By Patrick Birk
The Humans is a psychological drama that follows a family through a turbulent Thanksgiving on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The A24 film marks Stephen Karam’s feature directorial debut, and this screenplay is an adaptation of Karam’s Tony award-winning play of the same name. Through the film, we watch static build between the members of the Blake family as the pre-war apartment they occupy creeks and molders away. It stars Jayne Houdyshell, Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer, Beanie Feldstein, Steven Yeun and June Squibb.
Sound mixer Tammy Douglas
The film is a showcase for naturalistic acting, with characters constantly speaking over one another. Sound mixer Tammy Douglas was responsible for capturing the on-set sound. While we typically talk to re-recording mixers, for this piece, we wanted to get a look at how that audio process begins.
Douglas has been a union sound mixer for over 20 years. Her credits include Eighth Grade; What Happened Miss, Simone? Ziwe; and Search Party (Season 4). Douglas worked on the film The Humans prior to the pandemic.
Let’s find out about her process on this film and how she used less boom and more wire…
Before we jump into The Humans, can you talk about what your goal is in terms of handing off the audio to post?
My goal on every project is to hand off the cleanest audio possible. Rarely do I have conversations with the post sound people because most of them are hired a little bit later in the shoot. So in my sound reports I try to provide whatever info I can that I think will be useful to the post production team.
Where did the shoot take place?
We filmed at Steiner Stages, and there were two days when we were on location in the Lower East Side, Chinatown area. The scenes with dialogue, that’s all on the stage.
The set looks shockingly real. I lived in New York for years, and the set designers really captured the aesthetic.
David Gropman created an apartment based on a place Stephen Karam had actually lived in. I think it was a basement, and there were two floors. I think it feels so real because it’s created from his memory of that apartment.
It’s also like a real New York apartment in that it would be difficult to boom on that set.
I don’t believe there was any dialogue that was actually covered by the boom. I mean, the boom was always there just for ambience or footsteps. There were two cameras filming at all times. Even if there had been one camera that was a little bit tighter, it still wouldn’t have been boomable. And the lighting made it hard to boom because it was recreating the bare bulb look and the shadows on the wall.
The only boomable shots, I think, were food shots — the stove or when they’re showing the cooking and the prep work. That was it, so it was all wires.
How did you work with each actor to place their wire, in order to get the best sound for them?
They’re in the same wardrobe the whole movie, so that was interesting. Once you got an outfit and established it, that was it. I don’t even think any actor pulled off a piece of clothing. So for each actor, the first day was a big day of looking at the costume and assessing what I had to do with putting on the lav and Lectrosonics transmitter.
A few of the outfits were no problem. It was just easy. You just put the microphone on. Richard Jenkins’ outfit was that way — a simple long-sleeved polo shirt. And Amy Schumer’s outfit, essentially sweats, was very simple. It was a hand-off to her, and she would put the transmitter and lav on her chest and it sounded great. I started with a Sanken COS-11 on her and eventually moved to a DPA 4061 because I thought her voice had a bit of a richer tone on that mic. I’m a COS-11 person. That’s my go-to. But occasionally, there’s an outfit where I’ll switch to a Countryman B6 or a DPA because on some women, I think those mics bring out a better tone. Everybody else was on Sankens. The only outfits that were a little more challenging were Beanie Feldstein and Steven Yeun’s. The other four were pretty straightforward wires. Just go right in the center. I never like it too high; I never like it too low. Just kind of mid-chest.
What made Beanie and Steven’s a little bit more challenging?
Steven’s shirt was a button down, and it was a little starchy. The costume department was great, and I believe they tried to wash the shirt and break it in, but the material just made a little bit of noise. And every day I was like, “Let me move it here, let me move it there.” I never found a spot that was 100%, and his character was always moving, using the dish towel and cooking and going back and forth in the kitchen. He has the dishcloth, and he was also whipping his head around and doing stuff. And, of course, that’s when you’re like, “Oh, no!” But you know, nowadays with technology and post, they can clean up minor stuff pretty easily.
With Beanie, it was also the fabric. Kind of a silky fabric that had a little bit of a noise. She also had very specific requirements about what I could do, so I had to work around those, which was a little bit limiting in terms of what I could do. My only option with her was to tape it onto the outfit, and maybe that might not have been the best thing, but it was the only option I had available to me.
The other unique thing in this movie is that it was a six-week shoot. Each actor had doubles or triples of their costume — I believe Beanie had two dresses. The actors wear the same outfit for several weeks in a row. Even though it’s washed every day, there’s still a little bit of natural fabric stretching that occurs in the wardrobe. Over the progression of the shoot, Beanie’s costume material shifted a little bit more than on some of the other costumes, so that kind of created its own problems because I was taping onto the dress, and that was probably causing a little bit of the extra movement.
Did you find yourself stashing any mics around set?
Even with the limitations on booming, I was hoping to give post something. So, in every shot, I basically had a Sennheiser MKH 50 on the right and left, or sometimes a mic in the foreground and a mic in the background. Usually these were plant mics. I was like, “I don’t know if this is going to help post at all, but at least it’s something.” I didn’t want it to just sound like a TV show, where everything’s miked super-close. You watch some network TV, and there’s no personality to the sound whatsoever. The Humans is an art house film, and I tried to bring it to another level.
Sometimes, if there was more movement, I would actually have my boom op or my utility operating just to get more of the sounds of footsteps, etc.
The actors step on each other’s lines a lot. It’s a very naturalistic story and acting style. Was minimizing bleed a priority?
No. It was about the performances. The script is written that way. There were some big days, 10, 11 pages. I have one photo of my sound cart from the shoot, where I had the script sides taped up next to my faders, and I highlighted every character. It looks crazy. And there were these moments when you hear people talking at the same time. That’s the way the script was written, and that’s definitely how it played out. Every actor had their own ISO track. I’m sure the ISOs were very useful on the overlap stuff. I had the ambient mics on ISOs as well. Then I did the mix of the wires using a Sound Devices 688 and a CL-12, and I monitored the video feeds of the two cameras.
Sometimes we would do 10-minute rolls. When they chose the section that we were shooting that day, we would keep shooting that section again and again. Everybody’s in the shot, and there was no coverage, so I would have to let things go. There were definitely some moments, especially the argument scene in the living room toward the end of the movie, when they’re talking all over each other. There was a moment when I just had all my faders up, and I was like, “Wow. This is different.”
So it was just about nailing the take?
Yes, and I believe they had rehearsed a full week before shooting, which is somewhat uncommon these days. The actors sat on the stage, worked in the space and did the scene. It was all about the acting, and as a sound mixer, it was clear that’s what it was. I was just there to get the sound and stay out of the actors’ way as much as I could. I’d watch the camera feed, and it was different because there was no real booming or having any conversations with the boom operator about what was going on. It was just all me and my ears and the wires.
It sounds like an interesting experience as a sound mixer. Were there any other interesting things about working on this set?
Yes, the set was on one floor, but the actors go up the stage stairs, and the actors were always there for each other. Even if they were speaking, supposedly, on the other floor, they were there, saying their lines. It was funny. The set had a little staircase going up, but it’s just a set, so there’s not much space up there. There were moments when Richard’s up there, Beanie’s up there, and they’re delivering their lines full-force, and I’m recording completely off-screen lines. All of that was captured live, and it was great to record all the audio and have options for post.
That was the other thing, the actors were always there, and that’s great because in some movies, if the actor isn’t on camera, they’re like, “Okay. Let somebody else read off-camera.” They were always there doing the scene like it was real life.
How did you get into production sound mixing?
I went to Florida State Film School and moved to New York City after graduation. I started doing independent films. It was a great time for indie movies. I think it was when indie movies were really indie movies.
I boomed for one mixer briefly, and he didn’t know anything about booming; I found that very frustrating. That’s when I decided I was going to boom for several years because I don’t want to be that mixer who doesn’t understand what I’m saying to my boom operator. That’s it. I just boomed. It was one indie movie after another. They were just these little movies, but I learned a lot, and then I got some gear and started sound mixing.
Do you have any pro-level boom tips?
“Don’t ever think, by your eye, that you’ve got the spot.” Every voice is just different. Just move, feel it out and listen. You can’t just say, “Okay. That’s how you boom it.” Just play around, shift around.
