Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/714180
www.postmagazine.com 31 POST AUGUST 2016 AUDIO FOR STREAMING SERIES Dave Paterson and Roberto Fernandez, at Harbor Picture Company (www.harbor- picturecompany.com) in New York City deliver a detailed soundscape that match- es the scope of the visuals. They've been on the show for both seasons. "Marco Polo is very ambitious, in its size and scale, and its period nature," says Paterson, who is also the supervising sound editor on the series. "On the sound eff ects editorial and Foley side you have all of the horses, and armor, and all of the period detail. Those are always really complicated. Then, there are lots of languages, like Mongolian and Mandarin, and when they travel to other places we work in those languages, like Italian and Latin." Handling the group loop on this series is complicated since the group sessions are done in Mongolian and Mandarin. Paterson praises the skills of loop group coordina- tors Fabiana Arrastia and Sue Boyajian. "They do an amazing job at getting a lot of languages together for these relatively small groups. It's hard to fi nd Mongolian speakers in New York City," he says. Another challenge is ADR. The series is shot in Malaysia, and once production has wrapped, the cast disperses to all corners of the Earth. ADR is recorded wherever the actors happen to be, like Australia, South Korea, Mongolia, Russia, Italy, Canada, London or occasionally New York City. Matching ADR from multiple locations to production tracks is no easy task, espe- cially when the production tracks also need a bit of work. The show is set in arid Mongolia but shot in rainforesty Malaysia. Before Fernandez — who handled the dialogue and music mix — can start on the ADR, he fi rst has to clean extraneous bugs and wildlife from the production tracks. Fortunately, all the dialogue is prepped be- fore it gets to him on the stage. "We have an amazing dialogue editor, Mary Ellen Porto, who does a great job of fi nding the best mics and the best angles for the lines. I could never get the dialogue to sound like it does if she hadn't done all of this prelimi- nary work," says Fernandez. On the dub stage of Studio F at Harbor Picture Company's Hudson Street facility, Fernandez uses Avid's Channel Strip plug- in via Avid's S6 console to EQ individual dialogue tracks — notching out noisy frequencies and matching the ADR to pro- duction. Audio Ease's Altiverb helps him set the ADR lines into the scene. For com- pression and limiting, Fernandez chooses Avid's Pro Compressor. On the eff ects side of the board, Paterson also uses Audio Ease's Altiverb, choosing a reverb setting that matches Fernandez's ADR reverb for a scene. "I use Altiverb for the eff ects and Foley too so that we can get matching set- tings and everything blends together nicely," says Paterson. One of the biggest challenges to mixing Marco Polo is trying to create a cinematic soundtrack that plays back on earbuds as nicely as it does in 5.1, while still meeting the broadcast CALM act spec, as stipulat- ed by Netfl ix. Paterson says compression is his secret to mixing sound eff ects that have punch without overpowering the dialogue. Like Fernandez, he also uses the Avid Pro Compressor. "This series has a lot of loud, huge scenes. It's really about fi nding that dynamic range on the eff ects and the Foley so that they have punch, but still not get in the way of the dialogue or the music." Paterson also does a surpris- ing amount of subwoofer work for those watching in 5.1. To boost the bass, he likes Waves' LoAir plug-in. One advantage of Marco Polo being a streaming series is that the post teams have the fl exibility to work on the series non-sequentially. For example, Paterson and Fernandez say that Episode 9 was an epic episode, so it was saved until the end, giving sound editorial more time to cut eff ects and the composer more time to complete the score. "Not having to worry about a broadcast order was a huge advantage," says Paterson. "We could allocate resources per episode as needed as opposed to working to meet an air date for a specifi c episode." Another advantage is being able to play back the episodes all at once, to check for consistency between episodes and also to check how the mix translates on as many devices as possible. Fernandez says they make stereo down mixes of their work and check it back on a variety of devices. Paterson adds, "We're trying to hone in on those settings that work universally, to make it playback consistently on all the myriad of devices you can watch the show on and still get that large experience that we are trying to provide." Harbor Picture's Fernandez and Paterson collaborate on Marco Polo's sound.