Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545099
40 M PS E . O R G Tron: Ares (2025) © Disney I usually start with what I call the air of the scene, and I base that off production as much as possible. Because I want the dialogue to have something to sit in, something that glues it together. But if that air is completely static, your brain just throws it away. It cancels it out. So, you need a little bit of movement, something subtle. That might be distant sounds, tonal shifts, slight modulation … just enough so that it stays alive. And then I think in layers. What's happening down the hallway? Around the corner? Outside the window? Even if you barely hear it, it gives depth to the space. And especially now with Atmos, you can think in terms of near, mid, far. Not necessarily to make it bigger, but to make it feel more real. It's always a balance, though. Because if you add too much, you break the silence. And if you don't add enough, it disappears. You've developed a performance- based workflow using tools like Reformer Pro. How does that change your relationship to sound design? JDR III: It lets me perform ideas instead of just building them. Earlier in my career, a lot of what I was doing was going into a library, pulling sounds, cutting them in, shaping them, blending them. And that's still part of it. But tools like Reformer changed how I think about certain things. I remember seeing it for the first time at AES. Orfeas had an SM57, and he's just hitting it and suddenly it's leaf footsteps. And I'm like, "What is happening?" And what clicked for me wasn't just the tool, it was the idea that I could drive sound with performance. So instead of searching for the exact right movement of leaves or water or wind, I can load material into Reformer and use my voice or gestures to make it respond. There was a sequence I worked on in American Rust, where a character falls through ice and is underwater. And ith more than two decades of experience across film and television, James David Redding III MPSE has developed a workflow philosophy rooted in efficiency, creativity, adaptability, and performance-driven sound design. His credits span a wide range of narrative demands, from the tense, surveillance-driven atmosphere of The Americans, to the restrained, psychological minimalism of The Queen's Gambit, and the dialogue-driven complexity of projects like Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Patient. Across these works, his approach reflects a balance between technical precision and creative intuition, shaped by increasingly compressed production schedules and expanding technological possibilities. In this conversation, James David Redding III discusses how his process has evolved, how tools have reshaped his creative decisions, and why understanding perception may be more important than eliminating noise. W You have been working in sound for over two decades, and television schedules have compressed dramatically. How does your workflow philosophy translate into the daily reality of a show? James David Redding III MPSE: When I started my career at Sync Sound in New York, I quickly realized that what I thought the process was going to be didn't match reality. In school, you think projects take months. And then you get out into the professional world and it's like, "Oh, you have five days to do an hour of television." And you kind of go, "Wait, what happened here?" I've always been used to working in that kind of compressed schedule. What changed over time is how I approach it. For me, it's always been about efficiency, but not in the sense of just being fast. It's about getting to something that's going to work in the end, without waste. And waste can be time, it can be resources, it can be going down a path that you know probably isn't going to survive once you get into the mix or once the client starts giving notes. What I tend to do now is block things out first. Almost like how a camera department blocks out movement, or like a Bob Ross painting, you lay down the broad strokes first, then you go in and add the "happy little trees." I build a full pass as early as possible, and by about halfway through the schedule, I try to have something complete. It's not polished, it's not perfect, but it works. It tells the story. And then I go back in and refine it— add detail, shape things, take things out that don't belong. But the important part is that I'm not starting from zero if something shifts. If a temp mix comes up, or someone wants to review early, I have something that works. How do you approach designing environments for shows that rely heavily on silence and tension? JDR III: I always start with intent. What is this supposed to feel like? What is the emotional goal of the scene? On The Americans, we had this idea of "spy mode." And that was something we talked about a lot. Even if the camera is on the characters within the world of the show, nobody is supposed to know they're there. So that affects everything. Elizabeth is wearing high heels most of the time, but in spy mode, you don't hear her walking. We don't have sirens unless we specifically want to suggest danger or that they might get caught, because sirens immediately push the audience in that direction. Once you define that palette, then you start building from there.