Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535806
planted microphone. He said, 'This is garbage for the whole scene, except this one word, which I need it for.'" "I'll do my dialogue pass first, and I'll do my backgrounds and music at the same time [if they're available]. [Then] add in all the effects, then Foley, group, etc. I do a lot of quick passes rather than 'Let me get this scene perfect.' I get through everything fast, so I'm through the show, then I just keep refining." "There's a lot going on in those big cooking scenes where they're walking through the kitchen and things are on fire and pot tops are dropping. But we also get as granular as when there's a scene in the office with Richie and Sugar, which activity should play off stage." "We have conversations like, 'What would be happening here? It's 4 p.m., so they're done washing dishes but what would realistically and emotionally be going on?' I had one show last season where there were just too many forks going on off stage for the scene, so we replaced forks with a dishwasher. It's what would really be happening, and what sonically supports the emotion of the scene." He also appreciates and supports the work of his production mixer, Scott Smith. "I've never had a dialogue with a production mixer as much as I do with Scott. After Season 1, we talked about what we could do better. We had conversations with production about 'Can you break the wide with the boom?' The style of the show is primarily in close, so you're only going to use the wide shot once in the final edit. So, using VFX for the one- shot you use to visually take out the boom gives us good boom sound for the whole scene—we asked them to 'do the math.' Our post producer, David Woods, is very good about hearing us out, and that kind of collaboration is really nice." Production Sound Mixer Scott D. Smith CAS On how he started in the field: "I started in music before I got involved in film. My father actually owned a film processing lab, so I knew about the film business and had been exposed to it. A guy that I was working with in Detroit was doing mostly industrial and commercial work. I made a transition from commercials into making more films. I'm standing out wrapping cable at 4 a.m. in the middle of a blizzard and thought, 'This is not what I wanna be doing for the rest of my life.' The film business looked better." "My first film was a small movie in Detroit, Freedom RIP, with Bill Dear, who later went on to direct Harry and the Hendersons. My first big connection was with a little movie called Stony Island, directed by Andrew Davis, who went on to do The Fugitive [which Scott won a CAS Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Feature Films—the first year it was presented]. "The first episodic show I did was Crime Story. I got called for The Bear by a unit manager who I'd done a bit of work with. I thought this 'simple little kitchen thing' couldn't really be all that complicated!" (laughs) When asked about his approach when working with the cast: "I basically mic everything. On the actors, mics all over the set; one, two, and even three booms. Partly due to the overlapping dialogue, but also in large part, we just never know what's gonna happen." "We get very few rehearsals; they're basically just blocking, and even those are pretty rare. They're going for the energy of that first take, and everybody's okay diving in. They might do one take screaming at each other, and then the next one they're whispering. So, we basically try to second-guess things as best as we can in terms of levels and where to put L-R: Steve "Major" Giammaria CAS, Scott D. Smith CAS, and Rob Browning