Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535806
C I N E M A A U D I O S O C I E T Y. O R G 43 All cast members were fitted with lavs for all the non-plane footage, which worked very well. I had two team members dealing with booms and radio mics, Loveday Harding and Lee Grainge, who became very adept at getting the mics in great positions. There was also the problem with character identification. We had so many in the cast, all in green, all the same age, all with chiseled features. This was a big challenge. Loveday and Lee would have a book which had a per-day breakdown of who was on what. The sheer number of cast and area covered, especially at the airfield in Abingdon, was particularly challenging. I listened to real recordings of the pilots of the planes to understand what they would have sounded like. I had quite a complicated RF setup with up to four sets of Wisycom active fins sent to me by a French RF over fiber system. The problem at Abingdon was big TV transmitters to the hill. You had to be wary of which way you pointed the antennas, having to go much further to not be pointing at the TV masts. And some of the production took place during COVID. That must have introduced some challenges. Tim: Yes. Every day, about 1,300 people were tested for COVID over all the different sites, so there was a lot of waiting around for people to get the "all clear." This meant that we might not have a full sound crew to start the day with. We all wore thick N95 face masks, which were very hot in the summer months. By the time we got to the PoW huts, the weather had turned, and it was quite challenging just moving around the site, but we all got through it. How did you address the scenes with on-screen music? Tim: Well, since there was a fair bit of music to record, this brought its own challenges. We recorded them in situ and then shot them mostly to playback, with a few on location edits. I turned my regular kit van into a mobile recording studio which we could rig and de-rig very quickly. I used a Midas M32 console into Pro Tools, close miking with some loose mics, too. Michael and Duncan, were there unexpected challenges working on the show on the re-recording side? MM: Well, nothing was unexpected because we expected a lot of changes, and we expected VFX to be massively changing all the time, along with picture changing even if it wasn't the VFX portion of the film. Since we knew the story was going to be changing, we also knew the sound effects were constantly going to change and the dialogue was going to change drastically. We expected change—and change was incredible. We touched every single episode probably 20 times. L-R: Duncan McRae, Jack Whittaker, and Michael Minkler CAS Jack Whittaker capturing authentic sounds L-R: Michael Minkler CAS and Duncan McRae Sean Moher