Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/830490
C A S Q U A R T E R L Y S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 31 all of your help on this ridiculous journey. Oh, and my broth- er James Voss for stealing my Wampa when we were kids. MATHEW WATERS CAS AND ONNALEE BLANK CAS: RE-RECORDING MIXERS Where are you from? How did you get into sound? Did you study audio in school? Do you have any mentors that helped you get where you are? Onnalee: My backstory is that I used to be a professional ballet dancer, dancing with various companies in the United States. I got into a car accident and was forced to focus on something else, so I chose music! I went to a music engineer- ing trade school in Los Angeles and started working. My mentors are Mike Minkler and various mixers I have worked with over the years. Matt: I was a radio/TV major at San Jose State University. I thought I was going to go into radio. In February of my senior year, Stephen Flick, who had just won the Oscar for RoboCop, came and spoke to our class. I didn't even know this career existed. But, hearing what he did for a living, I decided to change my career path that very day and I moved to LA the day after graduation in May. Do you have a musical background? Matt: I was a percussion music minor. I played in some garage bands. I have always loved music. Onnalee: I do. I used to play in orchestra and a bit of piano. I engineered at recording studios The Village Recorder and Ocean Way before getting a job with Rick Rubin. I worked for producer Rick Rubin for a few years on various albums which was such a fun time. An opportunity came up to help Danny Elfman in the studio so, at that point, I left Rick Rubin and went to build two of Elfman's studios. Working for Elfman opened my eyes to how creative fi lm is. I loved it even more than music but in a different way. How did you become involved in Game of Thrones? Onnalee: In Season 2, they were bringing back the post to Los Angeles after Season 1, and I did various interviews for the job, and got it, to my surprise! Matt: We have worked on Thrones since Season 2. What console and DAW do you use? Onnalee: We have always been on an Icon. Every once in a while, we would do a premier mix on a Euphonix System 5. This season, we will mix on an S6 console. How many tracks are typically delivered to you, and what is the track layout? How do you split the mix between the two of you? Onnalee: A ton. Ha! I have about 20 production tracks of dialogue, 20 ADR tracks, and between 80- 100 group tracks that are split up between domes- tic and foreign. I have a separate machine for music which carries about 120-140 tracks of music. What are your favorite plugins to use? How do you make things sound "fantastic" and seem bigger than life? Matt: I use the Lexicon reverbs, PhoenixVerb, and now my go to is the FabFilter Pro Reverb plugin. I will use them all for different spaces and together as well to give different depths of fi eld in some spaces. I use Slapper for delays. Love delays. What unique challenges did you have to deal with on this particular episode? Onnalee: "Battle of the Bastards" (Episode 609) was unique in the sense that it was shot so cinematically and with huge battle scenes. Mathew Waters and myself re- ally tried to make every frame unique, detailed and clean, which was a challenge with so much going on onscreen. Matt: This episode was unique because it had a 25-minute continuous battle scene. Not only is it fun and challenging to simply manage all the tracks, but to also fi gure out how to make a huge battle sequence stay interesting and how best to help tell the stories that need to be told. Obviously, it starts with the great writing, then directing and picture edit- ing. They do such a great job of putting together the fi lm to help let the audio have wonderful moments. Also, I would say the last scene where Ramsey gets killed. Onna and the dialogue crew did a fantastic job with an incred- ibly diffi cult dialogue scene. It is amazing how much their work helped with the emotion of that scene. Is there anyone you would like to mention or thank? Matt: Well, from the sound side, I would like to mention and thank sound supervisor Tim Kimmel and his crew. The real- ity is that, after you do this for a while, you realize that it takes a village to create awesome work. And without Tim and his crew, we wouldn't be able to reach the goals we have for ourselves. Onnalee: I would like to thank HBO and David and Dan for creating this amazing show to be a part of. It is a joy to work on such an amazing piece of art.