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 33 to get around it. You know Alex, Ariel. I put her lav right in the side of her eyeglasses. She can be run- ning around and when you'd nor- mally get a ton of clothing rustle, we get none. In the episode "The Storm," you had to deal with a lot of water. Are there special accommodations you made to con- tend with that? Sure. One of the things is having the rain slicker so you don't hear the rain on the mic itself. Typically, we use K-Tek boom poles with the side mount, but that's not a good idea in the rain. You want it to go all the way through the pole so you can wrap it all up and keep everything dry. The other thing is making sure you have enough Hog's Hair, it's like a loose fiber material. When water hits it, it keeps water from making as much noise when it hits a surface and fortunately, the guys from FX made sure we had enough. There were scenes where we're using practical rain. Haley and Andy run out of the house and declare their love for one another. That was tricky. There was no room for Hog's Hair. I used Countryman EMW's because they're more water-resistant. Even then you have to be ready to get in there with canned air and take care of it. We're here in your studio where you also work as a re-record- ing mixer. How has working in post affected your work on the set or has it? Oh, it's affected my work in many, many ways. I've been working in post for over 10 years now. I know what I can get away with and what I can't. I know how much time things take to fix, and I know how much time Dean and Brian have to do a show. I know if something didn't sound right on the day, I'll get a wild line for it. Whenever possible, we try to do ADR for the show on the set. It's easier for the actors and we're able to record the actor through the same equipment and, oftentimes, on the same set that we originally shot the scene. This is great. I hope it keeps rolling for you. You know, every day I have fun at work. I get a script and I read a scene and I think, "How am I gonna pull this one off?" When you manage to pull it off, it's such a joy. It's an amazing thing to be part of. I have to tell you this (the most recent CAS Award), I was really, really surprised. I was telling Dean before the show, this is a big win for us just to be coming here, but we're not going to win tonight, and he goes, "No, we're not." And it's amazing that so many years into the show, that we even got a nomination. We were both tickled and genuinely shocked. And I have a dear friend, Ben Patrick, who does Silicon Valley, and before that, The Office. He's a brilliant mixer! I was so rooting for him to be up there on stage and have the experience. DEAN OKRAND CAS: RE-RECORDING MIXER Congratulations on your win! What do you think has led you and your team to this place where you keep winning the CAS Award? I was wondering that myself, but what I know is that the sound jobs on the show are really consistent. Steve Tibbo is really meticulous with his production audio. He fights and is not afraid to speak up when something isn't working right—which has proven to bring in tracks that are so much better. Steve does a great job. We have the same team of editors we've had since the inception of the show. Sound supervisor Penny Coghlan is fabu- lous. She keeps me honest. Our dialogue editor was the sound supervisor before Penny took over. And Penny used to cut the dialogue. They sorta swapped places. Lisa [then Varetakis, now Donahue] moved to Northern California. She keeps cutting the show so she knows how Tibbo records things. She knows how to find things in the multitude of tracks that Tibbo supplies and she knows the actors well enough to know when to look for alternates. It sounds like you're in good hands if you have the show's for- mer sound supervisor doing your dialogue editorial! Can you walk me through your process? One of Lisa's jobs is to figure out the best series of tracks for each situation. We try to use booms whenever we can. We try not to use the mix tracks, but sometimes you have to. On the stage, we mix the show in a day. I do a dialogue pass while Brian Harman does an FX pass. We work in the same room, out of the same monitors at the same time. But we're not Tibbo at the controls