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www.postmagazine.com 31 POST AUGUST 2017 Our ambition is to bring big-screen production values to the small screen," says supervising sound editor/re-re- cording mixer Lee Walpole about his work on Netflix's award-winning series The Crown. Netflix takes its streaming series seriously and it shows. Besides The Crown, the network has a bevy of other award-winning shows, from comedies like Orange is the New Black and Master of None to true crime docs like Making a Murderer. Here Post discovers what goes into creating the sound of Netflix's The Crown, Alias Grace and GLOW, while also talking with the supervising sound editors on Amazon Prime's award-winning animated series, Lost in Oz. T H E C ROW N Rumor has it that the real Queen Elizabeth watches Netflix's biographical dra- ma, The Crown. Considering it's a series about her life and reign, that's not too surprising (although it's difficult to imagine her lounging on the couch, binge-watching an entire season). Supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Lee Walpole and his crew at Boom Post in London, UK (boompost.co.uk) have been with the series since Season 1, and are currently into mixing Season 2, which is due out this November. The team's mission is to deliver sonic authenticity that's on par with the other highly researched aspects of the series. It's a job well-suited to Walpole's experience. Having worked on such films as The King's Speech and The Imitation Game, he's quite familiar with England of the 1940's. Since The Crown is a depiction of real people and events, Walpole and his team viewed any available archival footage to better under- stand the reality of those events. For exam- ple, they studied actual footage of Princess Elizabeth's wedding to Prince Philip before start- ing work on the wedding scene in The Crown, Season 1, Episode. 1, "Wolferton Splash." Walpole says, "The real events informed our decisions for what we put in the series. Were the crowds cheering outside the church? Were the bells ringing in the Abbey? That sort of thing. Also, we researched and sourced relevant geographi- cal sounds to ensure that we were always using authentic birds and cicadas for the various coun- tries listed in the show." During filming, Walpole's team was on-set to capture specific spot effects of props, era-ap- propriate vehicles, and location ambiences. They even recorded live footsteps, which they layered in post, to bring a signature character to the various rooms. "With live feet, a char- acter can leave a room and walk down a cor- ridor off-screen and we can sustain the sound longer than you would expect. This helped to reinforce the sheer scale of the locations for the viewer," explains Walpole. Their field recording kit included Sound Devices 663 and 744T recorders, and a Roland R26 recorder. For mics, they chose two DPA 4061s, a Rode NT4 and a Schoeps CMIT 5U. Walpole wanted the spot effects for the palace to sound expensive and decadent. The glassware and crockery all have exaggerated weight. The doors in the show have amplified bass and larger reverbs to highlight the size of the spaces. "The dinner scenes are treated as a set piece, with huge amounts of worldized recordings, done to provide a realistic base for the Foley and to ensure that the sound always sounds real," says Walpole. A M I D S U M M E R N I G H T ' S S T R E A M PART I — AMBITIOUS SOUND FOR NOTEWORTHY WEB SERIES BY JENNIFER WALDEN London's Boom Post (below) has been handling audio on Netflix's Emmy- nominated The Crown (left) since Season 1.