By Randi Altman

FX’s The Bear is back for its second season, and it’s as emotional, stressful and frenetic as ever. Helping to heighten those feelings is New York City’s Sound Lounge, which provided sound editorial, ADR and mixing for the show’s two seasons. In fact, the studio’s Steve “Major” Giammaria was recently recognized for his work on Season 1 with Emmy nominations for both Sound Editing and — along with production mixer Scott D. Smith, CAS — Sound Mixing.

Steve “Major” Giammaria

Giammaria is the show’s supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer working with the rest of The Bear team at Sound Lounge, including Andrea Bella, Evan Benjamin, John Werner, Jon Fuhrer, Matt Snedecor, Craig LoGiudice, Patrick Christensen and John Bowen.

We reached out to Giammaria to talk about his process on the series, while SFX editors Fuhrer and Snedecor pop in as well.

What was the directive from the showrunners, and what sort of feedback were you getting when they were reviewing?
Giammaria: The theme throughout this season is “Every second counts,” so the assignment was to keep up the pace from the first season and add a sense of urgency to almost every scene. This was primarily driven by the picture, but it was also important to incorporate clock bits and rhythmic elements into our sound design to accelerate the tension and sense of pace.

There are almost always three elements driving a scene in Season 2: construction noises and music scoring a five-way scream-fest; chopping, sizzling and beeping; and popping through music and dialogue, making the kitchen feel like it’s going to explode. Balancing this chaos was the challenge, which we quickly realized while working on the first season.

In terms of feedback, lots of notes on the first mix passes included raising the music. My job as a mixer was to find creative ways to poke it through without losing the dialogue and drowning in music. I wanted to make sure the viewer heard everything all at once without it being so overwhelming that they decided to grab the remote.

What was it like establishing the sound of Season 1 and building on that for Season 2?
Giammaria: It was great to be able to build upon the established style of Season 1 while exploring new locations and a remodel of The Beef. The style of fast-paced chaos  expands to the world outside of the kitchen, with sledgehammers and drills replacing the sounds of knives as the restaurant gets renovated. We also got to explore the characters’ journeys outside the restaurant around Chicago and other locations as a contrast to the chaos that defined Season 1.

Did you have any interaction with the production sound mixer?
Giammaria: Scott D. Smith, who is based in Chicago, was the production sound mixer on Season 1 and returned for Season 2. There’s minimal overlap between us, as I’m brought on right before he’s almost finished. He is great at communicating any issues I need to know beforehand and gives me a heads-up about what I’m going to be up against.

With a fast-paced production and a lot of improvisation, yelling, and talking over each other, he certainly has his hands full. In both seasons, he has done an amazing job of giving us great tracks to work with.

How much of the kitchen sounds were captured live and used versus how much you enhanced or created?
Giammaria: A lot of the background chaos of the kitchen and the construction site is captured live and tied to dialogue, so we have to use it whether we want to or not! Those sounds are always enhanced by Foley and sound effects afterward. With all the chopping, banging of pots and pans, and destruction of walls, more is always best for this show.

Any particular scenes or sounds stand out?
Giammaria: Episodes 6 and 10 pushed us to a new high with the ebb and flow of chaos and respite. Without giving too much away, they are both a departure from traditional Bear episodes and encapsulate its aesthetic perfectly. How’s that for a non-answer!?

Jon Fuhrer

Can you provide an example of some sound design you did for the show and how you created it? Libraries, recordings, etc.?
Fuhrer: One of the big concepts the showrunners wanted to convey for both seasons has been the sense of time and how that relates to the pressure cooker of working in a kitchen, processing trauma and realizing personal potential. Being a jazz-trained, rock-playing former line cook who shared a lot of these experiences, I had a pretty good sense of what Chris [Storer, the executive producer] and the creative team meant. It’s truly been a blast creating the world of The Bear for two seasons.

For such a fast-paced, dynamic show, it’s hard to pick a singular moment from this season. I got to design everything — from abstract panic attacks, egg timer and ticket printer symphonies, and car jumps and crashes to the never-ending sounds of interior construction, kitchens and city life next to the incessant trains.

But of all the moments, my favorite was working on Sydney’s food-tour sequence in Episode 203, which starts around the 13-minute mark. For a lot of these fast-edit montages, my primary goal was not just cutting all the sounds I hear, but really playing into the rhythm of the kitchen and the music.

I would start out by placing markers on the quarter notes and trying to accentuate the transients and downbeats of measures and progressions. This way, a series of six or 10 quick shots of trains, flaming pans, boiling water, knife chops, slicing meats, plating food, etc. would all build together and push the song and edit along.

During these types of sequences, I would cut in the hard effects and backgrounds as well as the bulk of the Foley, using a mix of library and my own Sennheiser MKH 50 by my desk. To glue it all together, I would manipulate the sounds of clocks, trains, vehicles, whooshes, breaths, doors, bells… you name it… and couple those with different risers, drones and whooshes to crescendo on those moments when it snaps back to a steady shot.

Matt Snedecor

Snedecor: Episode 204, “Honeydew,” was an interesting episode to work on since it was a break from the chaotic Chicago restaurant world of the previous episodes. We could relax a bit and take a breath to enjoy Europe. It was particularly fun to fully use my library of European ambisonics recordings that I had made while traveling there a few years earlier.

From making these recordings, wandering around back streets and alleys at night and hearing how quiet a city in Europe can actually be, the scene when Marcus comes across an injured cyclist at night was a great chance to build a feeling of tension and isolation using mostly ambience. The showrunners wanted to convey Marcus being unable to communicate with this man due to the language barrier and being alone, with no one else around to help. I was able to recreate the quiet city feel that I remembered using a combination of Copenhagen night ambiances, the nearby canal water, multiple layers of wind and a very alarmed dog echoing through the empty alleys to make these two strangers come together in a heartfelt moment without much dialogue to help.

I also did a lot of work on the restaurant and kitchen sounds. After getting booked to work on this season, I decided it would be helpful to have a new arsenal of original kitchen and restaurant sound effects to add to the newly built restaurant.

A close friend of mine is a restaurant manager and let me into his kitchen and bar to record his staff prepping before opening hours. I recorded sound bites of food preparation, chopping, general kitchen movement, pots and pans banging, the bar being set up, all without anyone talking, which is a rarity in field recording. I left with a few hours of material to sort through and only a few days before the start of sound editing. These sounds came in handy and were used frequently as the new restaurant came together in the show.

Finally, what tools did you use on the show?
Giammaria: We edit and mix in Avid Pro Tools front to back with the standard plugins you’d expect. This was one of the final shows for our trusty Icon D- Control Surface, which will be replaced by a new Avid S4 later this year. I’m sad to see it go, . it’s It’s been a workhorse for the past 15+-plus years, but the S4 has some great new features and workflow capabilities that I’m excited to explore.

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