Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1535880
70 M PS E . O R G always impossible to do except for maybe some random close- ups. So, knowing that post needed flexibility to recreate the sound of the performance in the room, we would always mic our actors with lavs. After the first season, when we realized how much stand-up and musical performances there would be, we had almost all the vintage mic shells retrofitted with modern-day Shure lavalier mic elements. So, we had those too, but we couldn't always rely on them as primary sources because many times the actors would move the stage mics in a way where their voices would go off access as they turned their heads or stepped further away or even closer. I spent a lot of time trying to smoothly mix the transitions between the lavs, which I would need when they went off access, and the mics on stage because there was a lot of back- and-forth between the two. Also, sometimes mic handling noise, squeaks, and creaks would be a problem. But Ron did like a lot of that because he felt it gave a lot of character. One last note: Amy told me from the beginning, "I do not want any ADR." That was my marching order. DB: Thank you, Mathew. Amazing work. So next, all your production tracks get synced to dailies and sent over to editorial, and the episode gets assembled (I'm condensing, obviously). Ron, where does it go next? RB: Sarah! [laughs] The first thing we always got is the picture and guide tracks—dialogue, music, and effects. They also gave us an AAF, which is basically a breakdown of all the audio in their Avid. That's what Sarah got first, sorted through it all, and then distributed all of that to the crew in a way that we all are able to understand it. S. Streit (assistant sound editor): For dialogue turnover, of course, Mathew had recorded all those tracks, but the picture editors never edit with all those, they didn't like all that noise in their sessions. So, when I got the episode, there were usually just one or two mics in their sessions, and I had to go back and find all the mics again and put them where they 're supposed to be so that we can actually edit them. DB: And did you manually reassemble the multichannel audio, or did you use Kraken, Edi- load, or another software? S. Streit: Actually, I just did it in Pro Tools, which will grab all the mics. However, the way they made the dailies, well ... they weren't in sync, so I had to sync them all by hand. I had to go back to Mathew's original files, which still have all the metadata. The track layout remained pretty consistent though. For example, for dialogue, track one is always Mathew's mono mix track. Track two was always the boom. Track three was always Midge, or the main character in the scene, and so on. And then it went over to Sara for editing. S. Stern (DIA editor): First, I'd see how long the episode was and check how many hours I had budgeted to do it. Usually, I had to pace out at about one hour of editorial time per minute of dialogue. Mrs. Maisel is very fast-paced and the scenes were very short; often only about one minute each. So, a lot of the time I'd just go for a scene per hour. Next, I'd listen to what Mathew's mix track sounded like, to see what they were used to hearing and follow his lead. I'd fill out a scene with the boom and then I'd cut in all the lav mics, and do any little fixes. One of the big issues again with the dialogue was that they're talking at such a rapid clip that you may not hear the dialogue clearly in the boom and sometimes you don't even really hear it in the lav! In those cases, we had to find alternates to fill in some vowels and consonants or swap out words here and there. As I cut, I'd flag all the spots where I wanted to try and cut an alt, and then Sarah would help me by lining up all the takes for me to listen to and cutting in suggestions, which I often ended up using. On this show, the actors were really consistent. So, we were very likely to find an alt that would cut in seamlessly and no one would notice. RB: We wouldn't be able to do a mix in four or five days without the work that she'd put in ahead of time … not to mention overlapping dialogue. Again, it was the nature of the show, you know, everybody was to be coming at you so quickly that they're all jumping everybody else's lines and it just never stopped, just never. S. Stern: A lot of times, Sarah helped me find alternate endings and starts of words or phrases to sneak in there. DB: Was Auto-Align out when you guys were doing the series? S. Stern: It was the first show I did using Auto-Align. It was amazing. I started using Auto-Align in the middle of Season 2, on Episode 6, and I remember really wanting to go back in time, just to do some Auto- Aligning.