NBCUni 9.5.23

Category Archives: Netflix

Zach Robinson on Scoring Netflix’s Wrestlers Docuseries

No one can deny the attraction of “entertainment” wrestling. From WWE to NXT to AEW, there is no shortage of muscular people holding other muscular people above their heads and dropping them to the ground. And there is no shortage of interest in the wrestlers and their journeys to the big leagues.

Zach Robinson

That is just one aspect of Netflix’s docuseries Wrestlers, directed by Greg Whiteley, which follows former WWE wrestler Al Snow as he tries to keep the pro wrestling league Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) going while fighting off mounting debt and dealing with new ownership. It also provides a behind-the-scenes look at these athletes’ lives outside of the ring.

For the series’ score, Whiteley called on composer Zach Robinson to give the show its sound. “Wrestlers was a dream come true,” says Robinson. “Coming into the project, I was such a huge fan of Greg Whiteley’s work, from Last Chance U to Cheer. On top of that, I grew up on WWE, so it was so much fun to work with this specific group of people on a subject that I really loved.”

Let’s find out more from Robinson, whose other recent projects include Twisted Metal and Florida Man (along with Leo Birenberg) and the animated horror show Fright Krewe

What was the direction you were given for the score?
I originally thought that Greg and the rest of the team wanted something similar to what I do on Cobra Kai, but after watching the first couple of episodes and having a few discussions with the team, we wanted to have music that served as a juxtaposition to the burly, muscular, sometimes brutal imagery you were seeing on screen.

Greg wanted something dramatic and beautiful and almost ballet-like. The music ends up working beautifully with the imagery and really complements the sleek cinematography. Like Greg’s other projects, this is a character drama with an amazing group of characters, and we needed the music to support their stories without making fun of them.

What is your process? Is there a particular instrument you start on, or is it dependent on the project?
It often starts with a theme and a palette decision. Simply, what are the notes I’m writing and what are the instruments playing those notes? I generally like to start by writing a few larger pieces to cover a lot of groups and see what gauges the client’s interest.

In the case of Wrestlers, I presented three pieces (not to picture) and shared them with Greg and the team. Luckily for me, those three pieces were very much in the ballpark of what they were looking for, and I think all three made it into the first episode.

Can you walk us through your workflow on Wrestlers?
Sometimes, working on non-fiction can be a lot different than working on a scripted TV show. We would have spotting sessions (meetings where we watch down the episode and discuss the ins and outs of where the score lives), but as the episodes progressed, I ended up creating more of a library for the editors to grab cues from. That became very helpful for me because the turnaround on these episodes from a scoring standpoint was very, very fast.

However, every episode did have large chunks that needed to be scored to picture. I’m thinking of a lot of the fights, which I really had to score as if I was scoring any type of fight in a scripted show. It took a lot of effort and a lot of direction from the creative team to score those bouts, and finding the right tone was always a challenge.

How would you describe the score? What instruments were used? Was there an orchestra, or were you creating it all?
As I mentioned earlier, the score is very light, almost like a ballet. It’s inspired by a lot of Americana music, like from Aaron Copland, but also, I was very inspired by the “vagabond” stylings of someone like Tom Waits, so you’ll hear a lot of trombone, trumpet, bass, flute and drums.

Imagine seeing a small band performing on the street; that’s kind of what was inspiring to me. This is a traveling troupe of performers, and Greg even referred to them as “the Muppets” during one of our first meetings. We also had a lot of heightened moments that used a large, epic orchestra. I’m thinking especially about the last 30 minutes of the season finale, which is incredibly triumphant and epic in scope.

How did you work with the director in terms of feedback? Any examples of notes or direction given?
Greg and producer Adam Leibowitz were dream collaborators and always had incredibly thoughtful notes and gave great direction. I think the feedback I got most frequently was about being careful not to dip into melodrama through the music. The team is very tasteful with how they portray dramatic moments in their projects, and Wrestlers was no exception.

There were a few times I went a bit too far and big in the music, and Greg would tell me to take a step back and let the drama from the reality of the situation speak for itself. This all made a lot of sense to me, especially because I understood that, coming from scoring mostly scripted programming, I would tend to go harder and bigger on my first pass, which wasn’t always appropriate.

More generally, do you write based on project – spot, game, film, TV — or do you just write?
I enjoy writing music mostly to picture, whether that’s a movie or TV or videogame. I enjoy it much more than writing a piece of music not connected to anything, and I find that when I have to do the latter, it’s incredibly difficult for me.

How did you get into composing? Did you come from a musical family?
I don’t come from a musical family, but I come from a very creative and encouraging family. I knew I wanted to start composing from a very young age, and I was incredibly fortunate to have a family that supported me every step of the way. I studied music in high school and then into college, and then I immediately got a job apprenticing for a composer right after college. I worked my way up and through a lot of odd jobs, and now I’m here.

Any tips for those just starting out?
My biggest piece of advice is to simply be yourself. I know it sounds trite, but don’t try to mold your voice into what you think people want to hear. I’m still learning that even with my 10 years in the business, people want to hear unique voices, and there are always great opportunities to try something different.

Geofrey Hildrew on Setting Editing Tone for Netflix’s Painkiller

Editor Geofrey Hildrew, ACE, has cut many episodics, including the upcoming Ryan Murphy show American Sports Story, Carnival Row and The Walking Dead. One of his most recent projects was editing Netflix’s Painkiller, which is a fictionalized retelling of the origins of the opioid crises, including the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma. It’s based on the book Pain Killer by Barry Meier and the New Yorker Magazine article “The Family That Built an Empire of Pain” by Patrick Radden Keefe.

Geofrey Hildrew

We reached out to Hildrew to talk workflow on the pilot, Episode 3 and Episode 5.

You cut Episode 1, essentially setting the tone for the series. How did you work with the showrunner to get this right?
One of the most unique aspects of the show is that the tone is constantly shifting. At times it can be devastatingly heartbreaking. At others, it becomes so heightened that we begin to question, “Did this/is this really happening?” Tonally, that’s an extremely broad canvas. We always had to question, “Are we being true to the story we’re trying to tell?”

Peter Berg is a masterful filmmaker – he’s a feature director, a documentarian and an actor (among other things). When we first started receiving dailies, it was immediately clear that this was going to be something different. Pete really used those different skill sets to give us some nontraditional and unique material. When he’d shoot a scene, he’d constantly play with shooting styles, improvisational techniques and even music to get to the emotional and dramatic truth of each moment.

As you can imagine, especially in television, this isn’t a traditional way of covering scenes. I remember some early moments looking at dailies and feeling a little uncertain about how to approach the material… until the lightbulb moment happened. Pete called one day and said, “Be nontraditional. Be experimental. Be surprising. Be Fearless.” That became our mantra in the cutting room, and it opened the floodgates for creativity.

No two episodes are alike, and that’s one of the things I adore most about this series. Episode 1 created some unique challenges: There are a lot of characters to introduce, and we tried to introduce each in a memorable way. We had a nonlinear timeline, not only jumping between past and “present,” but also needing to service each of those aforementioned characters. Additionally, we needed to introduce a lot of bold, stylistic techniques, which we’d use increasingly throughout the series, in a way that the audience could understand.

There is a lot of information and backstory in Episode 1. We needed to make this digestible so that it was simultaneously respectful of the subject matter and also entertaining. We wanted to create an experience. One technique Pete would often use while directing was to play source music on-set to help set the mood and atmosphere. That’s something I latched onto very quickly because it helped me get inside his head. It was an insight into how and what he was feeling on-set at that particular moment and what he was trying to convey with his material. Music became an important aspect of the show — not just the source cues we used but the wonderful score that Matt Morton composed for us.

Another breakthrough was the use of found and stock footage. There are some crucial moments throughout the series when we used that footage to help us emphasize key moments. An example of this technique in Episode 1 is the pleasure/pain montage. We went through many iterations of that sequence, some of which pushed the boundaries with extreme visuals. But that was the joy of working with Pete. He wasn’t afraid to hit that breaking point and sometimes go beyond it to see where we could take the material. And when we pushed things as far as we could, Pete had great instincts for pulling the pendulum back toward a happy medium that was evocative, experiential and best served our story.

Can you describe the pacing?
The pacing was always on our minds. Because we were playing with varying stylistic techniques throughout the series, we were constantly modulating the pacing. It changes, sometimes rather dramatically, throughout the series. With every scene, we first asked ourselves, “What do we want the audience to experience in this moment?” Emotion almost always took priority when approaching a scene. And our pacing and cutting patterns always evolved to service that.

There always has to be a reason to make a cut. Like any dramatic story, there are plenty of quiet moments… sometimes we’d let scenes play out in one-ers, and we’d want to live with the characters as events unfold. Other times we’d get quite aggressive with cuts, and an intimate scene might be purposefully nonlinear or cut like an action sequence. It was always about aligning the audience with the story arc of each character in an experiential way.

Because we were working with multiple storylines, I think we had a little more latitude to take some of these big swings. We’d examine how late we could get into a scene. How early could we get out? Executive producer Eric Newman once described the show as being shot out of a cannon. And that feeling is something very deliberate because I think it represents, in a very real way, the trajectory of the OxyContin epidemic. This all started and snowballed very quickly, and the epidemic was out of control before most people knew what hit them. I hope the pacing of the show emulates that sensation as it continues to build.

Did any of that change through the series, especially as the story progresses and becomes increasingly uncomfortable? It feels like the editing and presentation of the material mirrors the discomfort and puts the audience in each character’s mindset.
Since we’re following multiple storylines, each one evolves at its own pace. And there’s a good reason for that – each character has a different entry point to the story and their experience with OxyContin. I think it’s cool that we get to examine our story from so many points of view. On one side, we meet Edie (Uzo Aduba) as the reluctant storyteller, sharing her involvement with the epidemic.

As she begins telling her story, the cutting is much more traditional and deliberate. She doesn’t even know what OxyContin is. But she’s about to find out. As her investigation begins, her investment in the story and the toll it takes on her becomes more intense, so the pacing evolves to reflect that experience. By the end of Episode 3, the cutting is quite intense as we start to understand the real psychological impact this is all having on her. It’s like a form of PTSD.

This is also the case with Glen Kryger’s (Taylor Kitsch) story. In many ways, he’s the emotional heart of the show. We meet Glen and his family having an ordinary day at work. He, too, has no idea what OxyContin is. But his experience with it soon becomes more intimate, and things quickly escalate. So does the cutting. I think, more than any other story in the show, the editing style evolves most as we follow Glen. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying Glen becomes an addict. And as we follow that trajectory, our style changes. What does it feel like to take OxyContin for the first time? What does it feel like to become dependent on it, to start going through withdrawal? The cutting gradually evolves to reflect that.

In Episode 3, the cutting steps up to a new level. There’s a sequence where Glen is really beginning to feel the effects of withdrawal while brushing his teeth and making breakfast for his family. We really wanted to put the audience in Glen’s shoes. What does that elevated state feel like when you want to crawl out of your skin? The cutting and sound here are all very disorienting, even cacophonous, to help you feel that heightened sense of tension and anxiety. This further evolves in Episode 5, when Glen is deeper in his story. Glen is now on a mission to acquire OxyContin, no matter what the cost. Accordingly, his scenes are cut much more in the style of an action movie – because that reflects his emotional state. He’s a man with a very specific goal in mind, and that’s how we want the audience to experience it.

On the other side of the coin, we have the story of Purdue Pharma. The Purdue drug reps are introduced through Britt Hufford (Dina Shihabi), who ends up recruiting Shannon Schaeffer (West Duchovny). Britt is already deep into the “story of Oxy” as we meet her, but Shannon is playing catch-up. Accordingly, the cutting is very fast-paced to reflect that aspect of Shannon’s journey. She’s thrown in headfirst; we’re all catching up just like her.

Finally, we have Richard Sackler (Matthew Broderick), who is at the center of this whole thing. There’s a sort of whimsical style to the way his scenes are cut early on. He is the story; he’s not catching up to it. And maybe that also says something about his state of mind. Richard had a very complicated relationship with his uncle, Arthur Sackler (Clark Gregg). We see some interactions between these two characters in rather unexpected ways. And as that relationship develops, so does the cutting style to show Richard’s attitude toward Arthur.

Richard had a vision and had a singular focus on executing that vision. That whimsical style evolves to help portray what his emotional state of being might have been. In Episode 3, he gives a grand “blizzard of the century” speech. It builds in intensity, like an avalanche, using some stock footage as accents to help illustrate the intensity of his state of mind. It’s over the top and surprising at times.

Episode 5 and the Miami sequence are sort of where the story builds to its apex – it’s a fever dream of insanity, where all our stories finally collide in devastating ways. This was quite a balancing act as we checked in with each of our main characters. It’s a lot to keep track of, trying to best convey their emotional states while a party is happening around them. It’s over the top and decadent, yet tragic, heartbreaking and emotional at the same time.

Something that starts as good fun becomes utterly grotesque. It took a lot of work to get this right, but I’m very proud of what we accomplished here. Despite all the “noise” that is Miami, I think we found a way to cut through all that as we shift focus toward Shannon and Glen. Both characters have tremendous arcs in this episode. There’s so much more I’d love to talk about here, but I don’t want to give away any spoilers.

What about maintaining clarity in the interweaving narratives and timelines for the audience as the story unfolds in a nonlinear and nontraditional way?
As we began work on Painkiller, we had a lot of conversations about how we would maintain clarity.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked on multiple projects with non-traditional narratives. One example is a show called Once Upon a Time for ABC, where I edited all seven seasons as well as directed. Tonally, that show couldn’t be more different than what we’re doing on Painkiller, but it gave me a lot of confidence handling many characters over interweaving storylines.

Edie’s deposition was the through line that kept us grounded. Beyond that, we’re hopping around in time and place quite a bit. We tried multiple techniques in early versions of the cuts, oftentimes experimenting with on-screen graphics. But they never felt right. As we continued to revise the cuts, we often felt they got in the way. The time we spent reading graphics and banners distracted us from the experience of the show. So gradually, we started removing them. When we started screening early cuts for friends and family, something surprising happened. We received a lot of early feedback from test viewers that they were so engrossed in the story that they were not having trouble keeping track of the timelines. This was a big victory for us.

You used jarring, aggressive cuts and asynchronous footage to show the progression of the opioid crisis and the toll it takes on individuals. Can you discuss?
I think I’ve discussed this quite a bit in previous answers, but yes. It was always our desire to create an experience — to best use our cutting style to create an emotional connection between our characters and the audience. There’s a moment I haven’t talked about in Episode 3 when Shannon is out visiting a doctor’s office and witnesses, for the first time, two people taking drugs inside a car. This was a big moment for us. Again, we wanted to create an experiential moment. Briefly, we break from Shannon’s POV and move inside that car to be with the drug users. How would we show that?

Pete said he once heard someone describe the feeling of taking heroin as “warm honey,” so we worked to achieve a visual language that might convey that feeling. I think what we came up with is quite evocative. There’s nothing literal about the moment; it’s all visually based. That was something we designed in editorial. Later, in Episode 5 (during the Miami sequence), there’s another sequence with the girls in a bathroom using OxyContin. Since we had already established a visual language for this, we tried to replicate that same feeling there – this time with a character who we’ve come to care about.

How often was the showrunner looking at your cuts? Were you also showing cuts to the other editors, or did you all work separately?
Almost daily. We had an extremely collaborative editing process on this project. During dailies, Pete trusted us to explore and experiment with the footage as much as we could. Be fearless, he said! Once we started reviewing completed cuts, we moved from our home cutting rooms into Pete’s offices. He’d be in editorial most days with his dog, Esso. Eric Newman (Narcos), who I had previously collaborated with on the Netflix series True Story, made frequent visits to the cutting room. Garret Donnelly was my editing partner on the series (cutting the even episodes).

After dailies, we worked a little over a year refining cuts. The four of us would usually screen cuts together chronologically until we had a shape we were all happy with. (We also had wonderful partners in Alex Sapot and Andrew McQuinn at Netflix.) After each screening, Pete and Eric would give us some time to explore the notes. During that time, Garret and I were extremely collaborative with our cuts… constantly sharing ideas with each other and questioning each other’s cuts. It’s rare to have such a close collaboration with another editor. I valued that tremendously.

Once we had revised cuts of all the episodes, we’d sometimes start back from the beginning. Other times, Pete would come to the cutting room with an inspired idea about a scene or sequence we had long put to bed and asked us to try a radical new direction. The cuts were constantly evolving and changing. I’ve never had so much fun in the cutting room, having the opportunity to play and experiment. It really was an editor’s dream come true. I estimate that there are some scenes and sequences where I have created hundreds of different versions. I’ve never experienced that before but loved every moment of it.

What are some of your favorite scenes to cut, or maybe the most challenging?
There are so many sequences in Painkiller I’m fond of for different reasons. I talked earlier about the Glen breakfast scene. That was a fun one to cut because there was a musicality to the cutting. It was so nonlinear and rhythm-based that it was a blast to conceptualize and piece together. Miami was a crazy thing to put together. There was a massive amount of footage to play with, an embarrassment of riches, with so many iterations of that sequence along the way. It’s something we kept finessing until the very end.

I also love the way we introduce Glen in Episode 1. Pete did such a wonderful job blocking that scene, it was such a joy to put together. It starts as an ordinary “day in the life” of Glen. Very quickly, we learn so much about his character — what it’s like to run a small business and the stress that comes with that, and what his relationship is with his family (his wife, daughter and stepson). All the while, his son, Tyler (Jack Mulhern), is horsing around with an excavator. It seems playful, but it immediately introduces a level of tension into the scene. I think any smart viewer will realize pretty quickly that something bad is going to happen. We just don’t know how or when. The excavator becomes this ticking clock running in the background throughout. And then, when the inciting incident does happen, Glen’s injury, we’ve already fallen in love with this character – and hopefully, that makes it even more surprising and heartbreaking.

There are a couple of Richard Sackler scenes that I’m quite fond of as well. The opening scene in Episode 1 – Richard hunting the smoke detector – was so much fun to play with. It’s all just kind of crazy. And it says so much about this character without many words. When I had the idea to add “Sound of Silence,” the whole scene came alive in an almost absurdist kind of way.

The same thing goes for the scene in Episode 3, where Edie goes to Purdue and meets Richard for the first time. He’s throwing a tennis ball around the lobby for his dog, Unch. Again, I love the way Pete staged that sequence; it’s so inspired and unexpected. The way I built that sequence almost came about accidentally. The dog wasn’t cooperating on-set. As I began piecing the scene together, I didn’t know how I was going to address the continuity issues with the dog. This was a big dog, so he was almost always in the frame. So I decided I was just going to concentrate on Matthew’s performance and solve the dog later.

I built together a string-out of all the best pieces (and improvisations) from Matthew. And when I watched it, there was something kind of magical about the nonlinear nature of it all. Matthew was so good, mischievous, and maybe unhinged that it added another dimension to the character he was playing. I embraced the imperfections and continuity mismatches. I think it all came out rather delicious.

Possible to share a note that the showrunner gave regarding a scene or episode?
Originally, we didn’t meet Richard Sackler until much deeper into Episode 1. It started much more linearly with Edie and followed her into the deposition as she began to tell the story. Uzo’s performance is amazing throughout, and we knew the strength of her acting would carry the show. But there was a lot of heavy exposition to get out of the way. As we started experimenting with editorial style, we knew we also had to get the audience comfortable with the visual language of the show.

Pete and Eric came up with the idea of moving the smoke detector scene to the top of Episode 1. Now we had a way to ease ourselves into the exposition and introduce Richard Sackler sooner (hopefully in an entertaining way). It was also a chance to tease some of the stylistic chances we would be taking as the show progressed. When we screened this version, we all felt that we had figured out a way to tell the audience, “This is something different.”

What did you use to cut the series? Any particular tools that came in handy for this one?
Avid Media Composer. We had a really cool setup designed by Tommy Pham and TriCoast Media for this show. We had local hard drive media on all of our Avid setups, but our project files were all cloud-based. That way, no matter what system we decided to work on, at any location, we could load our projects seamlessly and work without any downtime. Our assistants were all working from home, so all our interactions with them were over PacPost.live or Slack. One benefit of the pandemic is that it’s really forced us to think outside the box and come up with some really creative workflows.

Finally, what stands out about this show from your perspective in terms of the editing?
Pete and Eric not only trusted me to be their partner in telling such an important story but were brave enough to give me the time to experiment and play. Sometimes showrunners get nervous when you show ideas that are half-baked or “works in progress.” This was very rarely the case with Painkiller.

Some of the craziest ideas would spark new ones and push us into surprising new directions. I’ve never had a creative collaboration like this before, but I sure hope I do again. I know, without a doubt, the experience of working with Pete pushed my skill set to new levels. He made me a better, more confident, fearless editor. I’m really proud of what we all accomplished together.

NBCUni 9.5.23

Emmy-Nominated Director Paris Barclay on The Jeffrey Dahmer Story

By Iain Blair

Paris Barclay is one of television’s most successful and honored directors. A two-time Emmy Award winner, he’s directed nearly 200 episodes of television, including such series as The West Wing, ER, Glee, CSI, The Shield, Scandal and NYPD Blue. He received his ninth Emmy nomination for an episode of the Netflix show Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. 

Paris Barclay

The 10-part true crime series, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, dramatizes the life and death of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters). It received six Emmy nominations. Barclay’s nod was for Episode 6, “Silenced.”

I recently spoke with Barclay about making the harrowing show, the challenges, his love of post and the importance of sound.

What were the challenges of directing your episodes — 6 and 10 — and how did you prepare?
I got the scripts a couple of weeks before I had to start official preparation, so I was able to ruminate on it and imagine it. What I kept coming back to was music — not the music that would play on the show but the whole thing as a kind of musical system. That was my private touchstone. I didn’t really express that to everyone else, but I’m also a composer, and I think of things in terms of beats, silences and crescendos, and the blessing of different instruments. So I tried to sort of play it like I’d play a score that I loved. That was the over-arching design.

Then we got technical, and there was a period of thousands and thousands of meetings. What would the slice of meat look like that appears in the final scenes? That was probably seven meetings just for that. How would we do Tony’s story, and would it be different in terms of the style we were doing for the rest of the show? How would we be able to bring Evan to that period and also a brighter mood than we see with him in the past? So in meetings with Ryan and the writers and producers we gradually hashed out all of these things, bit by bit. And then we changed them, constantly, because that’s the way it goes.

Talk about working with your DP John O’Connor.
He was my DP on both episodes, and we began working on the template that had been established on the first episode by director Carl Franklin and DP Jason McCormick. Jason was sort of our visual stylist for the whole series, and working with Ryan he conceived how the show would look. He left the rule book — basically, one page of different visual rules we had to adhere to, which we then had to deviate from. It was great to have the rule book, and we used it like I used the music. It became something that we blocked in and out depending on the scene and the circumstances.

The show has a great look. What cameras and lenses did you shoot on?
We shot on the Sony Venice, and we used the Blackwing 7 series of lenses created by Bradford Young and others that have that very particular patina and have that bokeh and certain fall-off and glow. And, of course, those lenses were undoubtedly tweaked by Jason to make sure they were exactly what we wanted. I believe we used two sets of the Blackwing 7 series of lenses, one that was a little bit more traditional in the Blackwing style, and one that was a little bit moiré distorted that we used in certain moments.

Tell us about the shoot.
We shot it all here in LA at Raleigh Studios, and the shooting schedule depended on various factors. So while I was shooting Episode 6, we were also cleaning up parts of Episode 1 and other episodes, so the schedule went a bit longer than usual.

I shot for about 18 days on Episode 6, and Episode 10 was a bit more efficient, shooting for about 14 days. They were definitely longer than normal TV as we shot cinematically, and it takes extra time to do all the setups and get the beautiful look we were hoping for. I think we did get the look we wanted.

Did you start integrating post during the shoot?
Oh yeah. I was super-fortunate to have Taylor Joy Mason as my editor. She was brilliant and came up with lots of great ideas. We were on the phone a lot about the things I was delivering, and she was trying things that were somewhat experimental and not necessarily in the traditional style of the show, which opened it up.

For instance, like the flutter-cutting between Dahmer and Tony when we go back to him telling his parents he met a good friend, and then we go back to the club. That was a real editorial collaboration from the get-go. Then there was the strobe lighting that made it intermittent and allowed us to go back and forth between experiences. Taylor and I were talking all along, and also talking about sound, as it plays such a critical role in this. We recorded sound everywhere, but then it was a matter of, which scenes are we really going to drop the sound out of?

We didn’t plan to use sound everywhere, but at least we had it – and thank God we did as some of the scenes that had been scripted as silent actually ended up with dialogue in them, and some of the scenes that had dialogue ended up without it. So it was a constant back and forth process, which lasted all the way through to the final mix.

How involved were you in all the post and who was on the team?
I was already involved in another Ryan Murphy series, The Watchmen, so I had Alexis Martin Woodall, president of Ryan Murphy Productions who’s brilliant in post, and she’s a former post supervisor, and is our secret weapon.

Then there’s Regis Kimble, who’s the post supervising editor, and he cut some of the episodes and also worked closely with all the editors to make sure the tone and style and look were consistent. Not every show has this, but having Regis was a godsend.

Then Todd Nenninger, a producer and post supervisor, was doing everything from dealing with the editors and the colorist to the VFX houses and locking in the sound on a day-to-day basis, and we’ve worked together on every Ryan show I’ve done going back to Glee. And he works closely with Scott James, the co-producer. They’re the people who actually executed my dreams on the stage and traveled this thing from start to finish, and I trust them completely.

I was already involved in another Ryan Murphy series, The Watchmen, so I had Alexis Martin Woodall, president of Ryan Murphy Productions, who’s brilliant in post. She’s a former post supervisor and our secret weapon. On some shows, I worry about post, but this team always makes things better. And directing this was very interesting from a post perspective, because Episode 6 starts with a very different look. It’s generally a brighter, sunnier look, and even the nights are not quite as dark and quite as yellow, because we’re living in Tony Hughes’ world. So the club scenes are more alive and have more vibrant colors. But then, as Dahmer intrudes into this world, we began to come back to some of the visual vocabulary, color and style that you associated with him before.

So when he considers crushing the pillows and trying to drug Tony, you see it go back to the style you’ve gotten used to. He’s center-punched in the middle of the frame in very tight focus, and the colors of yellow and despair that we’ve associated with him come back. And all that ends up with the final scene where we’re surrounded in the darkness of his apartment by dank yellows, until finally he’s enclosed completely in black. And the orchestra’s playing the cello line intermittently though the entire episode, and that cello line keeps getting stronger and stronger until at the end when the cello becomes a bass, and the sound drops out of the bottom. So all that’s part of the mix of that particular episode.

What was involved in terms of VFX?
There were very few visual effects in Episode 6. The main ones were for the baby in the first scene, to keep it animated and alive, as some of the baby footage wasn’t of a real baby. We also did some production and period clean-up. This was done by Fuse FX.

For Episode 10, where we see Dahmer being killed in prison, we used a lot of VFX to make it all as vivid as we needed. We had to change his face a bit, add blood and sometimes detract blood, so all that was a VFX surgery and redo to make sure it was all balanced and worked the way we wanted.

What about the DI?
Doug Delaney at Picture Shop was our final colorist, and he did all 10 episodes in the series. He’s brilliant. For instance, he brought in some of the brighter tones that lifted Tony Hughes’ world and all the optimism and took it back to Dahmer’s yellow, dark world in the end.

You’ve directed so many great shows. How do you rate this experience?
It was the most challenging because of the subject matter and my personal feelings about Dahmer, and the complexities of dealing with deaf actors, and also the sound issues.

The sound team from Formosa Group handled the sound mix, and we had a great team — supervising sound editor Gary Megregian, and re-recording mixers Laura Wiest, Jamie Hardt and Joe Barnett. This was really a sound show, and that made it more complicated than Glee with all the music. So you ask, exactly when do you lose the sound, and what replaces it? What about creating the sound of what a deaf person might hear? They created this roar that had a feel and flavor to it, that wasn’t quite a plane or air, that had to be imagined by people, and they did a terrific job.


Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.


Luther: The Fallen Sun

NViz Employs Unreal on Idris Elba’s Luther: The Fallen Sun

Acclaimed British crime drama Luther had its series finale in 2019, but Netflix has brought it and its star, Idris Elba, back for a new film Luther: The Fallen Sun, focusing on the detective who doesn’t always follow the rules. Elba has himself referenced how he welcomes the larger budget the film has in comparison to the series, and these high production values are clearly visible in the expanded locations, complex action sequences and excellent use of visual effects.

Initially, filmmakers drafted NViz to provide previz to help plan two major sequences for the movie: a high-suspense scene set on the ground and rooftops of Piccadilly Circus and the final showdown in Iceland. The NViz team worked closely with the film’s director, Jamie Payne, and with the film’s overall VFX supervisor, Matt Kasmir.

In the movie a sinister serial killer, Robey (Andy Serkis), has used the dark web to target several individuals on the verge of ending their lives. The plot leads to a complicated scene set in a busy London landmark, Piccadilly Circus, and involves action choreographed between the ground and several rooftops. It’s a grim scene that required meticulous planning to pull off on the day. Much of this planning took place at Shepperton Studios with Unreal supervisor Georg Engebakken, who worked closely with Payne, Kasmir and second unit director Wolfgang Stegemann throughout the process.

In post, NViz provided VFX and graphics for almost 200 shots, working closely with Payne, Kasmir and editor Justine Wright to reinforce key storytelling throughout the movie.

One of the main focuses of this work related to conveying Robey’s techniques and motives in a clear and impactful way. This included building the “Victim Farm” sequence, which depicts how Robey “haunts” the internet in search of his victims, and “The Red Bunker,” an immersive website used to draw in an unsuspecting audience, promising illicit, extreme pleasures in return for payment.

The Red Bunker
Using references such as seaside peepshows, online snuff videos and the infamous dark web game Sad Satan, NViz created an immersive real-time environment in Unreal Engine to showcase Robey’s dark world.

Designed to entice, excite and disorient, the content of the website reflects the real-world horrors committed by Robey in the film, with digital recreations of his crimes existing within a series of endless corridors, traps and cells.

The Red Bunker appears in two key moments in the film, so the NViz graphics team — led by creative director Chris Lunney, real-time supervisor Eolan Power and graphics supervisor Ian Sargent — worked with Payne and Wright to splice together R&D explorations of the Red Bunker environments with fragments of the film’s “real-world” horror — footage of Robey’s victims and his heinous crimes. These moments take the form of two “trailers,” advertising Robey’s big moment — the grand finale — broadcast live from the real-world Red Bunker location.

The Red Bunker was created in Unreal Engine as a real-time environment, which then served as final pixel VFX for a number of shots in the movie. It retained a super-stylized look, something the team was particularly pleased with. “Although The Red Bunker was worked up to an almost photoreal level, we had full control of how much we could ‘break’ it,” says CD Lunney. “We felt that the super-compressed, jagged aesthetic that had evolved through our R&D was incredibly powerful, and we were really pleased when it became apparent that Jamie didn’t want us to ‘clean it up’ for the final 4K versions; we retained a really raw feeling to the work.”

In addition to the graphics, the VFX work covered a wide range of material, including crowd augmentation, rig removals, screen inserts, cleanups and matte painting.

 

 


VFX and Post for Netflix’s Our Universe

UK-based Lux Aeterna played a significant role in the making of the Netflix series Our Universe, bringing its extensive visual effects expertise to the project, alongside the production team at the BBC Science Unit.

Director Stephen Cooter

We reached out to Lux Aeterna’s VFX director Paul Silcox and CEO/creative director Rob Hifle, Our Universe director Stephen Cooter and the team at Halo Post discuss the challenges they faced and how they tackled them.

How did Our Universe stand out against similar productions you’ve worked on? From both a VFX perspective and the overall look and direction of the series?
Stephen Cooter: It was a pretty unique proposition — combining natural history with VFX to tell the animals’ stories, not just in the context of the planet’s history, but in how they connect with the story of the universe itself, was something that I don’t think had ever been attempted before. We chose to shoot in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio to give the series the cinematic look that the epic nature of the storytelling required. Taking the science fiction films of Steven Spielberg and JJ Abrams as reference, we shot with anamorphic lenses where possible — using the characteristic lens flare to tie the natural history footage together with the VFX space sequences.

Our Universe

Rob Hifle

From the outset, we knew that linking the wildlife stories to the universe narrative was a vital part of the series. We worked closely with Lux Aeterna to develop transitions between the two strands and sequences, where we would integrate VFX within the natural history footage to connect our hero creatures to the cosmos.

How early on did Lux Aeterna get involved in the project? Had you collaborated with the BBC before?
Rob Hifle: We have a long-lasting relationship with the BBC Science Unit. We’ve worked on a multitude of Prof. Brian Cox series over the last 15 years, including Wonders Of the Universe, Human Universe and Wonders Of Life. We collaborated on the award-winning 8 Days: To The Moon & Back, which was a documentary drama featuring real declassified astronaut cockpit audio from the Apollo 11 mission, with actors “lipsyncing” the words. We used immersive VFX techniques to establish a first-person astronaut POV on the moon.

Our Universe

Paul Silcox

The BBC Science Unit has always wanted creative cutting-edge techniques in order to showcase its latest science revelations, so it’s always been a good fit with us, especially with our R&D department.

Were there any particularly complex scenes and if so, how did you navigate them?
Paul Silcox: Our Universe challenged us in many ways, both technically and creatively. We might be thinking big one day, visualizing the invisible forces that protect our atmosphere or erode black holes. The next day we might have to demonstrate fusion at an atomic scale. We were working with extremely large data sets so while we were art directing the collision of planets or destroying moons, we would also have to solve that technically.

Aside from the directors, how closely did you work with the DPs?
Silcox: We worked closely with Mike Davis (the showrunner) and all of the directors to craft the vision for the show. Our brief was to create a cinematic, immersive, entertaining and scientifically accurate depiction of the forces that shaped the lives of the animals featured in the show. By collaborating closely with the team throughout the process, we were able to keep this goal alive and deliver a cohesive vision.

Tell us about the experience on the virtual shoot. What was your input from a VFX perspective here? Did director Stephen Cooter provide a brief beforehand?
Hifle: I’ve worked with virtual studios on numerous occasions but never with a wild “habituated” bear. It was an amazing experience to work on this shoot. The crew in Hungary was highly skilled. There was a huge amount of planning from Stephen Cooter and the BBC in making sure that everything was considered and covered… as much as it’s possible to plan to work with an unpredictable brown bear! That meant we needed to work quickly in order to keep the bear’s time on-set to a minimum.

Courtesy of Stephen Cooter

We planned and artworked all the backplates beforehand, but there was still a need to work alongside the director and DP on-set to get the desired lighting and perspective as well as any last-minute amendments. With the virtual studio backplates, I was able to move the elements around on the screen, such as the moon. This meant we could frame up really quickly using the Technocrane and make changes to the backplates while working with the foreground bear on a practical rock. This flexibility meant that it worked really well for all departments.

Did you come up against any challenges during the shoot? If so, how did you resolve them?
Cooter: There were some sequences that were really important to the narrative of the films but that would’ve been very difficult or dangerous to shoot in the wild, so we needed to take a different approach. For example, to illustrate the connection between the Alaskan brown bear and the moon, we used a virtual studio and backdrops provided by Lux Aeterna to achieve the shot.

How closely did you work with Halo Post to post the final project? Was it full post — including edit, grade and finish? What about audio?
Cooter: We were with Halo for the offline edit and finishing. That meant we were able to call on their sound team — led by dubbing mixer Sam Castleton — throughout the editing process not only to provide a library of sounds, but also to design specific sequences where the audio was crucial to the impact and drama of the universe VFX shots. The planetary-scale collision that created the moon in Episode 3, “Turning Seasons,” is a good example of this. We used Avid Media Composer.

For the natural history sequences, the sound design was done by Wounded Buffalo.

Sam, can you talk about the audio post on this one?
Sam Castleton: The scale of Our Universe was gigantic and presented us with some amazing opportunities and interesting challenges. This led us to create some incredible sound design moments. Mixing it in Dolby Atmos enabled us to achieve the scale and definition required. It also enabled us to bring the stories to life in interesting ways, such as water shooting out of the earth’s core, stardust falling from the sky, photons bursting out of the sun and protostars propelling themselves into space. The sound of the series is very brave, bright and full. We are very proud of what we achieved.

What about the color grade?
Cooter: The series was graded by Halo senior colorist Duncan Russell. Working together, we approached the films on a scene-by-scene basis, giving each one its own look, depending on the mood and atmosphere each scene demanded. While we wanted to preserve the naturalistic look of the natural history sections, grading the universe VFX in HDR and delivering in Dolby Vision allows you to push these sequences much further — they feel like exactly the kind of thing HDR was invented for.

Duncan, what was the challenge for you?
Duncan Russell: The challenge was to push it as far as it would go but still be able to match it all up. When I saw the first rushes coming back from Australia and Southern Africa, I knew we were onto something special. I had never seen natural history made with such visual flamboyance, and the use of anamorphic lenses for large parts was a masterstroke.

The directors encouraged me to take things into the cinematic realm, not to be restrained by existing styles and to find a visual language that pushed at the edges of what a “nature show” could look like. I am more than proud to be involved.

What tools were used for the VFX?
Silcox: We used SideFX, Houdini and Foundry Nuke. The power and flexibility of these tools make delivering cutting-edge visuals possible. We manage and render our VFX with ShotGrid and Deadline, which are both essential components of our pipeline.

 


Composer Adam Blau on Scoring Netflix’s Dead to Me

Adam Blau is a composer and songwriter whose work spans film, television, theatrical productions and podcasts. As the composer for Netflix’s Dead to Me, created by Liz Feldman, he created a musical palette that infuses the show’s offbeat mystery with suspense and emotion.

Dead to Me

Adam Blau

Composing music to picture is an art that combines several different disciplines that I’ve been drawn to for most of my life,” he says.

We reached out to Blau, whose credits also include the FX show You’re the Worst and the IFC sitcom Brockmire, to discuss his work on Dead to Me, a Netflix series that is streaming its final season and stars Christina Applegate, Linda Cardellini and James Marsden.

Before we jump into your work on Dead to Me, let’s talk about what the role of composer means.
First and foremost, it’s about writing music that’s unique to a given project, helping to shape the tone and define the musical world in which the characters and action exist. This is almost always more than just a matter of writing a few concept pieces of music (though doing so can be helpful) — as a media composer I work with producers and directors to try to determine their view of what the score needs to accomplish, even if they don’t initially have a clear musical concept.

It’s a question, too, of figuring out not just how a score will sound, but how the music should be placed within a scene — How does it sit around a punchline or a particular bit of action? At what point will the music reveal a particular emotion or plot point?

What about your experience on Dead to Me?
Working on Dead to Me, our showrunner Liz Feldman always had a very clear view of what the music needs to evoke. Even if our conversations weren’t in musical terms exactly, part of my job as composer was listen when Liz talked about a scene and provide her artistic vision a musical voice.

There is also a significant technical aspect to the job, particularly when syncing music and action in a given scene. There’s a surprising amount of math involved. For example, if I’m working on a scene and I get a new cut that shifts the internal timings, it’s important go through and adjust tempos so the synced moments land where they’re supposed to… all while keeping things sounding musical.

And of course, in today’s world, it’s vital to wear a number of hats as a composer: creating mockups, mixing, orchestrating and composing in a number of styles all within a timeframe that is usually very compressed, particularly when working on a television schedule. It’s this variety and combination of disciplines that I love so much when working on a project.

What is your process when starting a job?
While every project is different and every collaborator has their own way of working, I find that it’s always ideal to get as much insight as possible into a show creator’s vision — communication is key, and I try to get as much time with a showrunner or director as I can because these initial conversations can provide overarching insight into the tone of a project.

I’ll read scripts, look at any concept art and listen to any reference tracks that might give an indication of the musical vibe we’re looking for. While it’s sometimes a divisive topic, I find it’s often quite helpful to have a temp music track of scores cut in from other projects, particularly when working on a tight television schedule. Even if the temp track doesn’t exactly fit the bill, it’s usually a helpful starting point for conversations surrounding music — rather than throwing darts blindly, we’re working off a common reference that can provide a decent shortcut to the best end result.

And for Dead to Me?
On Dead to Me I had done a couple demo tracks for some scenes to help get the job, so that thankfully gave me a good sense of the direction we were going in. I knew Liz liked those tracks, so I was able to extrapolate from there and work with her and the rest of the production team to flesh out the musical landscape of the show — with all its mysterious twists and turns, as well as letting the more emotional moments blossom from those early seeds we planted in the first couple of episodes.

How do you prefer to work with a showrunner?
As I mentioned before, I am a fan of getting as much information as early as I can. On some projects, the creators want to keep early edits close to the chest, only releasing cuts to the composer once picture is locked, or close to it — but I find that if I can see the episodes as they evolve, it can be very informative in terms of figuring out the musical flow not just within an episode, but throughout a whole season overall.

When working on Dead to Me, I was usually able to read the script by the time an episode got to me and had seen an early cut or two. Once we fell into a routine on the show, the editors and directors will have temped the episode with existing music, sometimes from other projects but ideally from my own catalog.

We’d meet with showrunner Liz, music supervisor Tricia Halloran, music editor Amber Funk and the stellar editorial team on the show, and we’d figure out exactly what the music needed to accomplish across the episode, both on a macro and micro level. Sometimes these would be longer discussions, but by the third season, it really did evolve into a shorthand — the feel of the show became so clear in our heads that we’d sometimes watch a clip and all say “yep” or “I know what to do,” and leave it at that.

I’ll usually average about a week to work on each episode of Dead to Me. If the schedule allowed, sometimes I’d take a bit more time, and if we were in a rare crunch, I’d work more frantically over a couple days, but we always made sure the music got the time it needed to make us all happy. Over that week, I’d send over demo cues to the cutting room, revise as needed, then mix, stem out the music cues, and send them over to the dub stage to be integrated with the rest of the sound in the show.

Are they typically open to any and all suggestions?
During productions, I usually have a discussion with the showrunner to flag any unconventional on-screen music moments that need addressing. In Dead to Me, we had an on-screen kids’ show choir that I did the vocal arrangements for, and I’d work with the team to produce the recording sessions. This type of musical moment requires a fair bit of advance work, so I try to determine these as early as I can.

On other shows I’ve composed for, like Stephen Falk’s You’re the Worst, there were a large number of in-show songs that required not only composing but teaching music to the actors, recording them ahead of time, and making sure all went smoothly on shoot days.

It’s definitely different from composing a score in my studio, but coming from the world of theater, working in person with performers on songs is something I really enjoy doing, and it adds to the variety of the job.

Do you write based on project – spot, game, film, TV — or do you just write?
While I do enjoy just writing music for myself, music for television and film scoring projects are by definition a bit more collaborative and therefore unique to each project. The music provides the aural identity of the show’s world, and it’s important as a composer to key into what that world is for each project.

For example, some directors/producers, like Stephen Falk, get into the specifics of the instruments and musical styles, weaving music into the show’s environment through in-show songs, musical punchlines and theme episodes.

On Dead to Me, it was important to Liz Feldman that we musically strike the balance between playful mystery, emotion, and comedy to create a sonic template for the show. It became clear early on that for a show as incredibly funny as Dead to Me, we needed to avoid any overt “comedy music” around the action.

Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini are both so magnetically funny themselves that playing a traditional comedic score ended up detracting from the humor between them. Instead, Liz quickly set a tone in which we let the score play up the drama and mystery side of things, letting it heighten the dramatic stakes so that the fantastic chemistry between the two leads could shine through amidst a backdrop of tension.

If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing instead?
Great question! It’s hard for me to imagine a life outside of the musical world, so in all likelihood I’d still end up doing something in music — maybe music-directing theatrical productions, as I have always been passionate about live theater.

I love working on big, social, collaborative projects with lots of variation and moving pieces, so theater seems like a good fit and something I’ve enjoyed doing in the past.

I also enjoy tinkering — I used the pandemic lockdown to teach myself to solder and learn a bit more about electronics, even making some basic synth components, so maybe I’d do something in that field, too. I’m also puzzle- and crossword-obsessed, so maybe I’d end up dedicating my time to something in that world. Heck, maybe I still will!

Did you come from a musical family?
That’s a big yes. My mother, Nancy, is a piano teacher who worked out of our house, so my background soundtrack growing up was nonstop piano music — some of those pieces are just embedded in my ears. I learned so much from my mom, not just the technical aspects of playing the piano, but also about how much fun music can be.

Our house was the place where friends would come over for big singalongs around the piano. People pulled out all kinds of instruments to sing everything from old show tunes to ‘80s pop hits and everything in between. It’s a mentality I carry through to this day, and it’s not uncommon for my family and I to still get a group of friends together to call out songs and sing whatever’s on our minds, like live-action karaoke.

My stepfather, Herb Deutsch, is another musical part of my family. Herb was the co-inventor of the Moog synthesizer along with Bob Moog, among other things. He’s the one credited with the idea of putting an actual keyboard on the synthesizer. Herb, along with his music and synths, has been a significant presence in my life.

I’ve also enjoyed collaborating on musical projects with my brother Daniel Rogge, and we’ve even written a stage musical together that had a brief run in New York. I love getting to create music with the people I love, so I’m grateful for these opportunities, and I’m enjoying seeing my own young kids be a joyful part of it as well.

What are your favorite instruments to write with?
While I don’t necessarily have a single instrument I like to write with, I often gravitate toward the piano since it’s my primary instrument and the one I’m most comfortable playing. Being surrounded by computers and synths all day long, I find it refreshing to detach and just let the music be music at the piano, independent of picture, focusing on creating the sound by itself and then bringing it back to my computer to record after the fact.

That said, I do like to play around with new sound libraries on my computer, and I try to incorporate new and unique elements into each score I do. I took advantage of some of Spitfire Audio’s boutique string libraries for Dead to Me, giving the more suspenseful parts a hushed, mysterious air. For You’re the Worst, I spent a fair amount of time coming up with unique synth patches, often improvising on a modular synth for hours and chopping the recordings up into pieces to be integrated into the score.

I’ve learned over the years that I can think best when I’m physically in motion — not exactly ideal for someone sitting in a studio chair for hours on end — and so I find that it can be a huge benefit to go on a long walk with a voice recorder and just sing or hum parts that I’ll later flesh out into proper songs or score cues. I probably have hours and hours of these voice recordings, which is only really an issue when I accidentally switch them on in my car and my family has to suffer through bizarre mumblings of half melodies. But I think they’re pretty much used to it by now.

My Year of Dicks

Can you name some other recent projects?
I recently enjoyed scoring an incredibly fun alternative animation project by Sara Gunnarsdottir and Pamela Ribon with the very colorfully named film My Year of Dicks. The film is a coming-of-age comedy that takes place in the ‘90s, and it incorporates a wide variety of animation styles and musical genres. It’s a touching, funny and innovative project that’s been winning all kinds of awards on the festival circuit.

I also recently wrote music for a Stephen Colbert-/Funny or Die-produced comedy special for Comic Relief on CBS called Pickled. It involved writing some sports-/Olympics-style orchestral pieces for a very silly celebrity tournament, so I got to draw on some of the work I did arranging music for films like We Are Marshall, The Express and The Longshots as well as from my experience composing music for the baseball comedy Brockmire.

I have an audio drama project I’m scoring that’s in the works from a major studio. It has yet to be officially announced, but I’m excited for people to listen sometime in the coming year.


Entergalactic

Doug Delaney on Color Grading Animated Film Entergalactic

Picture Shop senior colorist Doug Delaney started his career in post production shortly after moving from St. Louis to Los Angeles in 1995, when he began learning the art and science of film imaging for visual effects. Since then, he has built a career collaborating with top film timers, VFX supervisors and color scientists and working with some of the industry’s top filmmakers on a mixture of live-action and animated projects, including Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story; Love, Death & Robots; Captain Marvel; and The Equalizer.

Most recently, Delaney handled the color grading on the Netflix animated special Entergalactic. The film is a music television special – made for adults not kids — created by American musician and actor Kid Cudi and directed by Fletcher Moules.

Entergalactic tells the story of Jabari, a charming, streetwear-clad artist on the cusp of real success. After a chance run-in with his cool new photographer neighbor, Meadow, Jabari has to figure out whether he can make space for love in his life. 

Honoring the Art of Animation
Having worked on a variety of both live-action and animated projects in his career, Delaney is well aware of the different requirements and expectations when it comes to grading animation.

“For a live-action movie, assuming we’re involved early on in camera tests, which more and more we are, we have a more direct role in helping the cinematographer and filmmakers create the look and feel,” he comments. “You could be involved from the get-go, with dailies, preproduction and camera tests. It’s great creatively to be involved in that, and, ideally, you get to read the scripts and really understand the show before you step foot in it.”

Animation is a much longer process than physical production, with some differences in terms of what is being asked of the colorist. “However, there are many similarities in terms of the objective,” Delaney explains. “For example, in physical production we can be fixing things, like weather issues or consistency, time of day or editorial changes. These types of fixes don’t happen in animation, but there are other factors that require us to nuance and refine the scenes. It might come from two different places, but it’s the same end goal.”

Delaney feels that animation in general can be a bit more technical in terms of approach. “There is more specificity in animation because they have lived with it and designed it and literally painted and rendered it in a very specific way,” he explains. “The challenge is to serve and honor this and to tackle the technical challenges of ensuring that it remains consistent and that all parties involved are seeing what they expect to see. Then it’s about maintaining this through all the various deliverables and processes. Of course, this is also important in live action, but I think in animation it’s even more so.”

Entergalactic
Following his work on Love, Death & Robots, Delaney was approached by the Entergalactic team to help with the grade. For this animation project, he was brought in early in the process and was able to support the team with both creative and technical advice.

“It was the height of COVID, so I was invited to a few Zoom interviews with art director Robh Ruppel and the director, Fletcher,” says Delaney. “We kicked the tires about what they were looking for and what I could bring to the table, and we did some early color tests to sort out the color pipeline as well as some technical preproduction calls.”

Delaney wanted to be granular with his ability to assist in final grade and suggested they create masters for each of the characters, developing a matte for each one. “The technical challenge was the delivery of those mattes, as I needed them to be consistent,” he explains. “They were delivering EXRs, which can have a pretty big payload, and I wanted those consistently assigned to a channel for all the deliverables. This requires a bit of work for the animation houses in preproduction, but I felt it was important.”

Delaney used the sophisticated tools within FilmLight Baselight to help manage the character and object mattes, and he supported with tweaking and refining the renders. “With animation, Baselight’s ability to accept the EXRs with multiple matte channels and manage them quickly, easily and consistently is critical,” he explains. “The ability to manage incoming mattes and then supplement those with my own techniques — like shapes, keys, frames and rotoscoping — was really valuable.”

Technical Challenges
Art director Ruppel is a renowned artist and illustrator, and he and Fletcher had a very clear idea of where they wanted to take the movie visually. “In terms of the grade itself, animation is a very particular thing,” says Delaney. “The art director and the animation vendors are living with these images, and they render them to a very specific color palette and contrast – which can come with some technical challenges.”

The first challenge was the organization of the show and its hand-off from animation to editorial to color. “As it was a native Baselight conform, and we were working in ACES, it was really important to ensure the color pipeline was sorted and the character mattes and organization were consistent,” explains Delaney.

And visually, as it was a Netflix show with Dolby Vision requirements, the SDR had to be derived from an HDR source. “Because it’s animation, they’re rendering to a specific SDR color palette for a couple of years, and they know exactly what that looks like,” says Delaney. “To go from that to HDR and back to a derived SDR – and making sure that it matches the original SDR – can be challenging because you’re taking quite a detour in the color space.”

Delaney leveraged the color management tools within his system to support this. “I also find it very useful to be able to maintain multiple timelines. For example, I can check an SDR reference directly against a derived SDR from Dolby Vision HDR. The ability to check your work, track your color space journey and clearly see your layout of the color pipeline, and present this to a client, is extremely valuable.”

Texture and Film Grain
Early on, Delaney presented some ideas around applying film grain to the movie to help give the CGI-rendered images more texture.

“We added a little film grain, and I also pitched a couple of ideas for some lensing effects and chromatic aberration around the edges of the frame to give the film a bit more of an optical quality,” explains Delaney.

Delaney recalls working on a particular scene where the brush strokes and the lighting on Jabari weren’t quite consistent with what Ruppel and Moules were looking for. He also points out how, particularly in animation, an important part of the colorist’s role is to interpret and understand the team’s creative language.

“As a side note,” explains Delaney, “with Rob being an illustrator, the way he talks about highlights and shadows is very different to the language a cinematographer would use. Hearing his requests, getting inside each other’s heads and interpreting the language was a fun creative challenge.

“For this scene, in particular, he wasn’t happy with some of the brush strokes and the way the highlights were brushed on Jabari. To fix this, I used rotoscoping, keys and some sophisticated matting techniques to even it out and enhance some particular shots. There was a bit of work to get them to match and to execute the lighting techniques that he wanted in a 2D world.”

Adding Sound
When grading, Delaney usually likes to work in silence or with subtle background music to help with concentration and ensure he’s not distracted from the images. And, for the final master color correction, he always works in silence. But for Entergalactic, which was created by American musician Kid Cudi, sound was an important element for the director.

“When Fletcher came in, we would typically have versions of the stems or the current sound mix from the sound house so we could do playbacks with sound,” explains Delaney. “For Fletcher, that was important. There were sound queues, and the music certainly helped with the cadence of some of the HDR hits that we were doing.”

“One of my favorite things is seeing the final picture and the final sound all come together for the first time with everybody in the room,” says Delaney. “I still remember doing this with Fletcher and Rob. It’s exciting and will always be one of my favorite parts of the process.”

Podcast 12.4
Wednesday

Wednesday Editor Jay Prychidny on Working With Tim Burton

By Ben Mehlman

Odds are you have either watched or heard the buzz surrounding the Netflix series Wednesday. The show was shepherded by showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with the first four episodes directed by filmmaker Tim Burton. In an already iconic performance, Jenna Ortega portrays Wednesday Addams as she tries to solve a murder mystery at her boarding school, the Nevermore Academy. Joining Ortega is a cast that includes Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán and Gwendoline Christie.

Jay Prychidny

Working directly with Burton on the four episodes he helmed was editor Jay Prychidny, CCE, whose credits include Orphan Black, the TV version of Snowpiercer and the much-anticipated Scream VI, which is releasing in March. I recently spoke with Prychidny about collaborating with Burton, and why the show had him bouncing between Romania and the UK.

How’d you become involved in the project?
I was going stir-crazy at home during the pandemic (laughs) and needed to work with collaborators. Even now, a lot of work is still remote, unless you’re working with people who request in-person, and working remotely with Tim Burton was never an option. He needs to be in the room with the people he works with. So I flew to Romania and worked on-set while Tim was shooting his episodes. When he wasn’t shooting we flew to the UK and worked together there. I basically just followed Tim wherever he went.

How long was post on this one?
Filming started at the end of August 2021, with Episodes 1 and 2 being shot in a block. I was bouncing between Romania and the UK for about seven months. But of course, post can kind of dwindle on indefinitely [laughs]. I remember doing the last audio mix on Episode 1 and realizing it had been exactly a year since filming started.

What was your setup like? What’d you edit on?
It was bare bones. My assistant and I each had a room in the Romanian production office. For a long time, it was just the two of us in the entire post department — there were no coordinators or PAs, which was kind of crazy. I wouldn’t recommend that as a way to do a huge show.

My assistant and I were working on Avid Media Composer off of a shared RAID system and as production went on, we added another assistant.

[Editor’s Note: Prychidny assistant editors included Mihai Cosmin Popa (Romania), Galina Chakarova (UK), Tom Lounsbury and Brandy Hamilton (Toronto), Razvan Alexandru Ilinca (Romania) and Lavinia Terletchi (Toronto).]

Given how close you were to set, what was your workflow with Tim Burton like?
The way he’s used to working is to shoot during the day and edit at night, even looking at scenes that were shot that day (though his process was adapted a little to accommodate the accelerated schedule of TV). Regardless, working with editors is a crucial part of his creative process. He needs to be working on the edit as he is shooting. It informs how the project is evolving and even how he’ll shoot upcoming stuff.

Each day, we would give him polished cuts of what was shot either the day before or sometimes two days before. If his shoot schedule allowed it, he’d come in, or we’d output the scenes onto an iPad for him to check out on-set. This is what usually happened if he was shooting on-location.

The first four episodes were directed by Tim and edited by you. How was that broken up? Were you balancing four episodes at once?
The first block was Episodes 1 and 2. The second block, with Gandja Monteiro directing, was Episodes 5 and Episode 6. I believe this was to accommodate Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán’s schedules because they’re in Episodes 1 and 5.

That is also when we shot all the stuff at Nevermore Academy. After that, Tim came back to direct block three, which was Episode 3 and Episode 4.

Is it normal to have a director do a block, jump a few episodes ahead for the next block, and then have them return later for a second block?
That definitely happens, but in this case, it was mainly for Catherine and Luis’ shooting schedules and for the logistics of getting everything shot at the Nevermore Castle.

For a long time, it wasn’t even a sure thing that Tim was going to direct Episodes 3 and 4. His original plan was just 1 and 2, and 3 and 4 were directorless for a long time [laughs]. They were looking for someone because they weren’t sure if Tim would want to do them, but he enjoyed working on the show so much that he ended up doing all four.

What were your early conversations with Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Tim Burton like?
Usually, the big question when I start working on a project is “Why are you interested in telling this story?” I like knowing what the spark of inspiration is for someone because that’s something I feel I should be preserving. And so much of Tim’s process is learning as you go and seeing how things evolve. So I don’t know if Tim’s answer was mysterious to him, or maybe he didn’t know how to verbalize it, but his answer was always a version of “Well, let’s get into. We’ll start working and see what happens, see how things evolve.

And that’s how it was.

I remember telling Alfred and Miles beforehand that I’m the kind of editor who likes to put a stamp on things and have a strong perspective while still being open if collaborators down the line have different ideas and want to change things. They told me that was perfect because Tim likes being shown strong ideas and going from there. So things evolved in a very natural way.

How was it having to define the show’s own palette in relation to previous iterations of The Addams Family?
It was definitely interesting. My investment in The Addams Family is from the ‘90s films with Christina Ricci. I watched them a lot as a kid and thought Wednesday was such a cool character; I loved her. I was also a big fan of Angelica Houston’s portrayal of Morticia.

So, I came in with an idea of that being our tone, and we did evolve away from that a bit. Tim, especially, wanted this to be its own thing. We never talked about how it would reference other Addams Family properties or anything like that. Tim wanted to avoid things getting too plucky and comedic in the way the earlier films were. I then took it from there and pushed it more into an in-between zone, which I was happy about because, for me, the show needs to be fun and quirky while also having a darker edge to it.

The show does have a playful macabre sense of humor. How was it striking the right balance between the comedy and that darker edge that pushes into horror?
It was interesting because, as I said, I came into the show thinking about making it lighter and more comedic. Ana Yavari, who edited the other four episodes, came into it with a different perspective. She was thinking it would be darker and more disturbing. Then we reached a point where she looked at my episodes and was like, “Oh, this is a comedy?” [laughs].

The first episode she edited was Episode 6, which is when the monster chases them through the “creepy” house. From her perspective it was like a dark horror environment, and for me it was just light and funny. So there was definitely a meeting in the middle that happened stylistically with the show.

For me, it never made sense for this to take place completely in a horror world because it’s a show about Wednesday, and it should be grounded in her perspective as the main character. I never even thought about it being dark and horrorish because I was always thinking about how Wednesday sees the world.

So I treated the horror elements as more or less like surprises that intruded into her world. Which, when you think about it, is what horror is — something horrible barging into your universe without consent.

Jenna Ortega’s performance has been universally praised, and you’re currently working with her again on Scream VI. How was it crafting that performance? What was it like when you first started getting dailies?
Jenna is so smart and dedicated and a perfectionist with her craft. She puts a lot of thought into what she does.

Wednesday

Wednesday is such a strange performance because it’s so contained, and that could easily become boring or one-dimensional because a lot of her footage is literally just her statically staring into the camera. Theoretically, that seems like it should be awful, but I was constantly amazed by how many layers she could bring to that. Even though there wasn’t a lot of physical acting going on, you got such variety with all her takes. On one take she looks vulnerable, one she looks aggressive, one she looks fearful. I still don’t understand how all these shades are readable to an audience, but they are. I guess that’s the magic trick of that performance, which was a lot of fun to craft.

What was the most difficult scene or sequence to crack and why?
The hardest sequence to crack was the canoe race in Episode 2. For one, it’s a really hard thing to film. Canoes on the water are not the most cinematic or exciting. That was a sequence that evolved a lot, pretty much during the entire length of production. From Tim’s perspective it was always a sequence that was going to evolve.

After we finished block one, we would continue to shoot pickups for new little story beats, and after a certain point, it was no longer fall. So we continued filming that sequence in a water tank in front of a bluescreen in a studio in Romania. It wasn’t our original intention to shoot it in front of a bluescreen, so the VFX geniuses we had were creating background plates out of whatever footage they could pull from the original photography.

It took a lot of work to make the action beats clear while making sure they were exciting and entertaining.

Were there any other big story moments that evolved over post?
That happened more in the last four episodes than in the ones I edited, though one thing did evolve in Episode 1. We went back several months after production to shoot the scene with the hiker and the trucker in the woods when he gets attacked by the monster. That was shot in the UK instead of Romania; they even had to ship the Addams Family car from Romania to the UK to shoot it. Netflix felt strongly that the mystery around the monster needed to be set up really early in Episode 1.

As we wrap up, what have you been watching that you’ve been enjoying?
One of the most recent shows I watched was Season 2 of The White Lotus, which I loved. I love the characters and the style of it. I love that it feels like it’s really thought-out ahead of time, with a real plan of what they want to create. So much television feels like it’s being made up as they go along, or they are just trying to fill episodes to hit a running time. I find those things really hard to watch because I’m too aware of the construction behind it.

So, it’s so nice to see a show like The White Lotus from the mind of one person with one vision who is able to execute it the way they see it.


Ben Mehlman, currently the post coordinator on the Apple TV+ show Presumed Innocent, is also a writer/director. His script “Whittier” was featured on the 2021 Annual Black List after Mehlman was selected for the 2020 Black List Feature Lab, where he was mentored by Beau Willimon and Jack Thorne.  

Podcast 12.4

Sound Designer Scott Gershin on Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Veteran sound designer Scott Gershin has been working in the industry for over three decades, with a resume that includes Star Trek, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Green Lantern and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, among many others.

In December he took home his first Children’s & Family Emmy Award for Netflix’s Maya and the Three, and his latest work on Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio has earned him a spot on the Oscar shortlist for “Best Sound.” Gershin has a history with del Toro, previously collaborating with the director on Pacific Rim and Blade II.

Pinocchio

Scott Gershin

This stop-motion version of Pinocchio (which recently won a Golden Globe) reimagines the classic Carlo Collodi tale of the fabled wooden boy and sends Pinocchio on an adventure that transcends worlds and reveals the life-giving power of love. The characters are voiced by Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Finn Wolfhard and Christoph Waltz.

We recently spoke with Gershin about working with del Toro on and off for 30 years, their work on Pinocchio and his love of sound design.

Did Pinocchio differ from some of your other collaborations with del Toro?
I always wanted to work on some of Guillermo’s quieter movies. When we started discussing Pinocchio, we both realized this movie had to be very different than the other ones we had done together. It had to be much more subtle and tasty and really support the nuances of the story and the art…to create lots of detail using a fine brush. It was much more of a detailed audio sculpture rather than just putting sound anywhere.

Were there any sounds you created in the beginning stages of the film that changed a lot as you dove further into the project?
For Pinocchio, I started very early on during the storyboard portion. As I was coming up with different concepts, the sound evolved as the picture evolved. We kept iterating, and as the picture matured, so did the audio.

What are some of the sounds you created, especially for the characters?
The sonic artistry of the show involves when and how a certain sound was used and how the sounds help propel emotion. A lot of the organic sounds, such as wood, initially don’t contain a lot of emotion or ways of supporting the character. What little piece of sound we choose to use in any given moment, how we manipulated those the sounds and how we combined them really helped support all the different kinds of characters within the show. Each character had a number of signature sounds, and each character was made up of a lot of sounds rather than just one.

Pinocchio is made up of different types of woods that we moved and hit together. Wood creaks, metal squeaks and even sounds that weren’t actually wood all combined to create a single sound.  Then we used different elements throughout the show to amplify and support certain emotions.

Volpe has pockets full of coins, and occasionally you’ll hear tap shoes as he becomes very dramatic. Podesta and the priest have opposite sound from each other — one aggressive and the other passive.

All the townspeople and kids are speaking Italian. And the weapons that the kids fire don’t sound like guns, but something else. We tried to make them spring-loaded to confuse what happens in the following scene. Like the art in the show, the sounds are stylized and have their own take on what reality is.

But all those sounds evolved throughout the whole show. The goal is for listeners never to concentrate on the sound design because if they do, that means we are distracting them from connecting with the character. Our job is to create the perfect illusion, which means you fall in love with the different characters, especially Pinocchio.

Creating sound is hard to describe. It’s like carving into wood or stone — it’s all about the nuances and how you do it. It’s difficult to pinpoint a specific sound. It’s much more an expression of detail than it is of big sounds. Big sounds would just take away from the meaning and goal of the show.

Did the fact that the characters were created with stop-motion and not necessarily based on reality give you more leeway in the sounds you were able to create? 
A small fact is that creating a film using stop motion is actually similar to filming live action, except it’s being shot frame by frame. They shot with real cameras, lighting, costume and a makeup department. Sets were built, and they used CG to enhance things like water.

That being said, the show definitely had a stylistic feel. It was strongly based on architectural and clothing styles of the era. Obviously, the characters themselves had a unique creative style. I tried to stay organic to the look and feel of the visuals. While enhancing the sound to have a stylistic flair, I wanted to remain anchored in what you saw. The goal was that the sound had to transcend what you saw and heard… become a new reality.

It was important for the audience to see and feel that Pinocchio was a real character and not a wooden prop. So the goal of all the sounds was to support the emotional arcs that exist throughout each scene and the movie. A major plus was that our dialogue tracks were clean and without production noise. This allowed for more articulation and precision between the dialogue, music and sound effects.

All the frequencies were available, but the only challenge was that there was no place for sounds to hide. Every single sound is heard — every squeak, creak, cloth movement and weight shift by the characters — from Pinocchio to the godly sounds of the spirits and the inside of the dogfish to each bubble pop, dog scratch and distant line of Italian dialogue. It’s all heard.

It was all about making the correct choices for each shot and scene and the overall story arc. Because the show starts with simplicity — mono, like the birth of innocence — and evolves through the spatial complexities of life going full circle, ending life with simplicity and back to mono. All of this was thought out beforehand.

What is the best advice Guillermo has given you?
Not to f**k up. Because Guillermo and I have worked together for such a long time, we have a certain amount of shorthand. Our communication is always with sound and using creativity to help enhance the story. He likes to say we talk the vocabulary of sound and not words.

You have said that even the most minute of noises sometimes took up to three weeks of trial and error to find. Which noises were you referring to?
What makes this show unique is the detail. I love to put detail in my shows, but because this one was built so that there was no way to hide behind other sounds or music, you heard every sound you chose. As the picture, animation and movements evolved, so did the audio to best capture the essence of the scene and of the character. Many times we kept working, like with a sculpture, where you build the face and it looks like a face, but then you start going for every little detail. We added every little bit of sound that we could put in, which had to be balanced with what was happening on-screen, what was happening with music and what was happening with the story. We had to make specific decisions on what exact details we wanted at any given moment.

What scene in Pinocchio was your favorite, soundwise? Why?
I don’t have a favorite scene, but as you look at the film as a whole, it has a very specific sonic arc. One of the things I’m proud of is that there is not one scene that makes the show. The whole show evolves with the characters. It’s about the full story. It’s like asking, “What’s your favorite part of a score?” It’s the beginning, middle and end. It’s a sonic journey that has to be appreciated as a whole rather than living or dying on one scene. It really needs to be played as a full sonic piece because so much changes, and the evolution of sound is an integral part of the design.

Can you talk about the tools you use?
I used so much technology in this show; it’s hard to pick just one. Before I do anything, it has to start with great recording and the right sound. Then I can enhance it and manipulate it and make it into something different.

I can put the sound into Pro Tools, Reaper or Soundminer and use my favorite plugins or plugin chains to enhance, mutilate, mangle and combine it with other sounds, and that turns it into a new sound that better fits into the scene. Like music, it’s about volume, pitch, rhythm, presence, spatiality and/or mangling the harmonic and envelope structure to turn it into something else. Or simply grabbing a mic and using your voice, which I did a lot for Dogfish.

What advice do you have for sound designers just getting started?
Relearn to listen. As we grow, we stop listening. Become an audio photographer and start listening to all the sounds that you are exposed to, whether they be movies, games or just the environments around you. Start getting a mental vocabulary so that if you need to draw upon an experience, you will know what it sounds like.

For example, what does a realistic punch sound like? What does the “Hollywood” version of a punch sound like? Same goes with weapons such as guns. It’s too loud to record and then play back at the same volume, so how do you capture the essence of the weapon that can be played back at a reasonable volume?

Same thing with animals. How do you give animals an emotional sonic vocabulary similar to humans when, in fact, they don’t communicate or make sound in the same way. You have to invent it, and the audience has to be able to believe it.  The same concepts apply to vehicles, aircraft and pretty much everything. Learning to listen is essential because you have to hear it in your head first. If you can’t hear it in your head, you are never going to be able to create it, no matter what tools you have available.

Second, learn your tools and instruments so that when you have a creative idea, your brain will automatically know how to use the tools. And then it’s all about what you hear and how you bring it to life.

DP Chat: Firefly Lane’s Vincent De Paula on Tackling Multiple Decades

By Randi Altman

Based on the best-selling novel by Kristin Hannah, Netflix’s Firefly Lane follows two best friends, Kate and Tully, over the course of three decades. The series is now streaming its second season.

Vincent De Paula

Vincent De Paula

DP Vincent De Paula, CSC — who has extensive feature and television credits — has been on the show since its inception, working with showrunner Maggie Friedman to get the right look for the many time frames the show depicts.

You were the sole DP on Season 1 and Season 2. How early did you get involved, and how did that help?
I met with showrunner Maggie Friedman early on, when there was just one pilot script. We had a great meeting. We clicked right away while talking about the look and style I had in mind for the show.

I thought it was a fascinating story about friendship with American culture and history as our canvas. We could cover many topics as the background of our story and emphasize how things have changed for women regarding equality and rights from the ‘70s to today.

I also connected with this story a lot; I need to have a connection with the stories I am working on. I remember growing up in Spain with my best friend and how everything back then was about creating adventures, exploring life, dreaming about the future. All these memories and experiences were a key factor in how I saw this story from a teenager’s perspective.

When I was hired for the job, some of the real locations had already been chosen, so sadly, I didn’t have much input on those, and some have proven to be quite challenging logistically. But I had enough time to develop the look and style I had in mind.

What were the challenges (or benefits) of being the only DP?
Because I was the only cinematographer on the show, I didn’t really have time to prepare episodes with the upcoming directors or scout locations properly, but we tackled this show as a long feature film, with a specific look that would change between all the different timelines. And having just the one voice behind the camera allows for a very unified and consistent flow throughout the episodes.

Did anything change significantly from S1 to S2?
I decided to change lenses for Season 2. We had Cooke S4s in Season 1, and we moved to Panavision Panaspeeds this season. These weren’t available for us when we started filming last season. I used Panaspeeds while on the TV series Maid, and they have become one of my favorite lenses. I have used Panavision Primos extensively in my career when shooting with spherical lenses, but they are very popular and weren’t available for us last season.

Vincent De Paula

Vincent De Paula

The Panaspeed spherical primes are a high-speed, large-format companion to 35mm-format spherical Primo optics.

We had created a style and look in Season 1 through lighting, framing and camera movement that we carried on this season. Season 2 has some very strong dramatic moments, and we introduced new plots that required their own style of shooting. We also briefly introduced the 1990s as another timeline on the show that had its own style.

One of the main differences is that we built more sets this season instead of relying so much on location shooting, which we did in Season 1. Our 1970s interiors, the 1980s apartment in Seattle, and the 1980s news station were built on stages in Vancouver, BC.

When it comes to period stories, smoke/haze also plays a part, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Unfortunately, COVID and other factors prohibited us from using as much haze or smoke as we wanted.

Can you give more detail about the looks you established for each time period?
I wanted the different decades to have distinctive looks, although we did not want the different periods to be too radically different. Of course, when filming a period drama, everyone interprets how these different decades should look based on history, culture, films, photographs and experiences. But I wanted to approach these different looks from an emotional and character perspective rather than just a period-accurate perspective. Transitions also play a huge part in our visual vocabulary, especially when transitioning between different periods, so we are always trying to find interesting ways to create these.

The core of our main story lives in the 1970s, 1980s and early 2000s.

The 1970s has the warmest look in the whole series. It is our happy and warm period. This is a time when our girls get to know each other and explore youth together. In the ‘70s, yellows and greens are very prominent, with milky blacks suggesting a pastel feel.

For the characters, it should be about exploration, hope, adventure, youth, friendship and learning, creating an environment that should generally feel safe and warm. It should be the time that the girls would always look back to, their special moment, dreaming about an amazing life ahead of them, before they would grow to experience the reality of life.

To help achieve this overall tone for the period, I had stockings in the lenses and an 81EF filter at all times. There was almost always a hard and warm light coming in through the windows. As both characters have very different personalities, I also wanted a different approach for our camera movement and framing for this period. I introduced a more dynamic feeling to young Tully’s character (played by Ali Skovbye), contrasting with a more still and isolated feeling to that of young Kate (played by Roan Curtis). It was more obvious earlier in Season 1, and as her relationship with Tully matures, they will share the frame more.

What about the ‘80s?
The 1980s have a deeper contrast with a more saturated palette since the ‘80s had more vivid colors and a particular look when it comes to clothing and hairstyle. Therefore, I introduced a different filtration for the 1980s using Schneider Classic Soft filters of different strengths.

At this point, our characters are experiencing the real world, first jobs, relationships, etc. Everyone at this age has a higher energy that should also be part of this style, so the camera movement can get even more dynamic. Here we are not so much observers of two girls growing up together as we are participants, so I feel we have now moved in closer to our characters. The use of wider focal lengths closer to our subjects helped achieve that feeling. We want to feel like we are there with them, helping them transition into adulthood and the real world.

Instead of casting different actors for this period, like in the 1970s, Katherine Heigl (Tully) and Sarah Chalke (Kate) played themselves in the 1980s too, so we were doing de-aging in post production to help sell their younger selves.

What about the 2000s?
We treated the 2000s as our “present” period. In Season 1, we showed how Tully had had a successful career, contrasting with Kate, who is struggling career-wise but who managed to start a family. Framing for this period is more dramatic, and some scenes feel like the framing is calling for a more short-sighted composition. Until now, we have seen our girls growing and becoming women, and we have witnessed the development of their strong relationships. But now, in this period, we see more of the ups and downs of two mature women dealing with the routines of everyday life.

Overall, it feels more current, and the camera movement is looser for this period. I had a subtler filtration for this period, with the use of light Black Satin filters (or none at all, at times) and softer lighting coming through windows. The images have a more desaturated palette overall.

What direction did the showrunner give you about the look she wanted this season (and last)?
Our showrunner, Maggie Friedman, is not only a great leader in our show, but the writing she brought to all the scripts was just so good that it was amazing to be able to translate those words into visuals. We had a great collaboration together that I hope will carry on in the future. When I am presented with such quality scripts, it makes my job so much easier, and it allows me to dream bigger when prepping the episodes.

Did you work with a look book?
I always work with a look book. Last season I was gathering references from photography and other shows as a way to communicate our visual language to the directors and crew. I look at photography a lot for references and inspiration. Saul Leiter, Stephen Shore, André Kertész, Alex Webb and Todd Hido, among many others, are always present in my visual language as inspiration.

This season I used images from Season 1 to create a visual lookbook for Season 2 and a bunch of references for some new periods we were about to cover.

How did you work with the directors and colorist to achieve the intended look?
All the directors that came in this season were also fans of the show, and they knew it really well. We established a specific look in Season 1 that we continued this season, so everyone coming in was familiar with it and knew the look we were trying to achieve. I also shared my look book with everyone, and it was a pretty flawless process overall.

Company 3 has been taking care of our dailies and color timing for the whole show since last season. Claudio Sepulveda was our colorist, and Chad Band was our dailies colorist.

Prior to Season 1 of Firefly Lane, I shot the feature film 2 Hearts, where I also had the same team doing the color correction for me. So I knew the team very well, and it was a great collaboration again.

Were there on-set LUTs? DIT?
I always use just one LUT on every project, and I light for that LUT. Every now and then, we would make some subtle CDL adjustments that would go straight to our dailies colorist at Company 3. But I always try to get the look in-camera as close to delivery as I can.

Brian Scholz was our DIT on Season 1, and he came back for the remainder of the series. He knew the show so well, and it was an amazing collaboration once again.

Where was it shot, and how long was the shoot?
The series was shot in Vancouver, BC. We only filmed 10 episodes in Season 1. For this season we had 16 episodes to film over nine months, plus about four to five weeks of preproduction. Netflix is splitting Season 2 into two parts. Part 1 released on December 2, and part 2 will be released sometime in 2023.

How did you go about choosing the right camera?
Last season, Netflix’s mandate to originate in 4K ruled out my camera of choice, which is an ARRI Alexa, so I tested the Panavision DXL2 and the Sony Venice. I already knew what I could get out of the Venice, but I was pleasantly surprised by the images coming out of the DXL2. I also love its ergonomics and especially the viewfinder.

I also introduced the idea of filming the series for a 2×1 aspect ratio in Season 1, as it would fit these two characters’ stories, allowing us to frame them together and have them share the screen more often than not.

Can you talk about using lighting and framing to emphasize the emotional weight of the scenes?
As I described earlier, every period has its own approach toward lighting and framing, though I like to play this in a pretty subtle way between all the timelines. But the camera work is definitely more dynamic in the 1970s and especially in the 1980s. We used the Steadicam for those eras more often than any other periods.

The 2000s timeline feels a bit more static and somewhat the camera is a bit looser. The framing is also less “centered” than in other periods.

Vincent De Paula

Vincent De Paula

Lighting-wise, I used harder and warmer lighting for the 1970s to evoke emotions from that time, when our girls are still teenagers. I gradually change to a softer approach for the ‘80s and a cooler, more neutral tone for the 2000s.

There are times in the 2000s when we wanted to isolate some characters due to the emotional scenes they were playing. I tend to short-sight the compositions and use wider lenses that allow us to identify with the environment that surrounds the characters.

Any happy accidents to talk about?
There are always happy accidents on a film set, and I am the first one who will embrace them.

I remember there was a scene we were filming in the 1970s timeline, when young Tully is visiting her mom “Cloud” in jail, and eventually they would be sitting together in a table in the middle of the room. I wasn’t planning on having a two-shot with the window in the background, but as the camera was rolling into the set, it was pointing at this window and table with the stand-ins sitting there. I noticed how powerful it could be to actually let them be in a silhouette against that window, so I decided to light them that way instead, and it was only because I just happened to look at the monitor as the camera and dolly were getting to set and were “accidentally” pointed at this table.

Vincent De Paula

Any challenging scenes that you are particularly proud of or found most challenging?
Filming in Vancouver in the fall and winter has its challenges. In addition to the seasonal rain, it gets dark pretty quickly. Many times, I had to film night for day, and some of the locations were quite challenging in order to pull this off.

Earlier on in Season 2, Tully is filming a documentary in which she is trying to trace her father’s past and whereabouts. There was a scene where they all visit a restaurant with the camera crew, where they believed Tully’s father had worked in the past.

Due to scheduling reasons, we had to shoot at this location in the evening when it was already dark. There were windows all along one side of the restaurant. We had shot another scene there for the 1980s that plays in the same episode, and in that scene, I was able to feature those windows fully. But for this scene, sadly, there was no room to place any lights outside those windows, as the restaurant was over the ocean. So any lighting had to come from inside the room.

My approach was to deny seeing that part of the restaurant and place the fixtures inside the room as close as possible to those windows. In the background there was a door leading to a patio area where there would be more tables for customers, so I had a bigger light over there to recreate where the sun would be coming from. Overall, it looked really good, and to this day, no one can tell that it was actually night when we shot this.

Also, not being able to scout this real location beforehand brought more challenges because I had to come up with a very quick plan to light the space with its limitations, and I was only able to see this location on the actual shooting day.

Now more general questions….

How did you become interested in cinematography?
I was born in Galicia, in northern Spain, where the film industry is almost nonexistent. There is no film background in my family, so it wasn’t the path my parents probably expected for me. So when I mentioned my desire to be involved in the “movies,” it was pretty clear that I would have to move elsewhere.

After I moved to London, I got involved in documentaries, music videos and many commercials early on in my career and then I slowly got into more narrative work.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I was always watching films as a kid, and I remember thinking that I would always get something out of any film I would watch. Even if it wasn’t a great film, there would always be a message or a great adventure to witness. That sparked my attention, and like everyone else, I wanted to be a director, but I quickly discovered the importance of an image and all the things I could say with the use of light and composition, so I decided I wanted to be a cinematographer.

When I moved to the UK, I started working mainly on documentaries, and this taught me so much about using natural light and how to use what was available to tell a story. It allowed me to develop a naturalistic approach that I still always prioritize today.

When I started doing more narrative, commercials and music videos, I was able to apply that naturalistic approach.

I tried to enhance it to help the story in a more dramatic way, which I have since been calling a “poetic realism” approach. I knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, being able to paint and write with light and composition to tell a story.

Short films were my introduction to narrative. I also learned how wonderful the collaboration with the director, the production designer, the gaffer and all crew members could be.

Vincent De Paula

Vincent De Paula

It’s always important to be bold and push your creativity in every project you do, and I have been learning new things all the time. I was at a point where I was filming mainly on 35mm and S16mm, even though digital already had a presence. But learning to expose and work in a film environment is the best school. All the projects I did early on in my career were telling me that I had found my path.

What inspires you artistically?
I am constantly looking at photography and painting as main sources of inspiration. I think I have more than a couple of hundred books on photographers and painters. Saul Leiter, Stephen Shore, Gordon Parks, André Kertész, William Eggleston, Alex Webb, Roy DeCarava, Todd Hido and Fan Ho are some of the photographers I always reference.

I also love the masterly treatment of light by painters like Vermeer, the use of color and perspectives of de Hooch, the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio or Monet and the Impressionist style.

I always learn so much and find so much inspiration from the work of cinematographers like Conrad Hall, Gordon Willis, Sven Nykvist, Nestor Almendros, Ed Lachman, Robby Müller, Chris Doyle, Robert Richardson, Janusz Kaminski, Roger Deakins, Emmanuel Lubezki, Rodrigo Prieto, Linus Sandgren, Greig Fraser, Bradford Young and Natasha Braier, to name just a few.

And away from any visual references, I am always listening to music. I think if I wasn’t a cinematographer, I would have tried to become a musician.

Literature is also a huge influence for me, and I am pretty obsessed with the Beat Generation.

What are some of your best practices or rules you try to follow on each job?
I like “fixing things in preproduction,” and I always do a lot of research on the subject or themes I am filming. I think that one always has to have a plan. Even if it is a very small scene with very little time to prepare, you always want to have a plan to execute, or at least have an idea that usually develops into something bigger when on-set on the day.

I always have so much fun on the job, and I think the cast and crew feeds from it. I am very passionate about my job. I believe I have the best job in the world, I love what I do, and I am not shy to show that on-set.

Explain your ideal collaboration with the director or showrunner when starting a new project.
When I first read a script, I don’t want to immediately have an idea of what I want the film or series to look like. Naturally, as I read it and react emotionally to the story, I start to develop ideas in my head, but I like to come to my first meetings with showrunners and directors with a blank page that I will gradually fill with references and ideas to a look that I present to everyone involved. But I do want to hear their initial thoughts too.

Communication is key, and looking at references — discussing films, photography, painting, etc. — is part of that initial process. Even if one wants to have a very distinctive look, there is always room to look at other forms of art for inspiration.

It’s also very important to connect personally with the director I’m working with. I don’t mean we need to become best friends, but I have learned to read people quite well, and I like to know what goes on inside everyone’s head when working together on a project.

What’s your go-to gear (camera, lens, mount/accessories) – things you can’t live without?
I became a cinematographer in England, and at that time, digital was starting to be very present, but I was lucky to shoot on film early in my career. Learning to expose for film has taught me so much and has given me great confidence in my work as a cinematographer. I still love to shoot on film, and I think of it as another pencil with which to write a book.

Lately, I have been mainly shooting on ARRI Alexas, and it is my favorite sensor to shoot on. I think it is still the closest look to film to date. I love Panavision glass. I have been working with Panavision on 90% of all the projects in my career, and it is such a wonderful collaboration with them. They have always had my back, from my time in London to the US and Canada and beyond.

When it comes to anamorphic, which is really my preferred format, I love the Panavision C series and T series. I have shot with both on my last two feature films. One of them luckily had a large theatrical release worldwide where you can really appreciate the larger aspect ratio.

I genuinely think the wider screen from an anamorphic image can also be a really intimate format. You can frame two actors in a medium close-up in the same frame and let things play, and it allows the camera to move in a way that doesn’t force you into as much cutting.


Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 25 years. 

Marvel and Netflix: How Studio Operations Manage Media

By Oliver Peters

Large studios once personified by major theatrical releases have given way to modern hybrids with a presence in both the motion picture and streaming worlds. This business model includes companies like Netflix and Disney, among others. Gone are the days of storing film in vaults — replaced by the benefits of nimble access to digital assets. Those storage systems and procedures become the heartbeat of the operation.

Evan Jacobs

Marvel Studios
Under the Disney corporate banner and the Disney+ service, Marvel has been able to create streaming series and films based on the broader cinematic universe of its beloved characters. The logistics are shepherded by Marvel Studios. Evan Jacobs (VP, finishing, Marvel Studios) and Matt Walters (director of production technology, Disney) took time out of their busy schedules to discussed what goes into all of this.

How does Marvel handle the media assets for all these properties?
Evan Jacobs: Marvel Studios is a separate entity under the Disney umbrella. We have our own management team, but we’re on the Disney lot in Burbank working with other Disney departments. For instance, Matt works for Disney and supports our Marvel Finishing Department.

There are a couple of different ways that we approach projects. Marvel Finishing is our in-house DI group, and they handle all of our streaming content. They are a boutique operation — 12 people plus the engineers. The theatrical features go through outside vendors for finishing, with Company 3 doing the majority of that work.

Matt Walters

The conform editorial staff on the finishing side are full-time Marvel employees, but the creative editorial teams on the shows and films are hired on a per-project basis. When it comes to the equipment that the creative teams use, such as Avid Media Composer and Nexis storage, some is gear we own, while some is rented.

How does Marvel handle the media assets for all these properties?
Jacobs: Marvel Studios is the clearinghouse for all of the media that’s created. But first, let me add some background. Marvel started as a production company, just like many others. There was literally a drive array on somebody’s desk with the whole movie on it. As time went on, the consistency of the number of shows we were producing got more reliable. We’re talking the era from the first Iron Man to the first Avengers. The increased workload generated interest in bringing an enterprise level of support to this technology.

We currently rely on fast Quantum storage for finishing. Default storage for everything else is [Dell EMC] Isilon, along with some cloud services. At first, we had Isilon storage with every project on its own node, but as we produced more projects, we had to come up with a different strategy. We would be running out of storage on one show and have extra storage on another. Four or five years ago, we took a hard look at rethinking our storage footprint here at the studio and creating a very robust system for all the Marvel projects.

Moon Knight

Can you expand on that?
Jacobs: There are multiple levels. There’s the main in-production storage, which is fast. Then you have archive storage, because every single show that we’ve done is on spinning disk. We keep everything live because we tell such interconnected stories.

When you say live, are you talking just about the finished, edited version of a movie?
Jacobs: All of it. Today, every visual effects vendor, every stereo conversion vendor, every bit of camera original footage, everything that gets created as part of making one of our films comes to our storage. If it’s a DI vendor like Company 3, we’ll supply them with the elements they’ll need. With our internal finishing team, what’s cool is that we don’t have to move anything because we have direct access to everything here.

Wandavision

Matt Walters: From the final IMF that’s sent to Disney+ to final VFX and all the interim versions to the original plates. I can get Evan shots from the movies [completed] six years ago in a couple of minutes because we know where it is and can pipe it directly to them.

Jacobs: Same with assets. We’re talking about something like an Iron Man CGI model from 10 years ago.

That takes a lot of capacity, right?
Walters: There are different stages. In finishing, we have about a petabyte of fast storage. In Raw Cam, where we keep all the OCF storage of active shows, that will be around 30PB by the end of next year. Right now, it’s at 12PB, and we’re doubling it. Show storage for VFX shots gets into another 30PB for all the past shows. Then you add onto that the disaster recovery and safety copies, which is another whole tier. We treat our storage like a private, internal cloud. We can then make sure everyone has access, wherever they’re at and however they need it.

Moon Knight

On top of that, do you also use LTO backups?
Walters: Yes, we have LTO dual-tier backups of everything, as well. Internally, we have different generations of LTO readers going back to LTO4. So we can read any tape from a past show in addition to having it on spinning disk.

How do you keep all of this straight?
Jacobs: It’s a sophisticated operation that’s very systemized. Unlike a lot of production companies, we have the benefit of doing a lot of the same kinds of things all the time. We are a very VFX-dependent studio, so we’re organized around that principle.

On the data engineering level, there are tools to find things. But the truth is, we’ve automated the way we store things, and we have standards. A show today looks the same as it did five years ago. If you opened it up, you would know where everything was. We don’t have one show organized by date and another one alphabetically, for example. So the organizational standards, coupled with some institutional knowledge, allow us to find pretty much anything you would need.

How does this strategy benefit your workflow?
Jacobs: We use [Blackmagic DaVinci] Resolve as our internal DI solution. We also keep our Resolve database completely live for every single project we’ve done. When we upgrade to a newer version of Resolve, it updates that database too. We can open up a grade from five years ago. We have the luxury of being well-supported by a big operation. So we can do things that other people probably wouldn’t want to do, and maybe wouldn’t benefit from, because all our stories are so interconnected.

She-Hulk

I went back and remastered all of the Marvel films back to Iron Man one. It’s like cutting a tree and counting the rings. On those early films, it’s amazing how little media there was compared to now. When you get to the older films, because we were remastering from SDR to HDR, we would discover things. Shots might be clipped or there might be other things that you didn’t notice in the older formats. With the more modern shows, I was able to go back to the sources, open up those visual effects shots, fix them and put them back into the remasters. It’s awesome when you can do that and not wait a week for somebody to find an LTO tape.

Netflix
Netflix has been on the forefront of elevating production and post standards that ripple through the entire industry. Their specs, such as true 4K (or better) camera acquisition and HDR mastering, are primarily intended for Netflix Originals. But they also influence procedures followed by projects that don’t necessarily stream on Netflix. In order to present these specs in a clear manner, Netflix Studios maintains a Partner Help Center website with guidance on a wide range of production and post workflows. This includes a section on how Netflix expects a producing partner to manage the media.

The Crown

As with any production, all media and data management starts on-set or on-location. Scripted fiction projects will often go through a dailies lab or post facility that is responsible for handling the original media until it’s time to turn it over. In the case of Netflix, this media would be delivered to the Netflix Content Hub at the end of the production.

The 3:2:1 Principle
The key recommendation is to use the 3:2:1 principle and checksum verification. Simply put, this means hold three copies of your original camera and audio files. Store these copies on two different types of media. Keep at least one of the backups in a different geographical location. When making these copies, Netflix recommends drive arrays in a RAID 5, 6 or 10 configuration, but not RAID 0 (except for temporary use). Of course, LTO6 through LTO9 (LTFS format) also qualifies.

Dead to Me

Checksum verification requires that you use duplication software like Hedge or ShotPut, which compares the copy to the original and mathematically verifies that no data has been lost or corrupted. In addition, Netflix recommends a visual inspection, i.e., scrubbing through the offloaded files to check for any issues.

Finally, for scripted fiction production, Netflix expects a complete quality control check (QC) with real-time playback of all camera files. And that QC check should be done at a minimum 4K UHD resolution (3840×2160), preferably in a controlled environment, like a color correction (DI) facility.

Guidelines for Reusing Original Recording Media
For most productions, it’s routine to offload the original camera files (OCF), reformat the camera cards and reuse them for further recording. Under Netflix’s guidelines, this should only happen once the editorial team has signed off on what they’ve received and only when the media matches all camera reports and script supervisor notes. And of course, making sure that three verified copies exist. If the turnaround time doesn’t allow for the editorial team to perform these tasks, then it should at least be cross-checked by the dailies lab.

Manifest

All of this is a process that takes time and care. Maintaining a chain of custody is important should any issues arise. In setting up the workflow, consider things like the speed of the camera cards, read/write speeds of the various devices in the chain and the generation of LTO being used. It is also recommended that the drives you copy to should not be slower than the source. In other words, it’s OK to copy from a slow card reader to a faster drive, but ideally never the other way around. Finally, make sure you have enough extra camera cards to go through the full 3:2:1 process with verification and inspection before it’s time to wipe and reuse the cards.


Oliver Peters is an award-winning editor/colorist working in commercials, corporate communications, television shows and films.   

The Tinder Swindler

Getting the Right Look for Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler

By Adrian Pennington

Audiences were amazed by the depth of deception exposed in the Netflix true-crime story The Tinder Swindler. The film follows the victims of perpetrator Shimon Hayut, aka Simon Leviev, who posed as a billionaire diamond mogul on dating apps. He met multiple women and conned them out of thousands of dollars.

The Tinder Swindler“These women fall into a trap thinking that someone is in love with them,” says cinematographer Edgar Dubrovskiy. “Shimon Hayut is brutal, telling these women for months that they will buy a house together and have kids.”

The Tinder Swindler was produced for Netflix by Raw TV, the British indie that is credited with delivering cinematic production value to tough documentary stories.

Dubrovskiy and director Felicity Morris chose to acquire on Red, making this the first show for Netflix of any kind shot on the Komodo camera system. It was mastered in HDR in a predominantly ACES color-managed Dolby Vision workflow.

Ross Baker

The doc’s central story is told in interviews with Hayut’s victims, filmed in Sweden, Norway, Amsterdam, London and the United States. Interview footage was rounded out with stock footage, archive footage and dramatization, plus graphics of social media posts. Post production went through Molinare, where senior colorist Ross Baker handled the grade in FilmLight Baselight 4.

“From the first scene, it was clear Felicity and Edgar wanted to embrace a romantic and evocative world,” says Baker. “They achieved this with the soft warm tones from the interviews, using very minimal lighting. Edgar opted to just use practicals in the interviews to light the scene. The Komodo handled this with very little noise.”

Dubrovskiy sent Baker SDR stills as references for an approach that would distinguish the look between the victims and the journalists. Baker translated the SDR stills into HDR grade.

“Using Molinare’s proprietary streaming software, MoliStream, we shared the output with Edgar and explored our options, discussing the look live,” Baker says. “Here, we delved into how we could treat the images in different ways and how this would be perceived in each dynamic range.”

As many documentary filmmakers are experiencing HDR in production for the first time, it can be a massive learning curve for all involved. Baker says the extra dynamic range can sometimes be too much as it natively appears in ACES and HDR.  “Edgar liked the IPP2 roll-off that you see from the Red in SDR when you apply the soft tone-mapping and low-contrast options. This played nicely to the desired cinematic style required by Felicity. As these options are not available in ACES, I created a curve that would give us the same result while allowing a little extra head room to the highlights. I created a custom-grade stack that allows me to work with SDR content and push it to 1,000 nits (if desired) without breaking the images apart.”

The Tinder SwindlerDubrovskiy shot 6K RAW to fit Netflix deliverables, with the data overhead allowing Molinare’s finishing team to punch into the image as required.

“Blending the Komodo footage alongside a wide range of sources is always going to be tricky as image sensor quality and lens choices play a massive part in the final look,” Baker says. “I’m fortunate to have worked on many documentaries that have used lots of different media sources, so I’m able to draw on years of experience on what works.

“A big part of making the sources work together without compromising the ‘hero’ camera is to understand the difference in contrast and chroma and try to align them all together. It’s never plain sailing but with the Baselight you have the tools at hand to make the adjustments needed.”

For example, the social media posts and text messages, which assist in driving the story, shouldn’t jump out of the edit. “The graphics are predominantly bright white screens that could be jarring. Controlling the luminance and softly vignetting with a small amount of grain helped to maintain consistency with the interviews and reconstructions.”

Baker adds, “This was my first time working with Edgar, and he is a very creative and technically minded DP. He was very passionate that the right look be achieved.”


Adrian Pennington is a UK-based journalist, editor and commentator in the film and TV production space. He has co-written a book on stereoscopic 3D and edited several publications.

 

 

Grace and Frankie

Grace and Frankie’s Final Season: DPs Talk Evolution of Look

By Randi Altman

Netflix’s comedy Grace and Frankie is coming to an end with its seventh and final season. Initially focused on how two women deal with their longtime husbands leaving them for each other, the series has evolved to be so much more. The audience gets a deep dive on how this modern-day Odd Couple deals with friendship between women, finding love in your 70s and how wacky adventures can make you feel younger. It stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston.

Grace and Frankie

Gale Tattersall

Set in San Diego, the series’ look was originally set in Season 1 by DP Gale Tattersall, a veteran cinematographer who has worked on all seven seasons. We reached out to Tattersall and fellow DP Luke Miller, who started as a gaffer on Episode 1 and graduated to co-DP in 2019. Tattersall describes the show’s initial look as “cinematic, lyrical, believable, evocative and emotional.”

Let’s find out more…

Gale, how did you get involved in the show?
Gale Tattersall: I was chosen to DP the show because of previous work, including House and my feature credits, such as Virtuosity and Tank Girl. I had also worked with Marta Kauffman, our main showrunner on a project called Call Me Crazy, and we clicked immediately.

Grace and Frankie

Luke Miller

How has that look evolved over the seven seasons?
Tattersall: The greatest change of all was for Season 3, when we were able to switch to the Canon C300 MKII.

I also think the show became slicker over the seasons. Our complex lighting techniques became more efficiently employed, allowing us to move faster and thus give the director/editor more coverage, which in a comedy is so important for getting the best out of the script and pacing.

Considering it’s such a long-running show, how do you work with the showrunners/directors to get and keep the right look?
Tattersall: At the start, we had countless meetings for all the shows to discuss the look, so it would be extremely rare for something to happen by accident. Also, after a certain number of episodes, you have created a reference library, so there would sometimes be a reference to something that worked well in a previous episode that could be expanded upon. DPs have to be strong and opinionated on TV shows.

Grace and FrankieVery often you work with really great and well-seasoned directors, and we have been lucky enough on Grace and Frankie to have had many, but once in a while you get a newbie who wants to make an impression, and that is when, occasionally, you have to become a policeman of sorts and protect the integrity of the show by nicely suggesting shots that are more in keeping with the style of the show.

Luke Miller: One aspect of shooting a long-running series is trying to keep the look and feel somewhat consistent over many years and many directors. I like to sit in with our directors in their prep meetings to help develop their ideas in ways that are consistent with the look of the show.

If a director had an idea for a specific shot during prep, I could make sure we had the right tools or plan to accomplish it in the established language of the show. Often directors would come in and reference a scene from a movie that had a feeling or a look they wanted to integrate into their episode. We would take that influence, put it through a sort of Grace and Frankie filter and translate it into our show.

Other times, directors would point to previous episodes of Grace and Frankie for inspiration. While prepping Episode 715, “The Fake Funeral,” director Alex Hardcastle referenced a shot from one of the episodes he directed in Season 4 called “The Expiration Date.” We were talking about how to approach the final scene, and he told me he wanted to match the somber feeling of a specific shot of Frankie sitting in front of a painting at night. That gave us a great starting point, even though this was a day scene and needed to look different. We developed the lighting and lens choices with the mood of that shot in mind. It’s a short scene, but it caps the episode so beautifully and is one of my favorites in the series.

Were you using LUTs on-set? DITs?
Tattersall: We didn’t really use LUTs other than a generic Rec. 709. We didn’t use a DIT on-set either. I hate it when there is a desire to try to create the final image on-set. Personally, I love the progression. I’m a traditionalist. I started as a DP when nobody actually knew what I was doing until the next day or evening when rushes were available. I don’t need to display what the final image is going to be until it is created in final color with the colorist based on what I had in mind. I personally feel that video village and video assist should be used purely to judge framing, focus, performance and nothing more. That is why you should trust your DP, who needs to be on the same page as the director and showrunners.

Miller: We had auditioned some specific LUTs that we had our colorist create for basic day/night interior/exterior circumstances during Season 3, but we ultimately just used the standard Rec. 709 LUT built into the camera for on-set work. We found this was a very safe LUT that kept us in a controlled range on-set and allowed for a lot of room to play in final color. Alongside that LUT we had a high-end Canon reference display on-set that gave us a consistent picture to work from.

Speaking of the colorist, can you describe that relationship?
Tattersall: It is a gift having a great colorist such as Roy Vasich from Picture Shop Post. Even on a show as expensive as Grace and Frankie, everything is budget-driven. Time in the color suite is costly, so it’s important that Roy nails his first pass so we don’t have many corrections to make when we come in for final color.

It pleases me enormously when our showrunners and producers come by for their session and don’t change a thing! I’m also in touch with our dailies colorist, John Allen, every day I am shooting, giving him a heads up as to how the day went and what problems concerned me. So he is the first to get his hands on the first interpretation of our raw material.

Grace and FrankieMiller: Colorist Roy Vasich has been with the show since Season 2, so he is very familiar with the look and feel of the show. When an episode is completed, Roy takes a pass at it on his own and gets everything very close to the final look. Then I spend some time in the color suite with him and go through it shot by shot and make final adjustments.

When setting up a shot on-set, we spend our time making sure the lighting on the actors’ faces is perfect, but often we need to just rough in something in the background or the back of a shoulder in the foreground. Then when we get into the color suite with Roy, we can easily address those things with a Power Window or a gradient. Our show was an early adopter of finishing in Dolby Vision HDR, and Roy was instrumental in helping make that a smooth transition.

How much greenscreen is used on-set? How does that affect your workflow, lighting, etc.?
Miller: The entire beach backdrop outside the beach house was bluescreen, as was everything outside of Nick’s penthouse and the outside of Brianna and Barry’s house. All the interior car work was shot on greenscreen.

The nice thing about all the greenscreen is that it’s fast and flexible. We can decide on a scene-by-scene basis what the weather on the beach might be. The disadvantage is that it’s not much to look at for the actors on set, and you have to create all the lighting effects from your imagination.

On one occasion we were shooting a romantic night scene on the beach patio, and the giant bluescreen just didn’t have the magic of the night sky, so I projected an image of a full moon on the bluescreen to give a little mood to the stage. It brought out lots of smiles, grateful comments and, hopefully, it helped the actors get lost in the scene just a little bit more.

Tattersall: Bluescreen and greenscreen are a necessary evil, and we used our fair share. I am hoping these new multi-panel real-image displays will become more available and more affordable, as they are not only much better at creating a feeling of “being there” but can double as amazing, infinitely variable and interactive light sources. I admit that, like many productions, when doing “poor man’s” car work, for example, blue/greenscreen tends to lend to some bland or generic lighting because you have no idea what background plate will eventually replace the screen, making it impossible to light in sympathy with the chosen background plate.

You mentioned the Canon camera earlier? How do you pick what to shoot on? Did Netflix’s requirements play a big role in that choice? What about the lenses?
Tattersall: There are so many factors that go into making a show and choosing equipment. In some ways, the more successful you are as a show, and the more seasons you do, the more you paint yourself into a corner. Your unit production manager never stops to whittle down the budget in every single area.

Initially, when we were looked after by the wonderful guys at Keslow Camera, the only way they could make the show work financially from season to season was to hope that we would run with the same equipment we had used in previous seasons. But after all this time, we began to feel the Cooke primes and the workhorse Angenieux zooms were feeling tired and wanting, and they are just so enormous.

We ended up having to do our final 12 episodes post-pandemic with Alternative Rentals, who were wonderful. They could make these changes work for the budget that was unmovable, as they owned a lot of Canon camera gear already. I also believe in the harmony of a system working together. Canon makes their own cameras, electronics, sensors and lenses, and I believe there are times when the “purity” of one system working in harmony shines through.

Luke Miller on-set

Miller: We started out on the Red Dragon with Angenieux Optimo zooms and Cooke S4/I primes for the first two seasons, with the zooms on the cameras most of the time. Then we switched to Canon cameras in the third season. As new cameras were released, we changed between models in the Canon line as the seasons went by. The C300 MKII for Seasons 3-5, the C700 FF for Season 6 and some of Season 7, and the C500 MKII for the final 12 episodes of Season7.

In Season 7, we changed our lenses to Canon zooms (17-120 and 25-250) and Canon Sumire primes. I primarily used the Sumires with the camera in Full Frame mode for my episodes, while Gale relied mostly on the zooms in S35 crop mode. Netflix’s requirements were a big factor in our initial camera choices.

Back in 2014, when we were first getting started, the requirement of a 4K camera had us choosing from a shortlist of allowed cameras. Red Dragon, Sony F55 and a Canon C300 with an external recorder were tested. We liked the look of the C300, but the external recorder that was needed to record 4K at the time was too much hassle to deal with. When the C300 MKII was released and allowed for internal 4K recording, we made the switch. We were drawn to the sensor inside the Canon cameras. They produce great skin tones, have excellent latitude and create a soft, photographic feeling, even though they were recording 4K — or in the case of the C500 MKII, 5.9K.

The Angenieux zooms were basically an industry standard for television when we started in 2014, and many shows still make great use of them. And as Gale mentioned earlier, we found we were fighting against their sheer size, especially the 24-290, which was always on our B camera. For Season 7, we tried the compact versions of the Optimo zooms for the first four episodes, but while we were shut down for COVID, Gale tested the Canon zooms that we switched to. We found them to be much smaller than the big Optima zooms we had been using, and optically they offered improvements in some of the areas that the Optimo struggled in.

The 24-250 also offered a very interesting built-in 1.4x extender, which not only gave a much longer lens at the flip of a switch but also allowed it to cover full fame along its entire range. In Season 7, with the Canon Sumire primes, we generally lit to about a T4, where these lenses would give a neutral look that didn’t call attention to the lens. But for some scenes, we would shoot wide open, which is where the Sumires totally change into a soft image full of character, with a gentle roll-off to a bokeh with really interesting shapes. I used this look in a scene at the end of Episode 715 with Frankie in her studio and in 712 for a scene with Bud in his office at night.

What about the lighting?
Miller: The lighting on Grace and Frankie was really quite unique. To start with, the level of light we used is really high. We rated our cameras at 400 ISO and generally lit to a T4. A typical show today might have a camera rated at 800-1600 ISO and light to a T2 or wider. On average, that means we are using eight to 16 times brighter light as a starting point for a scene. Our primary objective was to light the cast as beautifully as we could while maintaining some shape and keeping the backgrounds interesting and natural feeling.

We covered every bit of the set that wasn’t in frame in white muslin and bounced light off it. We tried to have the actors’ light coming from every direction. Then we would balance the levels of the different areas of muslin in the same way you would balance a traditional key and fill to give the light some sense of directionality, even though it was coming from everywhere. In a way, the result was as if the actors were sitting for a portrait in each shot.

Tattersall: We had senior actors with pages of dialogue to get through. It was important to have a deep stop so that we had less chance of having to go again for focus issues. Also it was really nice not having to do mini focus pulls back and forth with the dialogue to achieve the two magic shots — action and reaction. Sometimes we even racked up an 11 stop just so that we could, for example, hold Jane and Lily both in focus even though they were at significantly different distances.

There is a bonus in shooting with bright light — the iris in the actor’s eyes shuts down to compensate, which means you get more color in the actor’s eyes rather than dark pupils. Subtle but true! We did wrap right up to the edges of the shot with white muslin, which sometimes we lit and sometimes we just used in the ambient light.

I love to use Leko lights (what I call Source Fours), as it’s the quickest way possible to throw up a piece of card that needs minimum rigging to create a very fast hairlight/backlight, for example. Our foregrounds tended to be flatly lit to be as cosmetic as possible for Jane and Lily, so we very often created harder shape and contrast in the background to create a balance and depth.

Any happy accidents this latest season that you can talk about?
Miller: In a way, COVID resulted in a happy accident. As a result of being shut down for a year and a half, we had to relocate the sets from Paramount to Sunset Gower Studios. Because they all had to be rebuilt, we were able to make several strategic changes to save time and give us more options for camera placement. Another challenge due to COVID: We were in the middle of shooting Episode 705 when we shut down. So half of the episode was shot before and the other half after. It’s probably a record for the longest shooting schedule for an episode of television.

Tattersall:  I felt so many things were happy accidents. Getting Luke accepted into our Local 600 union so that he could become my co-DP was a major one. Being lucky enough to pay homage to Stanley Kubrick and DP Geoffrey Unsworth, BSC, by “borrowing” the White Room from 2001: A Space Odyssey as inspiration for our heaven scenes in Episode 716.

Now for some more generic questions… How did you become interested in cinematography? 
Tattersall: I started with a love of photography from an early stage and was lucky enough have access to a great darkroom, where I developed and printed for hours on end. I learned about composition and shape and contrast — something I think is a shame for new aspiring DPs never to have experienced, given the instant gratification of digital media.

I made a simple documentary about Buckminster Fuller when I was 17. It was my first foray into cinematography, which inspired me to go to the London Film School, which is where it began in earnest.

Miller: I attribute the beginning of my love of filmmaking to a show I watched on the Discovery channel growing up called Movie Magic. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the show was basically a promotional tool disguised as a behind-the-scenes peek at how effects and stunts were done. I loved seeing the equipment and tools used to make movies, even though I had no idea what a cinematographer was.

After a year of being uninspired by studying computer science, I transferred to Columbia College Chicago and fell in love with their fantastic cinematography department. I knew then that cinematography was the area of filmmaking for me. I enjoyed using light and lenses to create the imagery, but what surprised me was how much of cinematography was about solving new problems in different ways. That sort of unique problem-solving while storytelling is thrilling for me.

What inspires you artistically? 
Tattersall: I was lucky enough to have come up through the business in London when Tony and Ridley Scott, Alan Parker, Adrian Lyne were all directing commercials for television. As a young camera operator, I got to work with so many great DPs…David Watkin, Michael Seresin, Alex Thompson, Nick Roeg and many others who were all a great inspiration. Later on, working with excellent directors was such a blessing.

Grace and Frankie

The crew

Miller: I’m inspired by movies that stand the test of time. There is something magical about a film that was made 20, 40 or 80 years ago that can still move an audience. In short, I’m inspired by films that are timeless. I strive to keep longevity in mind when I’m creating — to shoot in a way that allows a project to be enjoyed today or 50 years from now.

I’m also inspired on a daily basis by the directors I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I see my job as one that is less about coming up with my own ideas and more about listening to the director’s ideas, then developing, supporting and finding the right way to execute the director’s vision.

What new technology has changed the way you work (looking back over the past few years)? 
Tattersall: I think the speed and advent of LED lighting has been phenomenal. The flexibility to change color in so many LED fixtures is just amazing, plus the huge drop in power consumption and heat while still maintaining the same light levels.

Initially, I felt that the move from celluloid to digital was premature and represented a huge quality drop. Now, however, I feel the playing field is more even, and you certainly have to take your hat off to the flexibility of variable ISO settings and false color, which I love in terms of putting my exposure to catch the absolute maximum amount of image information.

Miller: I agree. LED lights are probably the most noticeable change in the last few years, especially ones that can be powered with batteries. On Grace and Frankie, we primarily used traditional incandescent lights for lighting the actors and sets, but we did incorporate some newer lights.

We were one of the first shows to incorporate Mole-Richardson’s Vari-Space LED space lights back when they first came out of the prototype phase. Those lights allowed us to change the color temperature of the sky in a second, which previously would have taken hours to gel all the traditional space lights. That ease of use and flexibility is now offered in almost every type of light, which gives more room for creativity without added expense and time.

What are some of your best practices or rules you try to follow on each job? 
Tattersall: When you are on a show, you spend more time with your crew than you do with your family at home, so you better be sure it’s a pleasant environment. I believe in kindness on-set; I get excited to see people grow into their shoes and develop their talents, but if I had to choose one thing, I would say kindness.

Miller: Yes, I agree. I aim to treat everyone with respect. I don’t believe in yelling at anyone on-set.

Grace and Frankie

Explain your ideal collaboration with the director or showrunner when starting a new project. 
Tattersall: I love the collaborative relationship with a director. I always, without a pause, keep my eyes open for special shots that a director might not notice, even if he or she has thoroughly done the homework. If I can pull a shot out of nowhere that is fun and will help the edit, it makes me very pleased.

And I never get offended if a director decides not to entertain an idea of mine. It’s a delicate balance running an idea up to the showrunners without running it by the director first because they could feel that their DP is being too pushy. Sometimes ideas can be run up the flagpole during a production meeting rather than in the heat of battle, when you are shooting and time is very precious.

Miller: An ideal collaborative relationship for me would be to work with a director or a showrunner who has an idea for a new project that exists in a whole new world. The director would have a strong grasp on this world but would still have some details that need to be discovered. I think the discovery process is a fun thing to go through together with a director and can inform so much about how a project should look.

What’s your go-to gear (camera, lens, mount/accessories) – things you can’t live without? 
Tattersall: Just one thing: a great sensor that allows me to feel that I am not losing something by not shooting film.

Miller: I’m a huge fan of using an optical director’s finder. I still use a viewfinder app when necessary, but looking with your eye through the actual lens is an important part of the ritual for me. I also think it helps connect the director to the shot early in the process.


Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for 25 years. 

Russian Doll

Netflix’s Russian Doll Season 2: Editor Todd Downing Talks Workflow

By Iain Blair

The trippy Emmy-winning Netflix show Russian Doll is back for a second season — great news for anyone who’s interested in the space-time continuum but who also loves surreal comedy-drama. Natasha Lyonne created the series with Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler. Lyonne stars as Nadia, a jaded New Yorker who is caught in a time loop, dying and then coming back to relive the night of her 36th birthday. Her friend Alan (Charlie Barnett) is stuck in the loop with her.

Todd Downing, ACE

The second season is set four years after Nadia and Alan escaped mortality’s time loop together. Now they are delving deeper into their pasts through an unexpected time portal located in the NYC subway.

Todd Downing, ACE, who was nominated for HPA and ACE Awards for Season 1 of Russian Doll, has returned as editor for Season 2.  I spoke with Downing, whose credits include Difficult People, Generation, Younger, SMILF  and Mrs. America, about the editing challenges and his workflow on this scripted television show.

Your collaboration with Natasha Lyonne has been so successful that she made you a co-producer on the second season?
I think the title was out of gratitude for the synchronicity of our editing styles more than any actual producing work. We have a really good way of bouncing ideas off each other, so I think it was just appreciation. I have no desire to be a producer.

What were the main challenges of cutting the new season?
First off, it’s a much bigger swing, I think, artistically. But I don’t think we approached it like, “It has to be this bigger, better show now that it’s Season 2.” The big challenge was just making it its own world and able to stand on its own.

The characters have to be the same from Season 1, and while it’s not a completely new aesthetic, it is different. And while Natasha was central to Season 1, she’s even more involved in all aspects of this season. She wrote more shows, directed more and was the showrunner as well.

Fair to say, the first season was very self-contained?
Yes, I felt it was very neat, and in a good way. This felt more like what David Lynch did with Twin Peaks, ripping it apart and going so much deeper into the characters.

Russian DollThere are only seven episodes, compared to eight in the first season. Did that make it harder or easier?
I think it was harder in a way. First off, you have all the pressure of the success we had with the first season, and then you’re trying to take it to a whole other level, and it had to be that much tighter without losing that sense that anything might happen. On top of New York, we also shot in Budapest this season, so the whole scope got far bigger.

Tell us about the workflow in Season 2. Where did you edit and do the post?
I started editing at home on Avid Media Composer while they were shooting in New York City, assembling dailies and doing the editor’s cuts using Jump Desktop to access the media at the production company, Jax.

Then after they wrapped, I went to LA to work in person with Natasha at Animal Pictures in Studio City, which Natasha owns with Maya Rudolph. That’s where we did nearly all the post, and it was great. They brought in all the gear, and we turned the pool house into an edit suite. The Avid Nexis was located in a back room there. Sara Schultz, one of the assistants, would use Jump Desktop to work off that computer and transfer media.

How did COVID impact post?
It was this very safe post bubble. Everyone there was working on the show all day every day, and no one got sick. But the whole season got pushed back a year because of COVID. In the end, editing took about seven months, and then we spent another couple mixing and doing the color, plus we also had a lot of VFX work, so it was quite a long post. And it was very intense.

How closely did you work with Natasha? I assume she’s very hands-on?
Very. She loves being in the edit room, and I really don’t think we could have done it remotely because she digs so deep into the material and likes to try out so many things. And I think for a show like this it was important for us to work together in person.

What was the most difficult sequence to cut and why?
It was probably Episode 4 in Budapest, where she goes to the party and smokes DMT and “falls into the rabbit hole” sort of thing. It gets quite trippy, and it was difficult to cut because it could easily have become “too cool” too quickly, like a music video. Even though it was this surreal narrative, we wanted to keep it balanced.

The first episode was tricky too, as you have to bring everyone back and lead them in the new direction. Finding the right tone took a very long time. She’s already died a million times, so is she freaked out by all this? It took a lot of versions to get the emotional tracks of the characters just right.

Tell us about the role sound and sound design plays in the workflow.
I was very involved, and I feel that as editing has evolved, studios expect more and more sound design to be done in the offline. It used to be more like “the sound team will do all that,” but now you really have to create a temp version of it, and I love working with sound. It’s half the show, and I had layers and layers of soundtracks going on. Natasha’s very into sound too, and we worked really hard on it.

Then our sound mixer and sound supervisor, Lew Goldstein at Parabolic, took over, and he’s amazing. He was on Season 1 too, so while cutting, we could go to him for sounds he created in similar scenes. I’d do a rough sound design pass, and then he’d take it up to another level. We had the same composer from Season 1, so I’d use temps from him too. We did an offline mix in LA, and then Lew did the final mix at Parabolic in New York.

There are a lot of VFX. Did you use temp VFX?
(Laughs) No, I’m terrible at it. Some editors have a background in After Effects, but I’m not one of them. We didn’t have a VFX editor per se, but two of the assistant editors — Sara Schultz and Corry Seeholzer — would do temp ones for us until we sent stuff to Break + Enter, the VFX company we used. Corry is really good at handling VFX temps.

Your background is in documentaries. What did you bring from that to this show?
That background is very helpful for a scripted show in moving beyond the script. You don’t get so bogged down, and you feel freer in terms of digging deeper into the material and moving stuff around and putting things where they weren’t intended.

Of course, every editor does that, so it’s not like some special skill, but I do think you’re more apt to do that when you have that background. You’re used to not having a total plan, so it’s very liberating to feel that you can just pull things from wherever you want.

Will there be a third season?
Yes, I think so. Natasha always planned to do three, and she’s not short of ideas. Hopefully there won’t be such a long gap the next time.


Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.

The Oscar-Nominated Sound Team for Netflix’s The Power of the Dog

By M. Louis Gordon

Jane Campion is known to cinema as a boundary-breaker, pulling audiences into complex experiences with sexuality and lushly realized human portraits of dominion, love and abuse. Her latest film, The Power of the Dog, turns her lens on the masculine condition, and this diagonal step for the director is garnering some of her highest critical acclaim — including 12 Oscar nominations — since her 1993 feature, The Piano.

Robert Mackenzie

Based on the novel by Thomas Savage, the film is set in 1920s Montana, where the Burbank brothers, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons), run a cattle ranch left to them by their socialite parents. When George brings home his new wife Rose (Kirsten Dunst), a modest widow and single mother, Phil makes her life on the ranch unbearable with insults and strongman mockery. Until Rose’s son Peter discovers Phil’s biggest secret.

Leading the task of post sound — which has been recognized with one of those many Oscar nominations for this quiet but potent film — was Robert Mackenzie, whose credits include slammers like Hacksaw RidgeMortal Kombat (2021) and Netflix’s The King. Though The Power of the Dog would seem a departure in style from Mackenzie’s action-packed fare, it’s more a result of the impeccable thoroughness and attention to detail that he, sound effects editor (and first-time re-recording mixer) Tara Webb and sound designer Dave Whitehead have built a reputation for.

Tara Webb

I got the chance to sit down with Mackenzie and Webb, who worked out of Sydney’s Spectrum Films, to talk about the team’s process.

How did you get involved with the project?
Robert Mackenzie: Tara and I were asked to come onto Top of the Lake [Jane Campion’s limited series]. We were a bit nervous because Jane’s made so many amazing movies – The Piano is one of my favorite films of all time — but she just invited us into her world on that show and then invited us back for The Power of the Dog. She’s the sort of person that’s there every day for the mixing and is endlessly curious about what we do.

How do you start working?
Tara Webb: Sometimes I’ll just start cutting effects straight away, but Dave Whitehead, our sound designer, spent a long time creating this huge library for us of effects, Foley, winds, etc.

The film was shot in New Zealand, and we were trying to create Montana, so he found this website of Montana sounds that had heaps of different birds and nature sounds that we could reference. We found prairie sounds and did some research into interesting birds that we could maybe put in as a drama point of focus. We pulled some grassy winds, some not-grassy winds. We put together a palette that we could pick from to have consistency across the film.

The Power of the DogSo you’ve built your library of effects. What was the editing workflow like?
Webb: Initially, we just split up the film. “You take the first few reels, and I’ll take the last few reels.” Then there were specific design moments throughout the whole film that Dave took on, so we were kind of working simultaneously. I was cutting certain scenes and then sending them to him. He was doing the same, and he would go out and do recordings as well. He had a lot of props that production sent to him, so he could then spend a couple of days in his studio recording the saddle, the boots, etc.

I was going through the location sound and picking things out. The scenes in the barn, for instance, had some awesome recordings that Richard Flynn (our production sound mixer) had done. I sent that to Dave, and it was a back-and-forth kind of thing. Then I’d jump into Rob’s studio and maybe do a quick little premix and send it to Rob. He would have a listen and then we’d send it off to editorial. It was the first time working with Dave, and he was awesome.

The Power of the DogWhat about the interior locations? Much of the reverb in the house and restaurant sound wonderfully real.
Mackenzie: The sets were really well-built for the starters. Richard was able to take advantage of the acoustics of the sets themselves, the natural echo in the rooms. New Zealand is also inherently a quiet place, which helps. We had a lot of production sound to use as Foley, but a lot of it was wide-miked; something we like to do is combine the Foley with the production sound and almost use the production sound as a reverb itself.

You’ve got the close detail of the Foley, but Foley can sound a bit unnatural. And reverb units, they’ve gotten better with Altiverb, but you can still kind of hear the sound of the speaker; you can still hear that artifice. So we used that combination of all three: dry Foley sound; Richard’s production effects that Tara sunk up, sample-accurate for every footstep and door creak; and then a bit of the Altiverb “indoor” as well.

Webb: Leah Katz, the dialog supervisor, would send through cleaned-up sync effects so I could have that as I was working, and I sent that to Dave as well. We had that great palette of sounds, so when Foley started, they could focus on the areas that hadn’t been hit yet or things that Jane perhaps hadn’t yet liked the sound of.

I’d always try to use production whenever we had Phil’s feet because it just had a great natural resonance to it. Dave recorded these amazing spur tings, which sounded fantastic, so we used them as a device as well.

Mackenzie: Initially we were making a big thing out of Phil’s boots, and then it was too much, so we’d pull back. As [director] Wan Kar-wai said to me once, “Rob, you’re kissing the audience with the same kiss every time.” So we try to adjust the balance of those elements to create some variation.

What did you use to mix the background elements outside — on the ranch, in the hills, etc.?
Mackenzie: I think there were multiple instances of Slapper on Tara’s session.

the Power of the dog

Webb: Reverb [plugins] can be amazing, but getting that natural kind of recording, there’s nothing like it.

There was one scene where Phil’s walking through the water. I was going through the location sound and there was a dog barking off somewhere, so I thought it might be cool to drop that in somewhere. I often go through the location sound and find things like that. I love those little snippets and stuff and try to drop them in when I can.

Mackenzie: That’s the type of thing Tara’s especially good at. She’ll find that one leaf that’s moving in the background and highlight it.

Another thing Dave Whitehead did was some worldizing in New Zealand. He got some of the loop group and re-recorded that through speakers next to a mountain. That helped a lot on the scenes with the cowboys — distant whistles or callouts through that opening cattle drive and in other areas.

The Power of the DogYou mentioned earlier that Jane was there every day for the mix.
Mackenzie: The way Tara and I work is to give editorial the sound as they’re cutting. We’ll do mix-downs of dialogue backgrounds and sound effects as stems and hand that over to editorial. Then if they add to it — they might delete our stems and then add more sound — we’ll get that back as an AAF and resupply the stems for the next cut.

Jane’s present at the final mix but also through the whole process, so we are getting feedback on all the material we’re supplying her throughout the picture edit. Jane was very particular about the way she wanted things to sound and how it would help the storytelling. Any sort of tonal drones or dramatic artifice that we might have put in early on — all of that was stripped back, and the drama came from those close-up details and background textures that were naturalistic.

Webb: By the time we get to the final mix, we’re usually in a really good place. Rob and Jane can then focus on the story and the drama rather than any kind of technical things. They didn’t have to spend time choosing between sync effects and Foley because that’s already done.

Mackenzie: When we sit down on the first day of the final mix, it’s playing the way Jane has heard it —the temp mixes have been in the cut, and she’s used to it. We mixed Reel 1, and then Jane said, “Oh no, it’s all a bit too much and overwhelming,” so we would break it down and then build it up again. We had three weeks for the final mix, which is pretty standard for us. But having Jane listening and giving feedback on the temp mixes up until that point gave us the luxury of time to be creative.

Could you break down one of my favorite scenes? Rose is practicing the piano in the drawing room, and Phil starts mocking her by noodling the same tune on his banjo from upstairs. The scene starts with Rose closing all the doors to the room to get some privacy.
Mackenzie: Oh yeah, it took a long time to get that wind through the crack in the door. That little “whoosh” as she’s closing it. Jane talked a lot about the wind. She had a whole concept for the wind, to hear the close wind around the house. And the idea of the house is almost that it’s a mausoleum. It’s sparsely furnished. It’s Phil’s domain.

Webb: Yeah. There’s no warmth in the house.

Mackenzie: You are hearing the wind come through the door, and then when the door’s closed it’s like a vacuum. Like Rose is sealed in the house and she’s sealed her fate. We know that Phil’s in the house and that he’s gone up the stairs. Rose doesn’t know that.

Webb: She thinks she’s in a little cocoon there. That wind was Dave Whitehead, our sound designer. We also did a lot of wood creeks and stuff as well, floorboards and that kind of thing, which we would sparsely place in between for moments.

Rose is playing, then we start hearing Phil’s banjo far off from upstairs.
Mackenzie: We did the banjo overdubbing almost like an ADR session. Jane directed the whole thing, and it took a day or two just to overdub the banjo for the film. Dave had to write parts based on the shapes that Benedict was playing, so we were mixing and matching between Benedict’s performance — because he learned to play the banjo — and Dave’s overdubbing.

Jane was really into Dolby Atmos, so I used the banjo as an object and put that in the back right corner, up in the roof. Then I slowly panned it forward as the camera zooms in on Rose and made the size of the object larger, eventually filling the room to get right into Rose’s headspace on the close-up.

Phil then pushes the door open, making sure Rose can hear him.
Mackenzie: We went back and forth a lot on how loud that footstep was going to be as he opens the door.

Webb: We initially cut it a lot louder. We did quite a few test screenings. When we were initially looking at just that scene, it sounded great to have his foot really stomp down. But when we watched the overall film, we ended up pulling back on most of those details. We left it with a naturalistic style.

Let’s talk about how frontal everything sounds. It’s such a sparse mix and you can make each thing feel grounded. Was there an approach or any tools you used to achieve that in the final mix?
Mackenzie: I went through a stage of using soft Neve compression on the entire final mix, but on this film, it was all in the box. We mixed on an Avid S6 at Spectrum Films here in Sydney, and it’s a great-sounding room. Compression is my favorite tool, and I use it on everything, but hopefully you don’t notice. We could talk forever about compression ratios and attack and release times. I used to love that, you know, the compression on the Neve Digital Film Console. When I first heard the EQ engaged on one of those, it was like my mind exploded. For this film, we tried to be subtle. We used Neve emulation plugins on the dialogue and music buses and tracks and things like that. Just to get that sound in there without you knowing.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve each learned from this project?
Webb: Oh gosh, I learn something new on every project I do. This was my first time doing mixing on a big feature film, so I learned a lot.

For this film we went further than I thought we would go with how much we stripped out. And there were times when I was worried that we’d stripped out too much. I was thinking, “Is that going to translate. We’re pulling out so much. Is that going to feel too empty for the audience?” It was quite surprising by the end when we watched through. It felt right for the film. I think we found a good balance.

Mackenzie: That was a huge learning curve for me… trusting what you’re hearing. And Tara is really good at that. She’s really good at saying, “That doesn’t need to be loud. I like it like that.” “Don’t worry about that, the audience will hear that.” Not being too concerned about how it’s going to translate over people’s phones or TVs. It solidified my belief that you need to mix it so it sounds good dramatically and the rest will take care of itself.

When No Country for Old Men came out, I read an article where Skip Lievsay was talking about the night scene in the hotel. Josh Brolin’s character sits on the bed, shotgun pointed at the door, and from outside comes a very faint sound of a light bulb being unscrewed. I’m probably getting the story wrong, but they were in the mix, and Skip was saying to the Coen brothers, “You can’t have that sound so low. It’s not going to translate across different cinemas that might have loud air conditioning or people that are rustling their chip packets. People might not hear it.” And  one of them said, “Well, then the scene’s not going to work. It has to be like that for the scene to work. So let’s mix it low.”

That was in the back of my mind when we were mixing this movie. You need to trust in what you’re doing and that the audience is listening. And when I saw The Power of the Dog with an audience for the first time, that’s exactly what happened. Everyone got very quiet and leaned into the subtle moments. If we had forced those and made them any louder, any fuller, we’d deprive the audience of that experience.


M. Louis Gordon is a sound editor, designer and location sound mixer at Silver Sound NYC. He currently produces podcasts for the nonprofit, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. His credits include Sundance 2016’s Equity, The CW’s Tough Mudder: The Challenge Within miniseries and Tribeca 2021’s limited series In the Cards. You can follow him on Instagram @mlouisgordon.

Maya

Composer Tim Davies on Netflix’s Maya and the Three

Creator/director Jorge R. Gutiérrez’s Maya and the Three is an animated Netflix series that tells the story of Maya (Zoe Saldana), a warrior princess in pre-colonial Mesoamerica. To save her family and humanity, she fights alongside three legendary warriors in an effort to defeat the gods of the underworld.

L-R: Tim Davies and Jorge R. Gutiérrez

While we recently spoke to the audio post team on the series, we also wanted to check in with composer Tim Davies, who along with Gustavo Santaolalla, was nominated for an Annie Award for the episode “The Sun and the Moon.”

Let’s find out more about Davies’ process…

Maya and the Three creator Jorge Gutiérrez describes the show as his “love letter to Mexican culture.” How did you support this vision with your score? 
Like any media scoring, the music responds to and is inspired by the visuals and the story. It is like fusion cooking. Jorge took ingredients from all over Latin American culture: Mayan, preHispanic, Caribbean. There were no rules, and it was the same for me. I saw all of that, picked a palette of sounds to support his creation, and just wrote what I felt. I knew I did not need to overthink it because Jorge hired me with an idea of where I would go with it.

You also worked with Jorge on The Book of Life. What are some of the benefits to already having that established relationship?
I have a vivid memory from our first playback meeting on The Book of Life… Jorge said he loved the music but then added something like “but it is not my movie.” I then took the exact same material but changed the orchestration and found a combination of sounds that worked, and Jorge was happy. Then we just focused on the finer details. I knew going into Maya that I could build on that previous sound. I did some more research, made a lot of new samples and found some great players to collaborate with me to create a new sonic world, one for Maya specifically. Also, we are friends now, so that helps a lot.

When we started work on Maya, everything went through Netflix. We tried it their way, but it would take a month to set up a meeting, and every email had to go through several people. After the first episode we just went back to texting. If I had an idea or question, I just messaged him, and he would always get back quickly. It meant I could then spend more time writing music and less time writing emails to 10 people!

Gustavo Santaolalla did the show’s themes, while you provided the score for the show. Can you talk about what your working relationship looked like?
Gustavo is a genius, and he writes the most amazing tunes. He met with Jorge, and they discussed what they wanted to do — I was not involved at that stage.

Once Gustavo was done, we all jumped on a Zoom call and listened to the themes together. Jorge told me where he thought each thing would go in the show. He was very specific, and I would say we stuck to about 95% of what he had imagined back then. I then wrote the score and reviewed it with Jorge.

How do you start your writing process, and on what instrument?
Once I heard the themes, I started to imagine my palette. I made a lot of new samples. Drums, logs, boxes, bombo, shakers, guitar noises, didgeridoo and some new synth patches. Gustavo had used the quena and sikus in his demos, and I wanted to also use the ocarina.

I found some good sample libraries (synthesizer/virtual versions) for my demos, and then we had Ashley Jarmack replace them with the real thing later. I did not start putting anything together until I spotted the first episode with Jorge, but by that stage I had all the pieces, and it all fell together easily. The temp score was very good, as Jorge and Myra (Lopez, the editor) had put a lot of time into it. We would discuss his ideas and the temp, then off I would go. I doodle at the piano, then enter that into the computer and work on it in there. I would sometimes have different ideas to the temp, and Jorge loved most of those things. We never once went back and listened to the temp; we always went forward, which is always nice.

Recording Maya and the Three

You got to record the orchestra and choir for the show in Australia. Why not just do it in the US? What were the benefits of doing it in Australia?
At one stage we wanted to record it in Guadalajara, Mexico. I had done a concert there for Guillermo del Toro, and Jorge asked if we could do it there. While it would have involved a lot of work to pull it off, I was game. Unfortunately, before we even started to make arrangements, COVID hit. So we had to consider the new landscape of available scoring stages. I looked around at places where I could get what I needed for the budget I had, and Australia was perfect. Of course, it helped that I am from there, and I got a nice trip home to record

There are many different styles of music in Maya and the Three, ranging from a Caribbean vibe to a Latin American vibe. Was there a musical style in the show that you weren’t as familiar with? Something you had to research?
Gustavo set the tone with a lot of those ideas in his demos, and I just ran with it. I did some research on Mesoamerican music and cultures, adding to what I had done for The Book of Life. I am pretty good at hearing a bunch of things and then incorporating them into my writing. We did decide we weren’t going to try to be super-authentic to any particular style, which allowed us to be quite eclectic. Jorge is Mexican, Gustavo is Argentinian and I am Australian, so all of those things come through in various ways.

Were there certain instruments you found yourself using more than others in the Maya score?
For this show, I used a lot of ocarina for Maya herself. Her mother and Chimi feature solo violin, Rico gets some steel drums on occasion, and Picchu has the quena flute. For Lord Mictlan I used heavy guitars, distorted cello, the Aztec death whistle and a didgeridoo!

There is an instrument called a Mayan trumpet that is similar to a didgeridoo. I had my friend Anita Thomas send me a few notes. I processed them a lot, so you probably can’t pick what it really is. There is a track called “Esqueletos” on the OST, and you can hear it clearly right at the start.

I used log drums for a lot of the rhythms and blended all of that with traditional orchestral strings and brass.

Maya

Tim Davies (Credit for this and main image: Anna Cheffy)

What does your equipment setup look like? Which programs do you frequent?
I have a newish Mac Pro. I write scores and sketches in Finale then program in Cubase using a lot of custom samples on top of the usual orchestral ones that everyone has. My programmer, Ryan Humphrey, has a duplicate setup so we can swap files back and forth. We also would spend a lot of time on Zoom.

You are also an orchestrator and conductor working on huge titles such as Free Guy and Hotel Transylvania: Transformania. When you were going in to conduct Free Guy, what did you do to prepare?
Free Guy was an interesting one. It was the first project recorded in Los Angeles since the pandemic had halted everything. We spent a lot of time planning how we would record it. We were limited to only 44 players at a time (normally we have about 85), so we had to split it all up.

We were all masked and spaced out, which presented a few issues. First, a lot of communication on the stage relies on facial expressions! If I smile, they know they are playing well; if I frown, they know something went wrong. In the past, when I gave instructions, I could tell from their faces if they understood me, but with masks on, none of those things work anymore. It was not fun.

The players of the ensemble are also spread out, which meant playing together and listening to each other was harder. The one advantage was that they had no stand partners to talk to, so it was much quieter (smiles).