For its two seasons, Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso has been the feel-good show we all needed, as well as an Emmy favorite. This year should be no different, with the show garnering 20 nominations, including ones for sound mixing and sound editing.

We reached out to re-recording mixers Ryan Kennedy and Sean Byrne, who were nominated for their work on Episode 205, “Rainbow,” and co-supervising sound editors Brent Findley and Bernard Weiser about Episode 209, “Beard After Hours,” which was also recognized. The group, which worked out of Warner Bros. Dub Stage 7, have all been on the show since its inception and are all about to start working on Season 3.

Brent Findley

With the success of Ted Lasso, have you stayed the course or made some changes along the way in your approach to the show?
Brent Findley: As the storytelling style of the show evolves, our approach evolves along with it. Season 1 introduced the characters and locations and the heart of the show with levity.  While Season 2 continued with the comedy, it also had a veil of seriousness. The journeys of the characters became more internal and more intimate. The soundscape followed that.

There were more moments of suspending literal environments and sound effects to make way for the emotions of the story. While our physical environments might look the same, we chose elements and mix techniques that allow the audience to focus on the heart of the story during our actors’ strong performances. I would say Season 2 is less literal than Season 1 in regard to the soundscape. We pull out an impressionistic brush more often.

Bernard Weiser

Bernard Weiser: Adding to Brent’s answer, Season 2 became more intimate with the characters. Season 1 was broader with the ensemble cast, and the dialogue challenge was to track the storyline clearly among the craziness of the group.

Season 2 needed to capture the intimacy within, and the dialogue track needed to reflect that through the mic choices and the detail while protecting each performance within the production. This really is not a different approach, but as Brent said, an evolution of the storyline, which we follow and match with plenty of “barbeque sauce.”

Ryan Kennedy: Each season I feel like I grow a lot as a mixer. I am often approached with new experiences on this show, and my line of attack is different every time. I have my bag of tricks that I lean on, but I find with this show in particular that I like to reevaluate what I used to know and try viewpoints that are different from the way I normally engage with the scenes.

Ryan Kennedy

Sean Byrne: A lot is the same for continuity — same reverbs, same background sounds, etc. In your mind, I’ll bet you can hear what Disneyland sounds like on Main Street — the train bell, excited kids, popcorn, turnstiles, distant coasters. It has a character, and so do the scenes in Ted Lasso. What tends to change is when we want to make a point that supports the story. There, we get to pull out all the tricks we know to put the listener into a sonic fantasyland.

What made you pick the episode you submitted? What about it did you feel was worthy of a closer look?
Byrne: The “Rainbow” episode was a very tricky mix. We are traveling from a quiet studio to the stadium, following Roy Kent through the maze of the city. All while being scored by The Rolling Stones song “Rainbow.”

Getting everything to cut through that song — dialogue, crowds, cab rides, bone pops, sound design and so on — was no easy feat. It’s a full-range song at a high volume. It didn’t leave a lot of room for detail, yet we had to make room without the listener hearing wild fader moves or EQ. We really strived to have the listener take the emotional and sonic journey with Roy. Feel everything he’s feeling.

Sean Byrne

Kennedy: I love the heart of this episode, “Rainbow.” The depth and complexity of the message as it involves sound is integral to the message of the show.

Findley: Episode 209, “Beard After Hours” is an enigma. It’s literally a bonus episode that is a side trip from the primary arc of the series. Every few minutes, Beard finds himself in a different place with a different challenge. From a sound editing angle, it meant that every few minutes required completely new environments and effects. The only constants were his iPhone and his apartment keys. He doesn’t even get to keep the same pair of pants!

Every turn revealed a different sound design moment never visited before: drunken crowd leaving Wembley (loop group singing) leading to a stripped-down main title song on the tube, sports reporters talking to him through the television, a psychedelic lava-lamp room, a noir-Mickey Spillane-style interaction with a pants-repairing redhead leading to a run for his life, a paranoid hotel night clerk, a much-deserved slo-mo beatdown in an alley to a mournful rendition of Blue Moon, our loyal soccer hooligans fulfilling their fantasy on the Richmond pitch, a rainstorm and divine interaction, a rave in a church, and wrapping it all up with the theme from The Benny Hill Show (Yakety Sax). What a trip!

Weiser: When we found out that Beard was getting his own episode, I believe we knew that this would be a challenge and a wild ride. And certainly Jason and the Ted Lasso writers delivered just that! This episode challenged us to put Beard’s craziness together with his intellectual side to give us insight on him. It also exposed Beard’s feelings with the Richmond fans when he provided his “hooligans” with a night in their personal heaven. After all, one of the things that makes the Ted Lasso series successful is the wonderful heart each character has.

Can you give us an example from that episode of something that was particularly challenging or that you are most proud of?
Kennedy: There is a lot to this episode that I am proud of. The scene with Nate and his parents celebrating their anniversary at A Taste of Athens is one. But I think the moment I am most proud of is the buildup of Roy Kent quitting his job as a sport commentator and making his way to the stadium. Our music editor, Richard Brown, did an amazing job with his work on the Rolling Stones song. He combined the mix of coming in and out of that song to build the tension that leads up to Roy joining the coaching staff of AFC Richmond. That is one of my favorite moments in television (regardless of my participation in it).

Byrne:For me, I had to think quickly during playback. The producers wanted to hear something happen with the crowd to make it disappear while Roy is in the tunnel, something dramatic. I got the idea to group the Atmos crowds together and do a low pass sweep on them as Roy breathes. His breath sucked the crowd out of the stadium. The producers loved it. It really helped sell the story without dialogue.

Findley: Beard’s apartment keys are a recurring character through the episode. It was very important that the chosen elements added up to the right feel…not too heavy, not too thin, not too dense. It might seem minor, but it’s a testament to the sonic detail devoted to every element of the show.

Weiser: For dialogue, the scene outside the club, in the street, with Beard and the lady in red was tough at first. There was a fair amount of traffic noise, and the clarity of the dialogue was difficult. We certainly shot ADR for the scene but realized that we needed to pull out all the stops to try and save the original performance encapsulated in those production tracks. In true Ted Lasso form, it was a collaborative effort between dialogue editing, ADR, FX, Foley and mixing. The end result is that only two ADR lines were used and we are very proud of a seamless track for this scene.

What was your process on these scenes?
Kennedy: My approach to this scene was to acknowledge the emotion that I was witnessing on screen. I wanted the audience to feel the anxiety that Roy was feeling. We had to carry that energy from the studio to him arriving on the pitch. The music, Foley and dialogue had to create the atmosphere and intensity to get us from point A to point B. Our production sound team had the wherewithal to use Roy’s actual lavalier mic that he takes off himself when he quits the commentator job. That in and of itself was a great tool for me to use in the process of mixing the scene.

My other processes for the scene were following along with the action on the screen, adjusting the production sound against the music track to come to a balance that highlighted the emotion we felt with Roy joining the coaching staff of Richmond — the pinnacle of which was to see Nate’s realization of what was happening, the musical breakdown followed by the show ending. It’s a bit of a cliff-hanger, really. It was a lot of fun to put together.

Findley: I worked with Foley artist Sanaa Kelley to dial in the right combination of metal pieces. We had several exchanges of ideas and samples as the episode developed. Based on our conversations, Sanaa went out to antique stores and curated just the right keyring, skeleton key and other supporting keys to give this prop true character.

The first time we see it, it is seemingly innocuous. Beard just lets himself into his apartment and puts the keys in a bowl by the door. No big deal, right? The sneaky part is that Sanaa performed it with repeated passes to get it right. She does that every time we hear the keys through the episode. The first hint that there’s something special about the keys is when they drop out of Beard’s coat pocket in the pub. There is a subtle ring-out of the keys as they fall then a perfect little jingle when Jeremy presents them to Beard.

Beard then drops them in Red’s apartment… though we purposefully did not play the dropping, just the picking up later when Red points them out to him. This is an example of the suspension of literal sounds to serve the story… to stay with Beard in his head. Had we heard those keys land in that quiet environment, we could’ve been thinking about why Beard didn’t hear them instead of absorbing the story. The keys really have a hero moment during Beard’s beatdown. Marcus Mumford’s rendition of “Blue Moon” is so mournful that if the keys had just fallen out naturally, the heart of the moment would have been broken. Therefore, we sustained and pitched Sanaa’s keys to be sympathetic with the song as they “sang” their way to the ground. This kind of attention really locks in all the elements into a cohesive soundscape, even though Beard’s journey is disjointed.

Weiser: There was nothing complicated with the process. We cut the production dialogue straight through and cut the ADR through the scene. Then we did the tedious work on the dialogue, making sure not to “overcook” the production tracks while cleaning them up.

In the end, this is what all dialogue editors would do. The difference is in the choices and taste of the dialogue editor and the editor’s faith in allowing the dialogue mixer to work his/her magic as well. This is where the collaboration takes place. One cannot finish the job without the other, and when we work together, 2 plus 2 can equal 10. I like to think that it’s this collaboration that makes the show special and what makes Ted Lasso.

What tools do you use in your work?
Kennedy: I use the Avid S6 console, and I like the FabFilter EQs and compressors. I call on iZotope noise reduction when needed, and I like to use Altiverb Reverb for its realistic reverb impulse responses.

Byrne: I use the Avid S6 console. I’m strictly a console and keyboard user. You never know when you might be working on another stage, so I don’t go crazy with macro devices and such. I really like Stratus 3D reverbs. For an Atmos environment, Stratus spreads to the speakers very nicely. Also, Revibe and Reverb One have some go-to presets that sound great in certain situations.

Findley: We use so many different things to solve problems and to create new things. I’m afraid to start listing because I know I’ll forget something. Our primary editing workstation is Pro Tools. We’ll conform to new versions of picture with Matchbox. For dialogue, Bernard Weiser and Ashley Harvey might use Auto-Align Post, Soundminer, RX, Revoice Pro, Envy, Pitch’n Time Pro, Debird and Undertone, to name just a few.

For sound effects and design, in addition to Soundminer, Envy, and Pitch’n Time Pro, Kip Smedley and Mark Cleary employ a lot of fun tools like Morph, Traveler, Stutter Edit, Enforcer, Whoosh, Crowd Chamber, even an Arturia hardware synth. Again, I’ve definitely left things out. We’ll also do specific field recordings to get unique material to work with so not all the source sounds come from an existing library.

What haven’t we asked that you feel is important about your role on Ted Lasso?
Kennedy:  I’d like to echo Sean’s response. Our job of mixing is always about picking what is important at the moment for the mix. Sometimes it is the dialogue, and at other times it is the music or the FX. The emotion and feeling of a show can change depending on what we’ve chosen. We love working with the producers and dialing in exactly what is needed in every situation.

Byrne: Pulling focus. We get so much amazingly recorded material, so it would be easy just to try and play it all. But the best mixes I’ve heard pull the listeners’ focus to what is important at the moment in the story. I want to pull the listeners’ attention to a feeling without them noticing, whether that is the feeling of being surrounded by 80,000 fans or of having a panic attack or of feeling completely alone in a crowded room. If you notice my work, then I haven’t done a good job.

My colleagues are so gifted at their craft. I’m constantly learning from them. My jaw drops watching Ryan Kennedy mix music and dialogue — timing the wall slaps and echoes to the beat of the song and spending the extra time to make the ADR sit perfectly in the mix. Brent and all of our editors make such excellent choices with their editorial that it gives Ryan and I time to really get deep into the mix rather than just working to get the job done. Brent and the team’s work on “Beard After Hours” was magnificent. So many details were added, all of the ear candy. I’m very grateful to be part of such a talented group of people.

Findley: My role is making sure everything you hear, save for the music, makes it to the church on time (the church being the mix stage) and that the sonic hopes and dreams of our creative leaders come through in the process. Translating the storytellers’ descriptions of how they imagine the soundscape to be into instructions that the sound team can work with is a core function. Often those descriptions are feeling-based, so converting those into practical application is important.

The thing that stands out the most to me is the overall feeling of collaboration at all stages of the process and from all levels of hierarchy. A good idea can come from anywhere. Anyone on the team can pitch an idea in their wheelhouse, and it is given thoughtful consideration. While we’re careful not to get mired in too many choices, and we don’t pitch ideas just for the sake of saying we contributed, the phrase “What if we…” is exciting to hear because what follows will be a fresh idea to think about.

Weiser: My colleagues have said it well. I can only say what a privilege it is to work with this wonderful sound team and mention the solid support we have enjoyed from our producers, from Warner Bros. Post Production and from Apple.