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June 2015

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www.postmagazine.com 25 POST JUNE 2015 Joshua designed the sound, and that's how we approached it in the mix as well." Marchain notes that electrical ele- ments play a huge role in the show's sound. For example, one of the main characters is in a cockpit and the plane is about to go down. Marchain used Zynaptiq's Morph plug-in on high-fre- quency tones and electrical elements, in addition to layers of whispers, sound design, and NASA space recordings to create the tone and tempo of this pivotal and high-energy segment. One challenge to the schedule was working with ever evolving VFX. Marchain notes, "They were basically flying in VFX at all different times, so we never actually finished one particular episode at a time. We would be working on the pilot and also working concurrently on Episode 5." There are 13 episodes in the season, and VFX changes to one episode would effect the sound in other episodes. "They want- ed the VFX to be great. They were refin- ing and making those VFX even better throughout the sound editorial process, to make them more real, more dramatic, and play along with the music and sound design," adds Marchain. No episode was really locked until they were done with all the episodes. On the mix stage, Marks and re-re- cording mixer Greg Watkins, who han- dled dialogue/ADR/music, worked to- gether to find a balance between the big music score and the big sound effects moments. They mixed on Avid D-Control surfaces running Pro Tools 10 HD sys- tems. In handling the effects, Marks says the final mix was all about finding the right balance between dialogue, music and sound effects. "We wanted to keep the dialogue clear for the audience to follow the story, so we really worked the music and sound effects around it for the highest emotional impact." THE ISLAND In the reality series The Island, merely surviving is winning. The show's 'contes- tants' don't compete against each other. This isn't man vs. man. Their struggle is man vs. nature. Survival extremist Bear Grylls first co-produced the series with Shine TV in 2014 for audiences in the UK. Now in Season 2, the formerly all-male series has opened the experience to UK women. Audio post supervisor Dan Jones, owner of Vaudeville in London, UK and Los Angeles (http://vaudeville.tv), explains the men's and women's islands are separate, and the shoot for each slightly overlapped. "In the UK, every Wednesday night the men's island would air on Channel 4, and every Thursday night was the women's island. So it was double the amount of work, but in the same time schedule." Having worked on Season 1, Jones knew what to expect for Season 2. "There were a lot of pre-shoot meetings with the production team to talk about how they're going to do the shoot, which was mostly doing what worked for the first season. For Season 2, there was just more of it!" Based on the UK series, the Amer- ican version of The Island premiered May 25 th on NBC, with new episodes airing Mondays 10/9c. It's co-produced by Shine America, part of the Endemol Shine Group that also includes Shine TV — producers of the original UK series. Audio post for the American version is done at Levels Audio in Los Angeles (www.levelsaudio.com), with Bryan Park- er and Aaron Cross on sound editorial/ sound effects and Phil DeTolve as the re-recording mixer. While Jones hasn't met the American team, he imagines their experience is similar to his. "It's the same show set-up, the same island in the Pacific Ocean off Panama, and the same sound supervisor, Simon Dyer, as well," states Jones. The Island uses an embedded four- man camera crew in addition to the contestants filming each other, but no sound crew. Jones explains that sound supervisor Dyer needed to devise a bulletproof way of capturing the sound cleanly without being intrusive. Dyer built special mic packs, using Zaxcom person- al mics, that are waterproof and able to withstand constant exposure. "Basically, they are walking around with no clothes on so they have this little harness which houses a radio mic. Simon [Dyer] spent ages developing a mic that was not go- ing to get damaged out in the elements," says Jones. During filming, Dyer is responsible for making sure all the sound material gets logged, which according to Jones is over 25,000 hours of audio from over 50 mics. Jones says, "Three tech teams worked 24/7 for the entire time of the shoot to back up, transcode and sync all of the sound." Vaudeville worked with head of Princess Post Paul Jones and manager of tech Gary Bradbury to create a workflow where all mic options were present for the sound edit and mix sessions. Both Jones at Vaudeville and Parker at Levels Audio used the iZotope RX 4 Advanced for dialogue cleaning. In cases where distortion was recorded due to sudden shouting, Parker says he leaned heavily on RX 4 to get the dialogue back to how it sounded when the guys were Marchain (inset) and his sound team at Warner Bros. developed a unique sound for The Whispers' 'imaginary friend' entity that is part paranormal and part sci-fi. CONTINUED ON PG 43

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