By Patrick Birk

The Amazon limited series A Very British Scandal stars Claire Foy as Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, and Paul Bettany as Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll. It focuses on the couple’s turbulent affair, marriage and divorce. This historical drama sees Foy and Bettany dig deep, exploring the emotional subtleties and ugliness that came along with being at the center of one of the first modern tabloid divorce cases.

UK-based supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer Howard Bargroff and sound designer Alastair Sirkett worked on the series. Bargroff is the owner of Sonorous Trident, a sound facility in Soho, and Sirkett is a frequent collaborator.

L-R: Howard Bargroff and Alastair Sirkett

The pair spoke to postPerspective to explain how they brought mid-century Britain to life.

How did you use your craft to amplify what was happening between the characters, when so much of the dynamic was unspoken?
Howard Bargroff: Well, we didn’t want to overload it. The idea was to tell the story as efficiently as possible because there was so much to tell. We did keep a lot of the spaces and emptiness that came from the edit, and that approach was strategized before we started. I was at the initial sound session, where there were some tone discussions. We don’t always get the luxury of talking about our approach before starting each job, but we did on this one.

Alastair Sirkett: There was always a subtle shift. We try to put in subtle shifts using ambiences and small details like birds because it is quite sparse. We used a lot of loons and pheasants because the castle in Scotland [where much of the series took place] had hunting grounds. My first port of call — especially when I know there are those big expansive moments with very little else going on sonically — is to pop down to the ornithology websites and have a quick check of where we are, what time of year we are in, and try to make that work.

We always tried to keep the locations going to portray that shift as the breakdown in Ian and Margaret’s relationship carries on. And as it breaks down over the three programs, there’s that subliminal kind of feeling that things aren’t quite right. And, of course, the acting was so great that a lot of those dynamics were already present.

We were always asking ourselves whether the story worked? You know, what bits are working and what bits aren’t working, and where do we need to do the work?

How did you establish a balance of design that allowed the story to breathe? What input did you have from director Anne Sewitsky?
Sirkett: When we were going through the spotting sessions, we were listening to it beforehand and coming back with questions and notes. Anne was very open to anything we wanted to put on the table. There were some sections where she would say, “No, we’re just going to have music through here.” And as a sound designer, I decided to give some semblance of silence, something that works with the music.

For example, in the scene where they’re going out on the lake in the sports boat, we didn’t need anything there. It was nice and they were cruising, having these lovely moments together at the beginning of the relationship.

But Anne wanted a definite shift in the atmosphere of Scotland for the duchess between the beginning and the end of the story. At the beginning, the duchess felt she was building this castle and putting her mark on it. So at the beginning, when there were builders there, we built that up and made it an interesting, exciting place for her. But as time went on, it became a lonesome, isolated place for her. So toward the end, when she was left on her own and everything was being taken away from her, we tried to pare that back to emphasize that solitary kind of situation.

The solitary scenes were counterbalanced with massive party scenes. Ian’s daughter’s birthday party in Episode 2 was a standout. How do you bring a scene like that together?
Bargroff: In the party scenes, we used a lot of all the disciplines. They rolled on-set, and the wild tracks were quite good, so they recorded some of the party stuff. We didn’t have loads of it, so some of it got reused. We also used Al to add crowd and effects stuff.

Sirkett: There were moments when Margaret gets sidelined in those party scenes. I tried to lean into that implication. There’s a point where she moves into a second room, and there are loads of people there, but she’s still very isolated, and she keeps looking over her shoulder. It was almost a matter of making it feel like people were laughing at her. We got them to shoot laughs and stuff like that with the crowd. It puts her in a sort of paranoid, “nobody loves me, everyone’s checking on me, everyone’s laughing at me” place. It was not distinct enough to make her turn around, but you constantly felt that she wasn’t part of the party…isolated from it.

You also feel that way when they open the restored castle, and Ian’s ex-wife Oui Oui turns up. Even though she’s got that pained smile on her face, it’s not about her.

Bargroff: Those scenes were challenging. It’s a lot of fiddling as you are working in order to get the right feel. Anne was very specific about the feeling and the energy levels going up and down, so we had a clear idea of where it should go.

The one that really took the time was the first party, with the mechanical penis. That was a challenging one to keep going because it’s quite a long time of just noise. It takes a lot of energy to keep something like that going without it becoming just a wall of noise. We went through a lot of revisions. We’d pick out details to get it energized and then drop for the perspectives and to pick out key lines. Then we’d bring it back up, and then it drifts off in a lovely way into a bit of music. So, yeah, there was a lot of work on that.

I know the big sound design moments are usually associated with big visual set pieces, like a World War III film or something. But on shows like this, where it looks pretty effortless, things like the party scenes take the most work. Especially with music and trying to get the level right.

Can you talk about period-specific sounds? What was particularly important?
Sirkett: For me, traffic is big one, especially when we were back in London. Anne wanted to have a definite shift between the isolation Margaret felt when she was in Scotland, which we implied with the sparse, nature-based ambiences, and London, where we explored her isolation in a different way.

For example, in the hotel when she went to visit her mom and dad, and outside her apartment – it was about keeping the cars interesting. I was also trying to match the vintage cars. There are a couple of times when a sports car pulls away. For the scene when Ian breaks into Margaret’s house in the rain, I spent way too much time trying to find the exact getaway car before realizing I didn’t have a good recording of it. I then flipped over to a Triumph TR6 or something similar to that. I had to remember that at that time, it wasn’t the London that I know, so there was a lot less traffic. We’d use those car accelerations and slightly knackered motorbikes, but nothing sounded great…engines of the period all sound a bit crap.

I also had to consider where they lived in London. I know those kinds of squares in Kensington, and there’s a definite slap to them because you’re around these garden squares surrounded by six-story buildings on both sides.

We’d use a lot of Altiverb to get the perspective right in those situations. When she’s coming back at stupid o’clock in the morning, I put a milk float in — that was the very early morning milk delivery that you used to get around that time. Ultimately, I think that was taken out, unfortunately.

We’ve discussed reverb a bit already in relation to effects and ambiences, but I also noticed the reverbs on voices in this production. Was that a conscious choice to emphasize Margaret’s isolation?
Bargroff: Yes. When I’m mixing, I get a little bit OCD about that. When you see the spaces, you’ve got to feel that you’re really pegged to that space. And, and as you say, it does help add isolation. If they’re in a big, empty castle, you have to feel the big, empty castle.

I like using reverb a lot for mixing because it’s a real space-establisher. It’s also a kind of psychological shorthand that gets you straight into the room. For example, if you have a quick cut between scenes and there’s not an establishing shot in the new location, you can reverb and know you’re pegged in the right space.

It tends to be a combination of a few reverbs as well. I tend to use ReVibe, which I know a lot of people sometimes get a bit snooty about, but it works for us. Generally, it’s a combination of that and Altiverb, which just has that brilliant, early reflection sound. It takes the curse off all the clip mics. Obviously, these days, sync sound is predominantly based on clip mics. Sometimes we’ll add a bit of Phoenix as well. Whatever works with the scene.

What other plugins are essential for you? Did you introduce anything new on this project?
Bargroff: We just started using the new Waves Clarity plugin, but unfortunately that came in just after this job. But on this series, the recordings were really good, so we didn’t have to do any salvaging on the dialogue. And most of the ADR that went in was requested and script-based, so it was planned beforehand.

We mostly used our normal set template, which we’ve been using for quite a long time. It gets little tweaks every now and again, but we’ve kept the core of it because it works; our template is designed not to do a lot…unless it needs to.

You know, nothing’s compressed to buggery, unless you’ve got a really loud bit. So it’s quite a transparent workflow until it needs to do a lot of heavy lifting, like when the dialogue is noisy, or it sounds like it’s been recorded on a clip mic. And then we bring in the big guns — EQ, compression, de-essers, things like that.

We also tend to choose plugins like ReVibe because they automate so well — you don’t get artifacts when you’re trying to tweak. On that one, I automate the reverb time because I use it a lot. That’s a big thing; I don’t necessarily program loads of different reverbs, but I have that on a separate lane. So when I’m tweaking for the scene, I’ll adjust the reverb time to try matching exactly what you’re seeing on the screen.

We’ve been using Nugen ISL for true peak limiting. We tend to do a lot of gentle compression in stages. Dialogue gets quite a bit of compression, between 1dB and 2dB, but nothing ever hits a compressor hard. I do quite a lot of dialogue shaping on the compressors. You know, I try to make sure that the dialogues have some kind of protection.

I come from a pop music background, and I’ve found techniques from that world help sell this kind of mix. It sounds loud but isn’t loud in places. So we find our mixes translate well between devices. Somebody will watch it on a phone in mono, and it will sound right. Then we can do a screening in a big room, and it will be fine. So we use the ISL and a bit of multiband compression, but a lot of the work is done in the mix.

You mentioned how good the production sound quality was on this production. As a mixer, how do you take good-quality production sound and make it that much better?
Bargroff: It’s the shaping, it’s the EQ and compression, gentle compression – it’s kind of a compression container around the dialogues. And I try to make all of the dialogues, just have a shape and a sound, you know, and that’s a pop music thing. I won’t do a huge amount to it, but I may apply a gentle mastering EQ to the whole series to help it sound as if the dialogue was recorded on a U87, and not a clip mic in a hat! I find that helps give it a more filmic quality. I’m trying to make everything sound like a Hollywood film. So we are giving it that top-end lift, taking some of the low-end out and then packaging it up with some nice compression so it all sounds warm and lovely.

The scene when Ian physically attacks Margaret struck me as a huge tonal shift. How did you approach a scene with such heightened energy, and how did you fit it in with the rest of the series surrounding it?
Sirkett: You mean the scene where he pins her to the bed and we cut to the other side of the door? It was when they got back from the party, and the clock was ticking… we were ramping up from zero to a hundred miles an hour very quickly and then back down again.

Foley worked for us quite well there. I was knocking furniture and adding a couple of things getting knocked off tables. We’d requested those fighting sounds from the Foley team. After I’d edited their recordings, I ended up adding a smash and a couple of other effects, for pacing and to give the sequence a sense of danger. They weren’t going to show the violence of that moment, but the implication had to be there; we wanted to feel like there were thrashing limbs, and before it cuts back in, he has his hands around her throat. I’m a huge fan of Foley. But there’s good Foley and bad Foley. Good Foley can absolutely change everything, and we got good Foley.

The guys at Universal Sound were great and very helpful. They knew what we were after and listened not only to our direction but to what we’d been told by the director about how she wanted it to flow. The Foley drove it, and I’m happy because I could have gotten very carried away with doing design moments and whooshes and whatever. But this was one of those cases with Foley where, once you get it in, there’s a bit of choreography to arrive at what I’m picturing in my head to imply something. So you hear rustling, then you hear the table hit, then you hear the smash.

Bargroff: We did quite a bit of fiddling with the dialogue on the stage as well. I’ve got a vague memory of finding some extra cries or something, pulling out handles on some dialogue to find them. That was another great Altiverb moment: using a “next door” setting. Then you push the Foley up on the pounce, as well. That’s where good Foley helps.

Sirkett: It fit so well for a moment like that. It could have been at any level and it would have fit. I think Howard had it at sort of half a dozen different levels until Anne was happy. And Anne’s aesthetic for what we were doing was great. I popped in one day for the mix, and she was happy with the source stuff that we’d all worked out. Howard was absolutely nailing it.

I came into the room, and Anne was very relaxed on the sofa, enjoying the experience. It’s always nice when you walk in and see that the director’s not sitting at the desk trying to do it themselves because they don’t feel they’re getting what they want. It’s always lovely to see the director enjoying the mix.

Patrick Birk is a musician and audio engineer at Silver Sound, a boutique post house. He releases original material under the moniker Carmine Vates. Check out his recently released single, Virginia.