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28 S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 C A S Q U A R T E R L Y MEET THE WINNERS This year's Cinema Audio Society Award for Television Series – One Hour went to Game of Thrones for the huge episode "Battle of the Bastards." This is the fourth win in a row for Game of Thrones and the sixth nomination. Production splits between two crews, "Dragon Unit," mixed by Ronan Hill CAS, and "Wolf Unit," mixed by Richard Dyer CAS. Brett Voss CAS is the Foley mixer. Onnalee Blank CAS is the dialogue and music re- recording mixer and Mathew Waters CAS is the sound effects re-recording mixer. For fans of the series, "Battle of the Bastards" is a watershed episode where multiple storylines intersect and climax in a huge onscreen battle. Jon Snow and his half-sister Sansa Stark must try to retake their castle on Winterfell from Ramsay Bolton. Even by the standards set in previous seasons, this is a magnifi- cent battle scene that took 25 days to film and required 500 extras, 600 crew members, and 70 horses. RONAN HILL CAS: PRODUCTION MIXER "DRAGON UNIT" How did you get into sound? Do you have any mentors that helped you get where you are? My career in sound started when I was 7 years old, working on occasion with my father, Patsy Hill, who was a freelance news cameraman. If there was a soft news story local to our home in Ballycastle on the North Antrim Coast, I would hope to be involved. This is where I got my love for fi lm and the busi- ness. Little did I know that years later, I would revisit some of these picturesque locations as production sound mixer on Game of Thrones. Through my father and his work, I met lots of talented sound recordists, including CAS Board member Peter J. Devlin. They were an in- spiration and font of knowledge. Did you work on previous sea- sons? Since the pilot, I have worked as production sound mixer on all 67 episodes. What mikes, transmitters, mixer, and recorder do you use? I am still mixing on a Cooper 208D. It sounds as good as ever. The only reason I can imag- ine changing it would be for a desk with more channels. The Sound Devices 788T SSD is my main recorder. The 788T has proved extremely durable and reliable for the job. I have spoken to Sound Devices through the seasons, to encourage Re-recording mixer Onnalee Blank CAS, Foley mixer Brett Voss CAS, and re-recording mixer Mathew Waters CAS them to release a recorder with more inputs, as on a show like Game of Thrones with only eight inputs, I am maxed out a lot of the time. I can only hope a replacement with at least 16 fully fl edged inputs and a bulletproof—or should I say "sword- proof " limiter—is just around the corner. I have replaced the Sound Devices 744T with a Sound Devices 688 as backup on the cart. This now allows me to parallel all the ISO's from the Cooper 208 and have four spare inputs. I have used Audio Ltd. 2040s since Season 1, and I hope to start integrating their new digital radio mic systems on Season 8. An internal SD card recorder seems like a great "belt and braces" idea, and encryption, I imagine, will become mandatory in the future. I have three Sennheiser MKH 60s and an MKH 70, which I use for exteriors. For interiors, I have four MKH 50s. I also have two MKH 8050s and two MKH 8040s with all the ac- cessories, which allow us to break them down and place them in areas too small for the 50s. For Season 6, I purchased three of Rycote's new Cyclone baskets and suspensions for the 60s, to cope with the local weather. They sound more open than the old baskets and are proving to be an asset in our fi ght against the elements. I also purchased a couple of their new softie wind covers and baseball windshields for the MKH 60s and MKH 50s. The DPA 4071s are defi nitely the way to go for a natu- ral sound with great isolation. The accessories are very use- ful, although at this stage, we have adapted and created a few of our own. They are more fragile than other lavs, but DPA has taken measures to rectify this. Time will tell. For wire- less headphone monitoring, I use the Sennheiser IEM 2050 transmitter and 2000 receivers, which allow great fl exibility. I don't run a return for video playback to the mixer; instead I provide a transmitter for video on an adjacent channel. By pressing one button on the IEM receiver, it can be switched from 'Sound' to 'Video' depending on whether you want di- TELEVISION SERIES ONE HOUR GAME OF THRONES "Battle of the Bastards" by David Bondelevitch CAS MPSE Re-recording mixer Onnalee Blank CAS, Foley mixer Brett Voss CAS, Ronan Hill CAS