave it space and dimension." Giammarco says the whole film is special to him in that each moment is creative, exciting and thrilling. "Throughout Moonage Daydream, Bowie's iconic music is proudly presented, with sound effects and sound design weaved into the fabric of the film to create a perfect union, to the point where I can't imagine the songs without the sound design accompanying it."