Tag Archives: ADR

The sounds of HBO’s Divorce: Keeping it real

HBO’s Divorce, which stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church, focuses on a long-married couple who just can’t do it anymore. It follows them from divorce through their efforts to move on with their lives, and what that looks like. The show deftly tackles a very difficult subject with a heavy dose of humor mixed in with the pain and angst. The story takes place in various Manhattan locations and a nearby suburb. And as you can imagine the sounds of the neighborhoods vary.

Eric Hirsch                                                              David Briggs

Sound post production for the third season of HBO’s comedy Divorce was completed at Goldcrest Post in New York City. Supervising sound editor David Briggs and re-recording mixer Eric Hirsch worked together to capture the ambiances of upscale Manhattan neighborhoods that serve as the backdrop for the story of the tempestuous breakup between Frances and Robert.

As is often the case with comedy series, the imperative for Divorce’s sound team was to support the narrative by ensuring that the dialogue is crisp and clear, and jokes are properly timed. However, Briggs and Hirsch go far beyond that in developing richly textured soundscapes to achieve a sense of realism often lacking in shows of the genre.

“We use sound to suggest life is happening outside the immediate environment, especially for scenes that are shot on sets,” explains Hirsch. “We work to achieve the right balance, so that the scene doesn’t feel empty but without letting the sound become so prominent that it’s a distraction. It’s meant to work subliminally so that viewers feel that things are happening in suburban New York, while not actually thinking about it.”

Season three of the show introduces several new locations and sound plays a crucial role in capturing their ambience. Parker’s Frances, for example, has moved to Inwood, a hip enclave on the northern tip of Manhattan, and background sound effects help to distinguish it from the woodsy village of Hastings-on-Hudson, where Haden Church’s Robert continues to live. “The challenge was to create separation between those two worlds, so that viewers immediately understand where we are,” explains series producer Mick Aniceto. “Eric and David hit it. They came up with sounds that made sense for each part of the city, from the types of cars you hear on the streets to the conversations and languages that play in the background.”

Meanwhile, Frances’ friend, Diane, (Molly Shannon) has taken up residence in a Manhattan high-rise and it, too, required a specific sonic treatment. “The sounds that filter into a high-rise apartment are much different from those in a street-level structure,” Aniceto notes. “The hum of traffic is more distant, while you hear things like the whirl of helicopters. We had a lot of fun exploring the different sonic environments. To capture the flavor of Hudson-on-Hastings, our executive producer and showrunner came up the idea of adding distant construction sounds to some scenes.”

A few scenes from the new season are set inside a prison. Aniceto says the sound team was able to help breathe life into that environment through the judicious application of very specific sound design. “David Briggs had just come off of Escape at Dannemora, so he was very familiar with the sounds of a prison,” he recalls. “He knew the kind of sounds that you hear in communal areas, not only physical sounds like buzzers and bells, but distant chats among guards and visitors. He helped us come up with amusing bits of background dialogue for the loop group.”

Most of the dialogue came directly from the production tracks, but the sound team hosted several ADR sessions at Goldcrest for crowd scenes. Hirsch points to an episode from the new season that involves a girls basketball team. ADR mixer Krissopher Chevannes recorded groups of voice actors (provided by Dann Fink and Bruce Winant of Loopers Unlimited) to create background dialogue for a scene on a team bus and another that happens during a game.

“During the scene on the bus, the girls are talking normally, but then the action shifts to slo-mo. At that point the sound design goes away and the music drives it,” Hirsch recalls. “When it snaps back to reality, we bring the loop-group crowd back in.”

The emotional depth of Divorce marks it as different from most television comedies, it also creates more interesting opportunities for sound. “The sound portion of the show helps take it over the line and make it real for the audience,” says Aniceto. “Sound is a big priority for Divorce. I get excited by the process and the opportunities it affords to bring scenes to life. So, I surround myself by smart and talented people like Eric and David, who understand how to do that and give the show the perfect feel.”

All three seasons of Divorce are available on HBO Go and HBO Now.

ADR, loop groups, ad-libs: Veep‘s Emmy-nominated audio team

By Jennifer Walden

HBO wrapped up its seventh and final season of Veep back in May, so sadly, we had to say goodbye to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ morally flexible and potty-mouthed Selina Meyer. And while Selina’s political career was a bit rocky at times, the series was rock-solid — as evidenced by its 17 Emmy wins and 68 nominations over show’s seven-year run.

For re-recording mixers William Freesh and John W. Cook II, this is their third Emmy nomination for Sound Mixing on Veep. This year, they entered the series finale — Season 7, Episode 7 “Veep” — for award consideration.

L-R: William Freesh, Sue Cahill, John W. Cook, II

Veep post sound editing and mixing was handled at NBCUniversal Studio Post in Los Angeles. In the midst of Emmy fever, we caught up with re-recording mixer Cook (who won a past Emmy for the mix on Scrubs) and Veep supervising sound editor Sue Cahill (winner of two past Emmys for her work on Black Sails).

Here, Cook and Cahill talk about how Veep’s sound has grown over the years, how they made the rapid-fire jokes crystal clear, and the challenges they faced in crafting the series’ final episode — like building the responsive convention crowds, mixing the transitions to and from the TV broadcasts, and cutting that epic three-way argument between Selina, Uncle Jeff and Jonah.

You’ve been with Veep since 2016? How has your approach to the show changed over the years?
John W. Cook II: Yes, we started when the series came to the states (having previously been posted in England with series creator Armando Iannucci).

Sue Cahill: Dave Mandel became the showrunner, starting with Season 5, and that’s when we started.

Cook: When we started mixing the show, production sound mixer Bill MacPherson and I talked a lot about how together we might improve the sound of the show. He made some tweaks, like trying out different body mics and negotiating with our producers to allow for more boom miking. Notwithstanding all the great work Bill did before Season 5, my job got consistently easier over Seasons 5 through 7 because of his well-recorded tracks.

Also, some of our tools have changed in the last three years. We installed the Avid S6 console. This, along with a handful of new plugins, has helped us work a little faster.

Cahill: In the dialogue editing process this season, we started using a tool called Auto-Align Post from Sound Radix. It’s a great tool that allowed us to cut both the boom and the ISO mics for every clip throughout the show and put them in perfect phase. This allowed John the flexibility to mix both together to give it a warmer, richer sound throughout. We lean heavily on the ISO mics, but being able to mix in the boom more helped the overall sound.

Cook: You get a bit more depth. Body mics tend to be more flat, so you have to add a little bit of reverb and a lot of EQing to get it to sound as bright and punchy as the boom mic. When you can mix them together, you get a natural reverb on the sound that gives the dialogue more depth. It makes it feel like it’s in the space more. And it requires a little less EQing on the ISO mic because you’re not relying on it 100%. When the Auto-Align Post technology came out, I was able to use both mics together more often. Before Auto-Align, I would shy away from doing that if it was too much work to make them sound in-phase. The plugin makes it easier to use both, and I find myself using the boom and ISO mics together more often.

The dialogue on the show has always been rapid-fire, and you really want to hear every joke. Any tools or techniques you use to help the dialogue cut through?
Cook: In my chain, I’m using FabFilter Pro-Q 2 a lot, EQing pretty much every single line in the show. FabFilter’s built-in spectrum analyzer helps get at that target EQ that I’m going for, for every single line in the show.

In terms of compression, I’m doing a lot of gain staging. I have five different points in the chain where I use compression. I’m never trying to slam it too much, just trying to tap it at different stages. It’s a music technique that helps the dialogue to never sound squashed. Gain staging allows me to get a little more punch and a little more volume after each stage of compression.

Cahill: On the editing side, it starts with digging through the production mic tracks to find the cleanest sound. The dialogue assembly on this show is huge. It’s 13 tracks wide for each clip, and there are literally thousands of clips. The show is very cutty, and there are tons of overlaps. Weeding through all the material to find the best lav mics, in addition to the boom, really takes time. It’s not necessarily the character’s lav mic that’s the best for a line. They might be speaking more clearly into the mic of the person that is right across from them. So, listening to every mic choice and finding the best lav mics requires a couple days of work before we even start editing.

Also, we do a lot of iZotope RX work in editing before the dialogue reaches John’s hands. That helps to improve intelligibility and clear up the tracks before John works his magic on it.

Is it hard to find alternate production takes due to the amount of ad-libbing on the show? Do you find you do a lot of ADR?
Cahill: Exactly, it’s really hard to find production alts in the show because there is so much improv. So, yeah, it takes extra time to find the cleanest version of the desired lines. There is a significant amount of ADR in the show. In this episode in particular, we had 144 lines of principal ADR. And, we had 250 cues of group. It’s pretty massive.

There must’ve been so much loop group in the “Veep” episode. Every time they’re in the convention center, it’s packed with people!
Cook: There was the larger convention floor to consider, and the people that were 10 to 15 feet away from whatever character was talking on camera. We tried to balance that big space with the immediate space around the characters.

This particular Veep episode has a chaotic vibe. The main location is the nomination convention. There are huge crowds, TV interviews (both in the convention hall and also playing on Selina’s TV in her skybox suite and hotel room) and a big celebration at the end. Editorially, how did you approach the design of this hectic atmosphere?
Cahill: Our sound effects editor Jonathan Golodner had a lot of recordings from prior national conventions. So those recordings are used throughout this episode. It really gives the convention center that authenticity. It gave us the feeling of those enormous crowds. It really helped to sell the space, both when they are on the convention floor and from the skyboxes.

The loop group we talked about was a huge part of the sound design. There were layers and layers of crafted walla. We listened to a lot of footage from past conventions and found that there is always a speaker on the floor giving a speech to ignite the crowd, so we tried to recreate that in loop group. We did some speeches that we played in the background so we would have these swells of the crowd and crowd reactions that gave the crowd some movement so that it didn’t sound static. I felt like it gave it a lot more life.

We recreated chanting in loop group. There was a chant for Tom James (Hugh Laurie), which was part of production. They were saying, “Run Tom Run!” We augmented that with group. We changed the start of that chant from where it was in production. We used the loop group to start that chant sooner.

Cook: The Tom James chant was one instance where we did have production crowd. But most of the time, Sue was building the crowds with the loop group.

Cahill: I used casting director Barbara Harris for loop group, and throughout the season we had so many different crowds and rallies — both interior and exterior — that we built with loop group because there wasn’t enough from production. We had to hit on all the points that they are talking about in the story. Jonah (Timothy Simons) had some fun rallies this season.

Cook: Those moments of Jonah’s were always more of a “call-and-response”-type treatment.

The convention location offered plenty of opportunity for creative mixing. For example, the episode starts with Congressman Furlong (Dan Bakkedahl) addressing the crowd from the podium. The shot cuts to a CBSN TV broadcast of him addressing the crowd. Next the shot cuts to Selina’s skybox, where they’re watching him on TV. Then it’s quickly back to Furlong in the convention hall, then back to the TV broadcast, and back to Selina’s room — all in the span of seconds. Can you tell me about your mix on that sequence?
Cook: It was about deciding on the right reverb for the convention center and the right reverbs for all the loop group and the crowds and how wide to be (how much of the surrounds we used) in the convention space. Cutting to the skybox, all of that sound was mixed to mono, for the most part, and EQ’d a little bit. The producers didn’t want to futz it too much. They wanted to keep the energy, so mixing it to mono was the primary way of dealing with it.

Whenever there was a graphic on the lower third, we talked about treating that sound like it was news footage. But we decided we liked the energy of it being full fidelity for all of those moments we’re on the convention floor.

Another interesting thing was the way that Bill Freesh and I worked together. Bill was handling all of the big cut crowds, and I was handling the loop group on my side. We were trying to walk the line between a general crowd din on the convention floor, where you always felt like it was busy and crowded and huge, along with specific reactions from the loop group reacting to something that Furlong would say, or later in the show, reacting to Selina’s acceptance speech. We always wanted to play reactions to the specifics, but on the convention floor it never seems to get quiet. There was a lot of discussion about that.

Even though we cut from the convention center into the skybox, those considerations about crowd were still in play — whether we were on the convention floor or watching the convention through a TV monitor.

You did an amazing job on all those transitions — from the podium to the TV broadcast to the skybox. It felt very real, very natural.
Cook: Thank you! That was important to us, and certainly important to the producers. All the while, we tried to maintain as much energy as we could. Once we got the sound of it right, we made sure that the volume was kept up enough so that you always felt that energy.

It feels like the backgrounds never stop when they’re in the convention hall. In Selina’s skybox, when someone opens the door to the hallway, you hear the crowd as though the sound is traveling down the hallway. Such a great detail.
Cook and Cahill: Thank you!

For the background TV broadcasts feeding Selina info about the race — like Buddy Calhoun (Matt Oberg) talking about the transgender bathrooms — what was your approach to mixing those in this episode? How did you decide when to really push them forward in the mix and when to pull back?
Cook: We thought about panning. For the most part, our main storyline is in the center. When you have a TV running in the background, you can pan it off to the side a bit. It’s amazing how you can keep the volume up a little more without it getting in the way and masking the primary characters’ dialogue.

It’s also about finding the right EQ so that the TV broadcast isn’t sharing the same EQ bandwidth as the characters in the room.

Compression plays a role too, whether that’s via a plugin or me riding the fader. I can manually do what a side-chained compressor can do by just riding the fader and pulling the sound down when necessary or boosting it when there’s a space between dialogue lines from the main characters. The challenge is that there is constant talking on this show.

Going back to what has changed over the last three years, one of the things that has changed is that we have more time per episode to mix the show. We got more and more time from the first mix to the last mix. We have twice as much time to mix the show.

Even with all the backgrounds happening in Veep, you never miss the dialogue lines. Except, there’s a great argument that happens when Selina tells Jonah he’s going to be vice president. His Uncle Jeff (Peter MacNicol) starts yelling at him, and then Selina joins in. And Jonah is yelling back at them. It’s a great cacophony of insults. Can you tell me about that scene?
Cahill: Those 15 seconds of screen time took us several hours of work in editorial. Dave (Mandel) said he couldn’t understand Selina clearly enough, but he didn’t want to loop the whole argument. Of course, all three characters are overlapped — you can hear all of them on each other’s mics — so how do you just loop Selina?

We started with an extensive production alt search that went back and forth through the cutting room a few times. We decided that we did need to ADR Selina. So we ended up using a combination of mostly ADR for Selina’s side with a little bit of production.

For the other two characters, we wanted to save their production lines, so our dialogue editor Jane Boegel (she’s the best!) did an amazing job using iZotope RX’s De-bleed feature to clear Selina’s voice out of their mics, so we could preserve their performances.

We didn’t loop any of Uncle Jeff, and it was all because of Jane’s work cleaning out Selina. We were able to save all of Uncle Jeff. It’s mostly production for Jonah, but we did have to loop a few words for him. So it was ADR for Selina, all of Uncle Jeff and nearly all of Jonah from set. Then, it was up to John to make it match.

Cook: For me, in moments like those, it’s about trying to get equal volumes for all the characters involved. I tried to make Selina’s yelling and Uncle Jeff’s yelling at the exact same level so the listener’s ear can decide what it wants to focus on rather than my mix telling you what to focus on.

Another great mix sequence was Selina’s nomination for president. There’s a promo video of her talking about horses that’s playing back in the convention hall. There are multiple layers of processing happening — the TV filter, the PA distortion and the convention hall reverb. Can you tell me about the processing on that scene?
Cook: Oftentimes, when I do that PA sound, it’s a little bit of futzing, like rolling off the lows and highs, almost like you would do for a small TV. But then you put a big reverb on it, with some pre-delay on it as well, so you hear it bouncing off the walls. Once you find the right reverb, you’re also hearing it reflecting off the walls a little bit. Sometimes I’ll add a little bit of distortion as well, as if it’s coming out of the PA.

When Selina is backstage talking with Gary (Tony Hale), I rolled off a lot more of the highs on the reverb return on the promo video. Then, in the same way I’d approach levels with a TV in the room, I was riding the level on the promo video to fit around the main characters’ dialogue. I tried to push it in between little breaks in the conversation, pulling it down lower when we needed to focus on the main characters.

What was the most challenging scene for you to mix?
Cook: I would say the Tom James chanting was challenging because we wanted to hear the chant from inside the skybox to the balcony of the skybox and then down on the convention floor. There was a lot of conversation about the microphones from Mike McLintock’s (Matt Walsh) interview. The producers decided that since there was a little bit of bleed in the production already, they wanted Mike’s microphone to be going out to the PA speakers in the convention hall. You hear a big reverb on Tom James as well. Then, the level of all the loop group specifics and chanting — from the ramp up of the chanting from zero to full volume — we negotiated with the producers. That was one of the more challenging scenes.

The acceptance speech was challenging too, because of all of the cutaways. There is that moment with Gary getting arrested by the FBI; we had to decide how much of that we wanted to hear.
There was the Billy Joel song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” that played over all the characters’ banter following Selina’s acceptance speech. We had to balance the dialogue with the desire to crank up that track as much as we could.

There were so many great moments this season. How did you decide on the series finale episode, “Veep,” for Emmy consideration for Sound Mixing?
Cook: It was mostly about story. This is the end of a seven-year run (a three-year run for Sue and I), but the fact that every character gets a moment — a wrap-up on their character — makes me nostalgic about this episode in that way.

It also had some great sound challenges that came together nicely, like all the different crowds and the use of loop group. We’ve been using a lot of loop group on the show for the past three years, but this episode had a particularly massive amount of loop group.

The producers were also huge fans of this episode. When I talked to Dave Mandel about which episode we should put up, he recommended this one as well.

Any other thoughts you’d like to add on the sound of Veep?
Cook: I’m going to miss Veep a lot. The people on it, like Dave Mandel, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Morgan Sackett … everyone behind the credenza. They were always working to create an even better show. It was a thrill to be a team member. They always treated us like we were in it together to make something great. It was a pleasure to work with people that recognize and appreciate the time and the heart that we contribute. I’ll miss working with them.

Cahill: I agree with John. On that last playback, no one wanted to leave the stage. Dave brought champagne, and Julia brought chocolates. It was really hard to say goodbye.

Goosing the sound for Allstate’s action-packed ‘Mayhem’ spots

By Jennifer Walden

While there are some commercials you’d rather not hear, there are some you actually want to turn up, like those of Leo Burnett Worldwide’s “Mayhem” campaign for Allstate Insurance.

John Binder

The action-packed and devilishly hilarious ads have been going strong since April 2010. Mayhem (played by actor Dean Winters) is a mischievous guy who goes around breaking things that cut-rate insurance won’t cover. Fond of your patio furniture? Too bad for all that wind! Been meaning to fix that broken front porch step? Too bad the dog walker just hurt himself on it! Parked your car in the driveway and now it’s stolen? Too bad — and the thief hit your mailbox and motorcycle too!

Leo Burnett Worldwide’s go-to for “Mayhem” is award-winning post sound house Another Country, based in Chicago and Detroit. Sound designer/mixer John Binder (partner of Cutters Studios and managing director of Another Country) has worked on every single “Mayhem” spot to date. Here, he talks about his work on the latest batch: Overly Confident Dog Walker, Car Thief and Bunch of Wind. And Binder shares insight on a few of his favorites over the years.

In Overly Confident Dog Walker, Mayhem is walking an overwhelming number of dogs. He can barely see where he’s walking. As he’s going up the front stairs of a house, a brick comes loose, causing Mayhem to fall and hit his head. As Mayhem delivers his message, one of the dogs comes over and licks Mayhem’s injury.

Overly Confident Dog Walker

Sound-wise, what were some of your challenges or unique opportunities for sound on this spot?
A lot of these “Mayhem” spots have the guy put in ridiculous situations. There’s often a lot of noise happening during production, so we have to do a lot of clean up in post using iZotope RX 7. When we can’t get the production dialogue to sound intelligible, we hook up with a studio in New York to record ADR with Dean Winters. For this spot, we had to ADR quite a bit of his dialogue while he is walking the dogs.

For the dog sounds, I have added my dog in there. I recorded his panting (he pants a lot), the dog chain and straining sounds. I also recorded his licking for the end of the spot.

For when Mayhem falls and hits his head, we had a really great sound for him hitting the brick. It was wonderful. But we sent it to the networks, and they felt it was too violent. They said they couldn’t air it because of both the visual and the sound. So, instead of changing the visuals, it was easier to change the sound of his head hitting the brick step. We had to tone it down. It’s neutered.

What’s one sound tool that helped you out on Overly Confident Dog Walker?
In general, there’s often a lot of noise from location in these spots. So we’re cleaning that up. iZotope RX 7 is key!

In Bunch of Wind, Mayhem represents a windy rainstorm. He lifts the patio umbrella and hurls it through the picture window. A massive tree falls on the deck behind him. After Mayhem delivers his message, he knocks over the outdoor patio heater, which smashes on the deck.

Bunch of Wind

Sound-wise, what were some of your challenges or unique opportunities for sound on Bunch of Wind?
What a nightmare for production sound. This one, understandably, was all ADR. We did a lot of Foley work, too, for the destruction to make it feel natural. If I’m doing my job right, then nobody notices what I do. When we’re with Mayhem in the storm, all that sound was replaced. There was nothing from production there. So, the rain, the umbrella flapping, the plate-glass window, the tree and the patio heater, that was all created in post sound.

I had to build up the storm every time we cut to Mayhem. When we see him through the phone, it’s filtered with EQ. As we cut back and forth between on-scene and through the phone, it had to build each time we’re back on him. It had to get more intense.

What are some sound tools that helped you put the ADR into the space on screen?
Sonnox’s Oxford EQ helped on this one. That’s a good plugin. I also used Audio Ease’s Altiverb, which is really good for matching ambiences.

In Car Thief, Mayhem steals cars. He walks up onto a porch, grabs a decorative flagpole and uses it to smash the driver-side window of a car parked in the driveway. Mayhem then hot wires the car and peels out, hitting a motorcycle and mailbox as he flees the scene.

Car Thief

Sound-wise, what were some of your challenges or unique opportunities for sound on Car Thief?
The location sound team did a great job of miking the car window break. When Mayhem puts the wooden flagpole through the car window, they really did that on-set, and the sound team captured it perfectly. It’s amazing. If you hear safety glass break, it’s not like a glass shatter. It has this texture to it. The car window break was the location sound, which I loved. I saved the sound for future reference.

What’s one sound tool that helped you out on Car Thief?
Jeff, the car owner in the spot, is at a sports game. You can hear the stadium announcer behind him. I used Altiverb on the stadium announcer’s line to help bring that out.

What have been your all-time favorite “Mayhem” spots in terms of sound?
I’ve been on this campaign since the start, so I have a few. There’s one called Mayhem is Coming! that was pretty cool. I did a lot of sound design work on the extended key scrape against the car door. Mayhem is in an underground parking garage, and so the key scrape reverberates through that space as he’s walking away.


Another favorite is Fast Food Trash Bag. The edit of that spot was excellent; the timing was so tight. Just when you think you’ve got the joke, there’s another joke and another. I used the Sound Ideas library for the bear sounds. And for the sound of Mayhem getting dragged under the cars, I can’t remember how I created that, but it’s so good. I had a lot of fun playing perspective on this one.

Often on these spots, the sounds we used were too violent, so we had to tone them down. On the first campaign, there was a spot called Deer. There’s a shot of Mayhem getting hit by a car as he’s standing there on the road like a deer in headlights. I had an excellent sound for that, but it was deemed too violent by the network.


AlphaDogs’ Terence Curren is on a quest: to prove why pros matter

By Randi Altman

Many of you might already know Terence Curren, owner of Burbank’s AlphaDogs, from his hosting of the monthly Editor’s Lounge, or his podcast The Terence and Philip Show, which he co-hosts with Philip Hodgetts. He’s also taken to producing fun, educational videos that break down the importance of color or ADR, for example.

He has a knack for offering simple explanations for necessary parts of the post workflow while hammering home what post pros bring to the table. You can watch them here:

I reached out to Terry to find out more.

How do you pick the topics you are going to tackle? Is it based on questions you get from clients? Those just starting in the industry?
Good question. It isn’t about clients as they already know most of this stuff. It’s actually a much deeper project surrounding a much deeper subject. As you well know, the media creation tools that used to be so expensive, and acted as a barrier to entry, are now ubiquitous and inexpensive. So the question becomes, “When everyone has editing software, why should someone pay a lot for an editor, colorist, audio mixer, etc.?”

ADR engineer Juan-Lucas Benavidez

Most folks realize there is a value to knowledge accrued from experience. How do you get the viewers to recognize and appreciate the difference in craftsmanship between a polished show or movie and a typical YouTube video? What I realized is there are very few people on the planet who can’t afford a pencil and some paper, and yet how many great writers are there? How many folks make a decent living writing, and why are readers willing to pay for good writing?

The answer I came up with is that almost anyone can recognize the difference between a paper written by a 5th grader and one written by a college graduate. Why? Well, from the time we are very little, adults start reading to us. Then we spend every school day learning more about writing. When you realize the hard work that goes into developing as a good writer, you are more inclined to pay a master at that craft. So how do we get folks to realize the value we bring to our craft?

Our biggest problem comes from the “magician” aspect of what we do. For most of the history of Hollywood, the tricks of the trade were kept hidden to help sell the illusion. Why should we get paid when the average viewer has a 4K camera phone with editing software on it?

That is what has spurred my mission. Educating the average viewer to the value we bring to the table. Making them aware of bad sound, poor lighting, a lack of color correction, etc. If they are aware of poorer quality, maybe they will begin to reject it, and we can continue to be gainfully employed exercising our hard-earned skills.

Boom operator Sam Vargas.

How often is your studio brought in to fix a project done by someone with access to the tools, but not the experience?
This actually happens a lot, and it is usually harder to fix something that has been done incorrectly than it is to just do it right from the beginning. However, at least they tried, and that is the point of my quest: to get folks to recognize and want a better product. I would rather see that they tried to make it better and failed than just accepted poor quality as “good enough.”

Your most recent video tackles ADR. So let’s talk about that for a bit. How complicated a task is ADR, specifically matching of new audio to the existing video?
We do a fair amount of ADR recording, which isn’t that hard for the experienced audio mixer. That said, I found out how hard it is being the talent doing ADR. It sounds a lot easier than it actually is when you are trying to match your delivery from the original recording.

What do you use for ADR?
We use Avid Pro Tools as our primary audio tool, but there are some additional tools in Fairlight (included free in Blackmagic’s Resolve now) that make ADR even easier for the mixer and the talent. Our mic is Sennheiser long shotgun, but we try to match mics to the field mic when possible for ADR.

I suppose Resolve proves your point — professional tools accessible for free to the masses?
Yeah. I can afford to buy a paint brush and some paint. It would take me a lot of years of practice to be a Michelangelo. Maybe Malcolm Gladwell, who posits that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something, is not too far off target.

What about for those clients who don’t think you need ADR and instead can use a noise reduction tool to remove the offensive noise?
We showed some noise reduction tools in another video in the series, but they are better at removing consistent sounds like air conditioner hum. We chose the freeway location as the background noise would be much harder to remove. In this case, ADR was the best choice.

It’s also good for replacing fumbled dialogue or something that was rewritten after production was completed. Often you can get away with cheating a new line of dialogue over a cutaway of another actor. To make the new line match perfectly, you would rerecord all the dialogue.

What did you shoot the video with? What about editing and color?
We shot with a Blackmagic Cinema Camera in RAW so we could fix more in post. Editing was done in Avid Media Composer with final color in Blackmagic’s Resolve. All the audio was handled in Avid’s Pro Tools.

What other topics have you covered in this series?
So far we’ve covered some audio issues and the need for color correction. We are in the planning stages for more videos, but we’re always looking for suggestions. Hint, hint.

Ok, letting you go, but is there anything I haven’t asked that’s important?
I am hoping that others who are more talented than I am pick up the mantle and continue the quest to educate the viewers. The goal is to prevent us all becoming “starving artists” in a world of mediocre media content.

Alvaro Rodríguez

Behind the Title: Histeria Music’s chief audio engineer Alvaro Rodríguez

NAME: Alvaro Rodríguez

COMPANY: Histeria Music (@histeriamusic)

Miami’s Histeria Music is a music production and audio post company. Since its foundation in 2003 we have focused on supporting our clients’ communication needs with powerful music and sound that convey a strong message and create a bond with the audience. We offer full audio post production, music production, and sound design services for advertising, film, TV, radio, video games and the corporate world.

CEO/ Chief Audio Engineer

As an audio post engineer, I work on 5.1 and stereo mixing, ADR and voiceover recordings, voiceover castings and talent direction, music search and editing, dialogue cleanup, remote recording via ISDN and/or Source Connect and sound design.

Studio A

Studio A

As the owner and founder of the studio, I take care of a ton of things. I make sure our final productions are of the highest quality possible, and handle client services, PR, bookkeeping, social media and marketing. Sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else!

Some people might think that I just sit behind a console, pushing buttons trying to make things sound pretty. In reality, I do much more than that. I advise creative and copywriters on changes in scripts that might help better fit whatever project we are recording. I also direct talent using creative vocabulary to ensure that their delivery is adequate and their performance hits that emotion we are trying to achieve. I get to sound design, edit and move audio clips around on my DAW, almost as if I were composing a piece of music, adding my own sound to the creative process.

Sound design! I love it when I get a video from any of our clients that has no sound whatsoever, not even a scratch recording of a voiceover. This gives me the opportunity to add my signature sound and be as creative as possible and help tell a story. I also love working on radio spots. Since there is no video to support the audio, I usually get to be a bigger part of the creative process once we start putting together the spots. Everything from the way the talent is recorded to the sounds and the way phrases and words are edited together is something I’ll never get tired of doing.

Sales. It’s tricky because as the owner when you succeed, it’s the best feeling in the world, but it can be very frustrating and overwhelming sometimes.

During work it has to be that moment you get the email saying the spots have been approved and are ready for traffic. On a personal level, it’s when I take my nine-year old to soccer practice, usually around 6pm

Studio B

Wow, I have no idea how to answer this question. I can’t see myself doing anything else, really, although I’ll add that I am an avid home brewer and enjoy the craft quite a bit.

Ever since I was a kid I had this fascination with things that make sounds. I was always drawn to a guitar or simply buckets I could smack and make some sort of a rhythmic pattern. After high school, I went to college and started studying business administration, only to follow in my dad and brother’s steps. Not to anyone’s surprise I quit after the second semester and ended up doing a bit of soul searching. Long story short, I ended up attending Full Sail University where I graduated in the Recording Arts program back in 2000

This year started with a great and fun project for us. We are recording ADR for the Netflix series Bloodline. We are also currently working on the audio post and film scoring of a short film called Andante based on a story from Argentinian author Julio Cortazar.

Also worth mentioning is that we recently concluded the audio post for seasons one and two of the MTV show Ridículos, which is the Spanish and Portuguese language adaptations of the original English version of Ridiculousness that currently airs in Latin America and Brazil.

The first project I ever did for the advertising industry. I was 23 and a recent graduate of Full Sail. All the stars and planets aligned and a campaign for Budweiser — both for the general and US Hispanic markets — landed in my lap. This came from Del Rivero Messianu DDB (currently known as ALMA DDB, Ad Age’s 2017 multicultural agency of the year).

I was living with my parents at the time and had a small home studio in the garage. No Pro Tools, no Digi Beta, just good-old Cool Edit and a VHS player (yes, I manually pressed play on the VHS and Cool Edit to sync my music to picture). Long story short, I ended up writing and producing the music for that TV spot. This led to me unavoidably opening the doors of Histeria Music to the public in 2003.

iZotope’s RX Post Production Suite, Telos Zephyr Xstream ISDN box and Source Connect. I also use the FabFilter Pro-Q 2 quite a bit.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

I live in Miami and the beach is my backyard, so I find myself relaxing for hours at the beach on weekends. I love to spend time with my family during my son’s soccer practices and games. When I am really stressed and need to be alone, I tend to brew some crafty beers at home. Great hobby!

Setting the audio tone of ‘Everest’

Glenn Freemantle sounds off on making this film’s audio authentic

By Jennifer Walden

Immovable, but not insurmountable, Mount Everest has always loomed large in the minds of ambitious adventurers who seek to test their mettle against nature’s most imposing obstacle course, with unpredictable weather.

Reaching the summit takes more than just determination, it requires training, teamwork and a bit of stubborn resolve not to die. Even then, there’s no guarantee that what, or who, goes up will come down. Director Baltasar Kormákur’s film Everest, from Universal Studios, is based on the tragic true story of two separate expeditions who sought to reach the summit on the same day, May 10th 1996, only to be bested by a frigid tempest.

Glenn Freemantle

Glenn Freemantle

Supervising sound editor/sound designer Glenn Freemantle at Sound24, based at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, UK, was in charge of building Everest’s blustery sound personality. All the wind, snow and ice sounds that lash the film’s characters were carefully crafted in post and designed to take the viewer on a journey up the mountain.

“Starting at the bottom and going right to the top, you feel like you are moving through the different camps,” explains Freemantle. “We tried to make each location as interesting as possible. The film is all about nature; it’s all about how the viewer would feel on that mountain. We always wanted the viewer to feel that journey that they were on.”

In addition to Freemantle, Sound24’s crew includes sound design editors Eilam Hoffman, Niv Adiri, Ben Barker, Tom Sayers and sound effects editors Danny Freemantle and Dillon Bennett.

Capturing Wind
Glenn Freemantle and his sound team collected thousands of wind sounds, like strong winter winds from along the shores of western England, Ireland and Scotland. They recorded wide canyon winds and sand storms in the deserts of Israel, and on Santorini, they recorded strong tonal mountain winds. At the base camp on Mount Everest, they set out recorders day and night to capture what it sounded like there at different times. “At the base camp on Everest, even if we didn’t use all the recordings from there, we got the sense of the real environment, exactly what it was like. From a cinematic point of view, we used that as a basis, but obviously we were also trying to tell a story with the sound,” he says.

To capture ambience from various altitudes on Everest, Freemantle sent two small recording set-ups with the camera crew who filmed at the top of Everest. “The equipment had to be small, portable and resistant to the extreme conditions,” he explains. For these set-ups, owner of Telinga Microphones, Klas Strandberg, created a small, custom-made omnidirectional mic for an A/B set-up, as well as a pair of cardioid mics in XY configuration that were connected to two Sony D100 recorders.

The best way to record wind is to have it sing through something, so on their wind capturing outings, Freemantle and crew brought along an assortment of items — sieves, coat hangers, bits of metal, pans, all sorts of oddities that would produce different tones as the wind moved through and around them. They also set up tents, like those used in the film, to capture the tent movements in the wind. “We used a multi-mic set-up to record the sound so you felt like you were in the middle of all of these situations. We put the mics in the corners and in the center of the tent, and then we shook it. We also left them up for the night,” he says.

They used Sennheiser MKH8020s, MKH8050s and MKH8040s paired with multiple Sound Devices 744T and 722 recorders set at 192k/24-bit. For high-frequency winds, they chose the Sanken COS-100k, which can capture sounds up to 100kHz. “This allowed us to pitch down the inaudible wind to audible frequencies (between 20Hz – 20kHz) and create the bass for powerful tonal winds.”

With wind being a main player in the sound, Freemantle’s design focused on its dynamics. Changing the speed of the wind, the harshness of the wind and also the weight of the wind kept it interesting. “We were moving the sound all the time, and that was really effective. There was a 20-minute section of storm in there, which wasn’t easy to build,” explains Freemantle. “We would mix a scene for a day and then walk away. You can exhaust your ears mixing a film like this.”

Having the opportunity to revisit the stormy sequences allowed the sound team to compare the different storms and wind-swept scenes, and make adjustments. One of their biggest challenges was making sure each storm didn’t feel too big, or lack dynamics. “We wanted to have something different happening for each storm or camp so the audience could feel the journey of these people. It had to build up to the big storm at the end. We’d have to look at the whole film to make sure we weren’t going wrong. The sound needed to progress.”

In addition to wind, Freemantle and his team recorded sounds of snow and ice. They purchased a few square meters of snow and froze big chunks of ice for their recording sessions. “We got all the gear the actors were wearing and we put the jackets and things into the freezer overnight, so they would have that feeling, that frozen texture, that they would have out there in the weather,” he says. “We tried to do everything we could to make it sound as real as possible. It’s exhausting how that weather makes you feel, and it was all from a human point of view that we tried to create the weather that was around them.”

The weather sounds weren’t the only thing to be recreated for Everest. The soundtrack also hosts a sizable amount of ADR thanks to massive wind machines that were constantly blowing on set, and the actors having to wear masks didn’t help the dialogue intelligibility either. “That’s why the film is 90 percent re-recorded dialogue,” shares Freemantle. “Sound mixer Adrian Bell did a hell of a job in those conditions, but they are wearing all of these masks so you can hardly hear them. Everything had to be redone.”

The dialogue was so muffled at times that it was difficult for the picture-editing department to cut Everest. Director Kormákur asked for a quick ADR track of the whole film, using sound-alike actors when the real ones weren’t available. In addition, he also asked for a rough sound design and Foley pass, giving Freemantle about a week to mock it up. “You couldn’t follow the film. They couldn’t run it for the producers to get a sense of the story because you couldn’t hear what the actors were saying,” he says. “So we recreated the whole dialogue sequence for the film, and we quickly cut — from our sound libraries — all the footsteps and we did a quick cloth pass so they had a complete soundtrack in a very short period of time.”

During the ADR session for the final tracks, Freemantle notes the actors wore weight vests and straps around their chests to make it difficult for them to breathe and talk, all in an effort to recreate the experience of what is happening to them on screen. As CG was being added to the picture, with more sprays of snow and ice, the actors could react to the environment even more.

“Having to re-create their performances was a curse in one way, but it was a blessing because then we had control over every single sound in the soundtrack. We had control of every part of their breathing, every noise from their gear and outfits. We have everything so we could pull the perspective in the sound at any given moment and not bring along a lot of muck with it.”

Everest was mixed in three immersive formats: Dolby Atmos, Barco Auro-3D and IMAX 12.0. “Each one of the formats works really well and you really feel like you are in the film,” reports Freemantle. “The weight of the sound hits you in the theater. There is a lot of bass in there. With sound, you are moving the air around, so you are feeling it when the storm hits. The presence of the bass hits you in the chest.”

But it’s not a continuous aural onslaught —there are highs and lows, with rumbly wind fighting against the side of the mountain on Hillary Step and hissing wind higher up towards the summit. “You have to have detail and the sounds should be helping to tell the story,” he says. “It’s not about how much you put in — in the end, it’s about what you take out when you finish. That’s very important. You don’t want the film to be just a massive noise.”

The Mix
Everest was mixed natively in the Dolby Atmos theatre at Pinewood Studios by Freemantle and re-recording mixers Niv Adiri, CAS, and Ian Tapp, CAS. Sound24’s tried and tested Avid set-up helped bring the sounds of Everest to life, working on the powerful Avid System 5 large-format console, using Pro Tools 11 with EUCON control. Their goal was to put the audience on the mountain with the climbers without overwhelming them with a constant barrage of sound. “The journey the characters are going through is both mental and physical, and mixing in Atmos helped us bring these emotions to the audience,” says Adiri. Since director Kormákur’s focus was on the human tragedy, the dialogue scenes were intimately shot. This enabled the mixers to shift the bala

nce towards dialogue in these sequences and maintain the emotional contact with the characters. In the Atmos format they could position sounds around the audience to immerse them in the scene without having the sounds sit on top of the dialogue. “The sheer weight and power of the sound that the Atmos system produces was perfect for this film, particularly in the storm sequence, where we were able to make the sound an almost physical experience for the audience, yet still maintain the clarity of the dialogue and not make the whole thing unbearable to watch,” says Tapp.

Once the final Atmos mix was approved by director Kormákur, the tracks were taken to Galaxy Studios in Mol, Belgium, for the Barco 3D-Auro mix, and then it was on to Toronto’s Technicolor for the 12.0 IMAX mix. Despite the change in format, the integrity of the film was kept the same. The mix they defined in Atmos was the blueprint for the other formats.

For Freemantle, the best part of making Everest was being able to capture the journey. To make the audience feel like they are moving up the mountain, and make them feel cold and distressed. “You want to feel that contact, that physical contact like you are in it, like the snow is hitting your face and the jacket around you. When people watch it you want them to experience it because it’s a true story and you want them to feel it. If they are feeling it, then they are feeling the emotion of it.”

For more on Everest, read out interview with editor Mick Audsley.


Behind the Title: Formosa Group mixer Tim West

NAME: Tim West

COMPANY: Formosa Group‘s Villa commercial division.

Audio post for features, TV and commercials. We have sound editorial teams working on different feature projects.

Commercial and ADR mixer.

I record, edit and mix commercials for TV, radio and theatrical presentations and replace dialog for movies and TV shows.

The amount of file management and the printer problems I deal with.

I use an Avid Pro Tools rig with an ICON console, Adam monitors and John Hardy pre-amps.

The social aspect — the clients and actors I work with. I love hearing old Hollywood stories from the horse’s mouth!

Mornings! I’m definitely a morning person.

It’s been a while, so I haven’t considered anything else for a long time, but probably something to do with construction and property development.

Since my mid-teens when I interned at the BBC — I got distracted for a few years, but I got back into it in my mid-twenties.


Taco Bell’s “Breakfast Defectors” campaign and The History Channel’s Texas Rising.

I worked on a campaign for Chevy Silverado a couple of years ago which told the stories of various people and how they used their Trucks. I had enough time to make them sound really great, and they were beautifully produced and written pieces.

I watched Texas Rising in a theater for the cast and crew screening, and was struck by how proud everybody is of their work; it sounded and looked truly awesome.

My Dolby Media Meter, a good microphone and my coffee machine.

I think I have a healthy amount of stress to keep me on my toes, but I like to sail, and hang out with my kids (which isn’t stress free!). My nine year old has suddenly become a really great drummer, so I keep my Marshall amp in his room and we rock out a few times a week. I’m not saying we’re any good, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun!

The audio team at Sony Pictures Post takes on Netflix’s ‘Bloodline’

By Jennifer Walden

For many in the country, this past winter was a rough one. In fact, at times it felt never-ending. While spring now limps toward us just a little too slowly, you might want to imagine yourself in a tropical climate. May we recommend settling in with a refreshing drink and binge watching Netflix’s new drama series Bloodline. Shot on-location in Islamorada, a six-island section of the Florida Keys, Bloodline unravels the story of the locally renowned Rayburn family, whose children engage in a bit of Floridian fratricide.

Re-recording mixer Joe Barnett at Sony Pictures Post notes, unsurprisingly, that bug sounds Continue reading

Oscar-winner Ben Wilkins on Whiplash’s audio mix, edit


By Randi Altman



‘Chicago Fire’: the sound of drama

By Jennifer Walden

Whether it’s a raging high-rise fire, a horrific car accident or another life-threatening event, the firefighters, rescue squad and paramedics of Chicago Firehouse 51 on NBC’s Chicago Fire are always in the center of some sort of dramatic adventure. And sometimes that drama spills into the personal lives of these imperfect heroes.

To help enhance the feeling of action and drama throughout each episode, the audio post team at BluWave Audio, a division of Universal Studios Sound that handles TV mixing, audio restoration/preservation and digital mastering, fills in the backgrounds with off-screen sounds such as fire radios, equipment being moved around, phones ringing, voices and other more typical sounds.

“The fire house they’re stationed at is a hub for many different activities for the fire Continue reading

Creating ever-changing environments for CW’s ‘The 100’

By Jennifer Walden




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