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Now, Hear This! sounds and a completely different environment compared to Bat- tlestar.With Caprica, you are on an actual planet that has a mixture of familiar things and new things. It’s interesting visually to see everyday types of things integrated with fu- turistic devices.Visually and soni- cally it’s a bit of a disconnect, but it all works and makes you believe that it all really exists.” “One example is cars,” says Ko- bett. “They tend to show regular types of vehicles, but the engine you are hearing might have a futur- istic sound or a sound that a nor- mal car would never produce. So it becomes a blend of old and new, or familiar and futuristic. Everything is based on sounds organically that Capricais mixed at BluWav Audio, where old and new sounds are blended seamlessly. CAPRICA Re-recording mixers Michael Olman and Kenneth Kobett use sound to help create the believable world of Caprica, airing on the SyFy Channel. Caprica is the prequel to the Battlestar Galactica series, which has grown in popularity over the course of its long his- tory, striking a chord with its fans. Mixed at Universal Studios BluWave Audio Mix B lo- cated in Universal City, CA, Caprica is not necessarily dependent on the original series, or the current Battlestar series on Syfy.“The producers are purposely not building on anything from Battlestar,” says Kobett. Caprica is 50 years previous to Battlestar,so it’s much further in the past.” Olman agrees:“There is a very conscious effort to have the series stand on its own. The only thing that has come from the pre- vious series sound wise is the sound of the Cylon robot. Other than that, everything is new. For me, there was a bit of a learning curve starting this series back when we did the first two-hour show. It was a whole new world with a completely different set of people are familiar with, but they are not played perhaps, where you would expect them.” Even during the exciting action scenes, the dialogue still must be intelligible in the mix at all times.To accomplish this, Olman and Kobett need to strike a perfect balance with the sound effects and music.“Both Bat- tlestar and Caprica leave room for the mo- ments when music or sound effects should take priority,” says Kobett.“When dialogue comes in, the trick is to get back down while all the action still happening. So, we play up the moments when we have the space for a big sound effect or music cue. But ultimately, the story is going to be told to you via dia- logue. Sure, these are very visual shows, but they are still character driven.” The workflow on Caprica starts with su- pervising sound editor/sound designer, Daniel Colman, who receives the OMF from the picture edit. Once the sound edit is built, the show is ready for mixing with Olman and Kobett.“Typically, there are 80 tracks of effects, 32 channels of music, 10 channels of dialogue, another five channels of ADR, eight channels of group, so it’s a very wide build, trackwise,” said Olman. “I deal with the sound design elements which are part of the sound effects build,” says Kobett.“A lot of the specific sound de- sign elements have been approved already.We do not have a lot of alternates, necessarily. If we need an alternate to something, Daniel Colman will provide it on the dub stage. He provides a very complete and cut track.” “Bear McCreary is the composer on the show as well as Battlestar,” reports Olman. “Like Battlestar, there are a lot of stems.Now we have comp-ed some of them down to 5.1 stems, but we are getting 32 tracks of music every week.With the music, some of the producers have already heard what Bear is doing, so there are not that many surprises during the mix. Also, we have access to basi- cally everything that Bear has done for both Caprica and Battlestar. So it’s really easy to dig back into the library of previous stuff to help fill in something or address anything that the producers are asking for.” Caprica is mixed on the Harrison Seri- esTwelve digital console running Pro Tools|HD with a full array of plug-ins from Waves and Audio Ease, such as the speaker- phone plug-in. However the team does pre- fer to do most of the processing outside of Pro Tools such as using the Harrison’s EQs, the Lexicon 960 reverb, Cedar Audio’s 1000 noise reduction system and the Dolby Cat 30. The world of Caprica, and the whole genre of sci-fi, depends on hearing and seeing things that have never existed before. “From the sound effects side, it’s very liberating,” says Kobett.“I am often reminded that visual effects can’t stand by themselves.They rely on the sound to bring them to life. Caprica uses such a high level of visual effects to support the futuristic story line that the sound is vital for making everything seem real. So for me, it’s fun to mix a show that I consider to be all about the sound in many ways.” 38 Post • April 2010 www.postmagazine.com