Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/681510
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 35 One thing I was going to say was I did analyze the episode from the get-go on how should this sound. This was going to be playing over computers, FaceTime conversations, so it was really important to me to have it feel open and natural sound- ing. I took in to meetings with the producers the importance of having the booms because I knew they all cared deeply about how something should appear as real as possible. The actors had no visuals of the other sets because of the lag—8 to 14 frames. We do do it regularly where we are filming someone on FaceTime on another set and that's fine when you do one—I dial in an offset. But in this case, where we had so many sets going on at the same time, that wouldn't work. Well, I thought it all blended together so well and I want to congratulate you on that. Thank you. You know, I didn't know if people would recog- nize all that went into the episode but, obviously, they did. It won the CAS Award and the Emmy this year, which is amaz- ing. Though, being on a show I enjoy doing is the biggest gift. David Michael Torres: Foley Mixer It's so nice to be speaking with you, David. So, tell me about the show. Before we even started working on it, we had to try out several keyboards—we tried at least six—for Claire's typing and it was narrowed down to two. We did a lot of wild tracks—space bar hits, return key hits. Through the conversations, we did a couple of passes, if not more, of each keyboard, just to try to get the right rhythm, the right phrasing of the words. That way, Penny Harold, the supervising sound editor, could take the best of it and cut it in. Some of the typing was really fast and, when you look at it, it looks like a blur, but you don't want it to sound like a blur. Another important thing was the track pad, moving the fingers so when you see the cursor on the screen, the finger moving across the pad had to match through- out the whole show. It was like a separate cloth pass, pretty challenging. And all the footsteps and props you see, we had to cover. It was quite extensive. The production crew from Modern Family "Connection Lost." Srdjan "Serge" Popovic, John Sheridan, Peter Hansen (crouching), Brian Wittle, Stephen A. Tibbo CAS, Corey Woods, William Munroe (back), and Ken Strain Well, I will tell you that Steve Tibbo, when I talked to him, was quite complimentary. Yeah, Steve. He does such an amazing job on the production audio that it gave me a great reference for matching and sweet- ening to keep it consistent. How many seasons have you been on Modern Family? Seven seasons. All of them, starting with episode one, season one. I think that is true of the whole crew. Another thing that we emphasized, too, was the handling of the cellphones. With any kind of movement, we did subtle live mic bumps. Especially with Jay—every time he answered the phone, he put it up to his ear, forgetting he was being FaceTimed, we had to give some light mic movement. Do you use a separate mic for that? No, we use the regular Sennheiser shotgun mic and sometimes the Neumann U87 for props, but the main thing that makes all the difference is the Avalon tube preamps; they are just wonderful. What Foley artists do you work with? I work with Tim Chilton and Jill Sanders. They've been a team for more than 25 years now. In fact, Jill did all the typing for the show. She is great at the finesse stuff. So I assume you had a day to do this show. Yeah. You know, every episode is different. It doesn't matter how long it takes, you just do it until it's done. Modern Family is a challenge because you never really know when they are going to emphasize the Foley in a scene—if they do at all! So I have to treat it as if every scene is going to be used. It ends up being a very thorough and special M&E. That's the approach we take for the show. And you know, if they are going to submit a show for an Emmy, that show is going to be really busy! That's true! And these half-hour shows just seem to get busier every year. Do you get a lot of feedback from the dub stage? From Dean and Brian? I always communicate with the dub stage mixers on all my shows. How did that sound? Do you want something to sound differ- ent? I always want to be in on that. I don't want someone to come up to me later and say, "You should have done something different for that." Sound is subjective, so I want to hear feed- back as soon as possible. I talk with Brian a lot about that—he makes me shine! Brian and Dean are great guys and I'm right down the hall from them, so if they need a fix, it's so quick. That really helps. And Penny Harold, our supervisor, is really great. She'll let us know if there are some things that are really important. Where do you normally work?