Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535806
44 S U M M E R 2 0 2 5 I C A S Q U A R T E R L Y DM: The constantly evolving workflow was a challenge, but also an opportunity in the sense that we didn't start on Episode 1 and finish chronologically with Episode 9 and call it a day. So we would do whatever we could on each episode and put it away and send it back to the sound editing team. As the visuals would come in, it would influence the picture part, and we would get the new conforms and then sound editorial would cut new sounds and introduce new ideas. As we put an episode up again, we'd already been through, for example, the next four or five episodes and were now circling back to it. What was your approach to the mix process for a show of this caliber? MM: Well, there was a beginning of, middle, and end to every episode, and we wanted to hit 'em hard and hit 'em soft. Everything had to have an arc. We wanted to be dramatic. We wanted it to be entertaining, informative, and heroic. All those things were in mind the whole time, and it was never just okay to level it out or EQ-match it up. It was never that. It was always about entertaining and telling the story. Every move that everybody made had that focus on it. It wasn't really mixing, it was creating. DM: The experience that Gary Goetzman, the showrunner and creator, allowed us to have was one of trust. We were really trusted to be professionals. We were able to take risks, make choices, and surprise him so that as he came to view different episodes, he was a fresh audience member himself, which really helped influence how he wanted to take things further. It also gave us the opportunity to try some interesting things. Sometimes the first time you try something can frighten away a director, but we were able to really dig into and try things that we could perfect and truly see if they're working to help the story. That was an opportunity that was incredibly unique and really special. I hope to have more like that for sure. We also learned more by experimenting and listening on the different soundbars and environments, so we were able to revisit the episodes and implement, adapt, and know that we still wanted to maintain a difference between each episode. That was a great challenge in and of itself to not make every air battle sequence feel the same as the last one. So we had to focus on what is the story and what is the threat for this battle sequence, and at times it may be like the flack and then the next episode is more about the enemy planes and then the next episode is more about the weather around them and the fact that they then had to travel with no fuel and all that sort of stuff. We also worked with a military advisor. We would be able to call them up and say this is happening in the show, in the story, at this time. Would we hear this kind of dialogue? Would this particular light turning on make a sound? Does it sound like an alarm or a siren when they go into battle? Different questions like that. We were learning those things, and in different episodes you'll be able to see things or just hear them and know what's going on. It was all about the authenticity and that was a keyword in that part of our directive. We weren't going to take creative liberty to just generate sound design. How did you approach mixing the gunfight scenes mid- flight? MM: Oh, it's kind of a poetry. It's kind of like moving up, down, and around and having a rhythm and a pace, and we're moving too fast. Here we get slowed down, so don't put this other effect here just yet, hold back. Don't hit the music here. Move that music so it hits here rather than there. Let's do a sustain here and suspend a moment, even if that moment is one second, it could be five seconds, too. It's a balance of all the elements to make it feel right. We also had to keep in mind that this was for streaming. It was a big Atmos mix, but it couldn't be an overly overwhelming Atmos mix that would play best in the theater. It had to play best on streaming. There is a difference. It's not one versus the other like one is better than the other, they're just different animals. So, the streaming mix had to be tight, probably a little tighter than it would've been for the theatrical mix. DM: Yeah, that was always really tough because dialogue is king. If there was a line of dialogue, we understood that from a story perspective you had to get out of the way to be able to hear what they were saying. So, while we're on the perspective of a big 50 cal firing right in the foreground, we may have a line of dialogue of that character or something over the radio that is key to story, so you have to get out of the way. You can't have something over the top of something important. There were times where, if the character is screaming or shouting, for example, we can blast right over the top of that, and it is effective for the story. It was all about making choices and peeling things away. We used Atmos as a tool to really help do that, where we could split things away into an overhead sound field and using all the surrounds to move the weight around the room. That helped when we needed to clear the front screen channels for dialogue. So we could move some of that heavy B-17 interior, but also really place the friendly or enemy ships or planes around us because that's key to the story as well—where is everyone at any given time? Sean, what was your approach to capturing ADR? SM: During the ADR, we had to remain faithful to the period in terms of the language being used and things like that. There were times when we came up against lines in the