CAS Quarterly

Spring 2016

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32 S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y H BO's Game of Thrones is a ratings juggernaut featuring multiple worlds, dozens of characters, royal conflicts, supernatural creatures and, of course, flying dragons. Reportedly, it has the fifth largest Twitter following of any TV show and stimulates success for a book franchise, as well as ridiculous incarnations of merchandise. The casting, visual imagery, and sonic experience are simply mesmerizingly on point. And the sound team for Game of Thrones has proven just that by receiving three consecutive CAS Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Television Series – One Hour these past three years. They are clearly making something special. "Hardhome" was an exceptional episode, two feuding families together, gathering and gaining the following of their people and building their army to join together for a battle against … lightning-speed attacking zombies! All while the White Walkers creepily watched on with sterile satisfaction. The battle built beautifully with sonic cues off screen featur- ing dog barks, screams, and branch cracks which hurried people running for salvation into frame. It continued to grow over the course of the next 15 minutes with the classic big battle GOT sounds, giant foot thumps, and undead crawling over walls and throwing their bodies off cliffs just to regenerate anew. Then impressively, full music cue and battle Foley, SFX and group drops at one point to near silence—intensifying a stare down between Jon Snow and the Night King that finishes with the King raising his arms to raise the women, children, and warriors into blood-thirsty zombies. The solitude created after a barrage of music crescendos, battleaxes and swords, group wails and efforts into the desperate breaths and small laps of water under Jon's small boat from land was incredibly effective. It was a true dance of sound. How did they do it? Ronan Hill CAS and Richard Dyer CAS: Production Mixers Production is divided into two teams: Dragon and Wolf. Ronan Hill leads Dragon, a team consisting of boom op Simon Kerr, second assistant Johnny Wait, and sound trainee Daniel McCabe. Richard Dyer leads Wolf, consisting of assistant Bradley Kendrick and second assistant Kelly Stewart. Richard's team is a close-knit machine. Bradley and Kelly having worked together for five years now, starting on Great Expectations for BBC in 2011. Richard explains, "Their contri- butions cannot be underestimated in the acquisition of the scripted dialogue. Between [Bradley and Kelly], they run an excellent floor, watching crew rehearsals, planning boom cover- age, and rigging all the radio mics. Their decision making is paramount to the delivery of the best possible tracks arriving at the desk for me to get to work with. They cope with the daily pressures magnificently—showing great personal quali- ties with all cast and crew. Their conscientiousness is key to the consistently good tracks that we are able to provide. There are no occasions when I need to ask them to address a particu- lar issue—we are all on cans throughout the day and they are usually in there making adjustments before I even get to say anything." Ronan also has a top-notch team who, on this episode, was tasked with shooting the long epic battle. Ronan cites "Hardhome" as one of the most challenging episodes to date. While interior scenes and scenes around the shore landing and evacuation were relatively free of the smoke machines and large wind machines needed for VFX, many of the scenes around the stockade were very difficult. "Radio mic transmitters were pad- ded for scenes with heavy background and, as the artists raised their level to compensate for the background level and stage direction, it allowed a realistic chance of their dialogue being cleaned up and mixed against a textured non-machine Atmos track," expresses Ronan. He uses DPA 4071 lavaliere mics to get a natural quality while capturing every word. Logistically, as cameras were shooting in every direction, he relied greatly on his portable sound cart. "My portable rig with a second Sound Devices 788T, CL8, and Audio Ltd. RK3 radio receiver racks was ready to grab for run-and-gun or boat- based shots," he explains adding, "the Audio Ltd. 2040 receiv- ers allow a fast swap of radio mic receivers from the cart-based RK6 radio mic rack to the portable RK3 racks." And this is to say nothing of weather and location conditions like horizontal rain, which occurred during the shooting of this scene—but did not stop taping. Clearly, the commitment of these professionals is evident in the results. Both Richard and Ronan take great pride in their mix tracks and credit their teams and the educated preparation with their success. Brett Voss CAS: Foley Mixer The team of Foley is lead by mixer Brett Voss and consists of father-and-son Foley artists, Jeffrey Wilhoit and Dylan Wilhoit. They stomp out 48-58 minutes of Foley to embody a prin- cesses' light goblet touch to an army of sword-wielding war- TELEVISION SERIES ONE HOUR GAME OF THRONES "Hardhome" by Karol Urban CAS MPSE Photo: Helen Sloan/HBO

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