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www.postmagazine.com 32 POST APRIL 2017 fects. During that time, the Foley team does a pass too. Then she spends another five days on the mix, which includes playback/fixes for supervising sound editors David Acord and Matthew Wood, final playback for supervising director Dave Filoni and printmaster. Wild is currently taking a break from the series to work on the upcoming Star Wars feature film, but she gives Post a look into the sound on her most recent episode, "Through Imperial Eyes." For that episode, Wild created a fight scene between the sinister Grand Admiral Thrawn and his comman- do droids, which were re-programmed to attack him instead of protecting him. Specific sound elements for the commando droids, like motors and movements, were pre-existing in the Rebels sound library. They had been designed already for earlier episodes. Wild cut those to fit picture and combined them with hits and impacts from the Skywalker library — a unique collection of effects created by Skywalker Sound's many talented sound designers. The challenge on "Through Imperial Eyes" was to find effects that cut through composer Kevin Kiner's score — particularly Thrawn's powerful, organ-driven theme music, and still be suitable for TV spec. Wild, who has a strong background in TV work, instinctually selects effects that will work best for this medium. She says, "The music is so good at helping to tell the story and at developing the characters so we really want to bring that into the mix. But this is Star Wars. We are renowned for big effects and very specific effects. The chal- lenge is getting a balance that will showcase all those things." One technique Wild uses to achieve a balance between music and effects is to establish the sound design by letting it lead the mix initially, and then slowly back off the effects level and allow the music to take over. "Once you put the effects in the view- er's mind, you can pull them back. It helps emotion- ally to have the music drive. To push the emotion, we go with music but we really want to get those sound effects in there because they're Star Wars effects and they're incredible," Wild says. During the dialogue pre-mix, Wild spends a lot of time on creative processing — since all the lines are recorded cleanly in a studio environment. She uses the PhoenixVerb Surround plug-in to put the voices in their corresponding spaces on screen. She's created custom reverb presets for reoc- curring spaces, such as on the rebels' spaceship called The Ghost. "I have a preset for the hallway and for the cargo hold and for the cockpit. I like to make all of the spaces a little bit different and unique, just to help sell that the characters are moving around and are in different spaces on the ship. I love that reverb. You can get good small spaces and good exteriors as well. So that is very useful on the show," notes Wild. MICKEY AND THE ROADSTER RACERS Mickey and the Roadster Racers premiered on Disney Junior this January, and it's recently been picked up for Season 2. In the show, Mickey and his friends compete in races at different locations around the world. Each character's car is an exten- sion of his or her personality, both visually and soni- cally. The sound team at Boom Box Post in Burbank, CA (www.boomboxpost.com) — led by supervising sound editor Kate Finan — collaborated with Disney Television Animation to develop a signature car sound for each character. Finan, who worked di- rectly with executive producer Rob LaDuca and the series' directors, says, "We weren't concerned about the sound exactly matching the visuals. Instead, we chose a sound that reflects both the car design and the personality of the driver." Instead of compiling different car sounds to build a unique car for each character, Finan says they wanted to be total purists. They listened to numerous cars to find the perfect sounding one for each character. "We were very meticulous about our car choices. Once we chose a vehicle to use for that character, we only used sounds from that vehicle," she says. For example, Daisy drives a Formula One-style car, with a single-seat and open wheel design. "We tried to figure out what Daisy is like. She's really girly and sometimes annoying but also fun and spunky and has all this attitude. Since she's one of the ladies, we wanted her car engine to have a higher frequency. To match her person- ality and match the visual, we chose a Nissan Dallara, which is a single-seater, open wheel car you'd drive in the Monaco Grand Prix. It has this wasp-like sound that's high and buzzy. Even when it's idling, it makes these high-pitched revving Mickey's sound is that of a classic Camaro.