Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1543098
Spring 2026 – LOCAL695.COM 25 Building a Unified Sound & Music Department One cohesive team, one heartbeat, one creative language I noticed a separation between sound and music on my early musicals. Music took responsibility for prerecords and playback, Sound recorded the dialog, with booms and radio mics. You'd share a comms channel and work together on the transition point from dialog to playback, but, fundamentally, you were two different tribes. That model made no sense at all, especially if you are dedicated to capturing live singing. Over a number of films, I began to build on an idea that Sound & Music should be treated as the same department on the set and in prep as much as possible. This includes capturing any studio prerecords on the same boom mic and lavs that will be used for dialog capture on the set, alongside the music producer's choice of vocal mic. This gives a wealth of choices to the Re-recording Mixer even if the project is not going to be live sung! If a project starts like this, it creates a cohesion that finds its way to Picture Editorial and ultimately, to Sound & Music Post and the mix stage. On the last five musicals I have mixed, Arthur Fenn-Key, 1st AS, has boomed the prerecords and fitted lavs to the actors in the recording studio sending the feeds to the studio's Pro Tools session. On Wicked: For Good, our team crystallized around a few key people, many of whom I'd worked with before: • As Production Sound Mixer, I am responsible for capturing dialog, live singing. and overseeing the entire on-set vocal sound and music workflow. • Music Supervisor Maggie Rodford, who literally organized the mammoth task both creatively and technically of keeping us all in lock step from a musical standpoint. Maggie was there with me right from the beginning. We built the team together and were in constant communication many months before prep, discussing every nuance and intention of sound and music on the films. I am indebted to her as is our whole department. • Josh Winslade, our on-set Pro Tools Music Editor, who lived in the middle of the playback world, shaping Greg Wells's backing tracks, cuing music, and dropping in live elements on the fly. • Benjamin Holder, Music Associate and Keyboard Player, who became the emotional heartbeat of the system whenever the actors needed freedom of tempo and dynamic. • Arthur Fenn, Key, and Robin Johnson, my 1st Assistant Sound assistants, i.e., Boom Operators, who were the physical link between the actors and my cart. • Natassja "Taz" Fairbanks, 2nd Assistant Sound, who became the quiet guardian of floors, leaves, puddles, and anything underfoot that could destroy a performance. • Robin Baynton, Vocal Editor, who was getting our production tracks into his Pro Tools system and working on them on a day-to- day basis, as well as helping Myron Kerstein with the live vocals and music as we were shooting. • Dom Ammendum, Music Producer, who was on set with us every single day as our conduit of Wicked musical knowledge and the creative guardian of Stephen Schwartz's songs and score. Beyond our immediate team, our work flowed directly into: • Supervising Music Editor Jack Dolman • Supervising Sound Editor Nancy Nugent-Title • Re-recording Mixer Andy Nelson and Re-recording Mixer and Supervising Sound Editor John Marquis And part of our wider team: • Stephen Schwartz, Composer • Steven Oremus, Executive Music Producer • Greg Wells, Music Producer & Arranger • John Powell, Score Composer • Plus, Mike Knobloch of Universal Music, who is an incredible inspiration and support to me. Mike is such an advocate of the live sung musical and I cannot thank him enough. We were not separate departments handling different parts of a workflow. We were one chain, carrying a live performance from Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande standing on a balcony, all the way to an audience sitting in a cinema. To make that chain work, we had to build a technical infrastructure that treated music playback, live keyboard, production sound, and IEM monitoring as one instrument. That is where the Pro Tools and production sound integration came in. Cynthia Erivo & Ariana Grande