By Randi Altman

Monkeyland Audio supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer James Parnell has been working on a variety of high-profile TV and film projects, including the Oscar-winning film Moonlight, Hulu’s PEN15 and the recent Tribeca film Lorelei. He was recently nominated for a Daytime Emmy, along with the show’s post team, for his work on Season 2 of Netflix’s Trinkets. The series follows a grieving teen who finds an unexpected connection with two classmates at her new high school after they all land in the same Shoplifters Anonymous group.

James Parnell

While LA’s Monkeyland Audio provided audio post for Trinkets Season 1, Parnell joined the series for Season 2, after, he says, “Trinkets was already sonically well-established.” Parnell was the sole re-recording mixer for Trinkets Season 2, so he was responsible for mixing all the sonic elements for each episode. That included dialogue, music, backgrounds (Ambiences), sound effects, sound design and Foley. He mixed Trinkets on the Avid S6 console in Dolby Atmos.

Let’s find out more …

You were brought on for Season 2. Can you talk about what the soundscape was prior to you joining? And did that change at all for you?
Monkeyland Audio did all the sound post for the first season, so maintaining continuity between seasons wasn’t difficult. Before being brought on for Season 2, I watched the entirety of the first season in order to familiarize myself with the established locations: Lakeshore High School, the SA meeting room, the girls’ houses.

In Season 2, we spend a lot more time at Lakeshore High School — at one point following the characters to a soccer match. We also visit new locations, like a school robotics competition, Downtown Portland at night, Sabine’s gigs at various venues and many more locations that provided the opportunity to widen the sonic palette of Trinkets.

The biggest challenge to jumping onto an established show is to demonstrate that you understand what the sonic goals are and that you’ve done your homework by listening to and observing the work done on the first season. Certainly this season was more ambitious than the first, sound-wise, and the whole sound team was absolutely thrilled to have received an Emmy nomination for our work on the show.

How would you describe the sound of Trinkets S2?
Detailed. Trinkets Season 2 was very full, from an editorial perspective. Each episode got a full loop-group recording session, which, for the uninitiated, is a bespoke recording session wherein actors lend their voices to scenes that are densely populated: schools, audiences, sports games and busy city streets.

There was an emphasis on building the environments in which the characters lived. For established locations, we would elaborate on the existing sound, thickening them in places. Trinkets was mixed in Dolby Atmos, so there was lots of panning work with backgrounds and “source” music cues, which we did to envelop the listener in the scene.

We also worked really hard to clean the production sound as much as possible. Because Trinkets was shot on location in Portland, the production sound team had a lot to contend with noise-wise.

We also worked really hard to clean the production sound as much as possible. Because Trinkets was shot on location in Portland, the production sound team had a lot to contend with noise-wise. Dialogue editor Jackie Johnson and I worked hard to use all the production sound possible and cue as little ADR as we could. From a mix perspective, I tried to make it seem like the characters — Elodie, Moe and Tabitha (Brianna Hildebrand, Kiana Madeira and Quintessa Swindell, respectively), were living life in their own bubbles and never fully connected to their environments. Sometimes this meant downplaying bar ambiences or school ambiences and allowing them to live front and center within a scene.

This was especially evident during the Shoplifter’s Anonymous scenes, where we would often start a scene by muffling the speakers’ voices and then slowly giving them more clarity. Other times, Elodie would be overwhelmed by sounds from her environment, needing to escape and push her way through a crowd. These sonic moments were important because they were key to the main character arcs.

Can you talk about your workflow/process on the series?
Trinkets was ambitious, from both a sonic and scheduling perspective. Each episode was edited in one week. We’d typically edit and mix two episodes and then play back both episodes in sequence on a single day with the producers. Upon receiving the turnover, we’d have a spotting session with the post producer and associate producer, when we would discuss the sonic challenges as well as the wishes for the show’s sound. Everything from creative ADR cues to sound design texture would be discussed in these spotting sessions. I’d have a day to mix each episode, with our mix review days being split into morning and afternoon playbacks.

Given that Trinkets was mixed in Dolby Atmos, attempting to playback and execute notes on two episodes in one day was very ambitious, but the team pulled together and made the schedule work. Mixing the show in Atmos meant that the show took longer to mix. On an average mix day, I would start by mixing dialogue and balancing the show’s background ambiences around them. I’d then turn around and give the show a dedicated music pass. Again, because Atmos gave us the ability to mix in “3D,” some of the more robust scenes took much longer to mix, and finding the delicate balance of some scenes was more laborious.

In contrast, sometimes certain scenes came together quite quickly. For the opening scene in Episode 1 (“Supernova”), where Moe and Tabitha are being interrogated by the police, I used a jail-cell reverb on their dialogue and panned it into the Atmos channels to give the listener a sense that the space was small and claustrophobic.

Who else makes up the Trinkets audio post team, sound designer, etc.? 
Trinkets has a really talented sound team behind it. Jackie Johnson was our dialogue editor, Xiang Li was our sound effects editor/sound designer, Alex Jongbloed was our Foley editor, and Jacob Ortiz was our ADR mixer.

We were also helped by Ben Robinson, who was our fantastic music editor. Ben currently works at JTN Music. We mixed on the Monkeyland Atmos stage called Stage Plata. All the mix stages at Monkeyland are named after types of tequila, so we have a Stage Anejo, a Stage Reposado, and a Stage Mezcal as well. We also have a lounge for clients that we call the Agave Lounge.

Was there a favorite or most challenging episode or scene from this season?
The Season 2 finale episode stands out as a favorite for me. We were made aware, going into the second season, that the show was not going to be renewed for a third, so the plan was to throw the kitchen sink into the mix for the finale. In this episode, Moe and Tabitha make their way to the ocean with Elodie to help her spread her mother’s ashes. There’s a great three- or four-minute sequence where we arrive with the girls on the cliff, and the mood is somber. We really strip out a ton of sounds to focus the storytelling — Elodie’s dialogue front and center, and there’s some gentle wind and waves in the background.

Once Elodie’s character arc is complete and she’s able to look at the loss of her mother with perspective, we time-jump onto the beach with Moe, Tabitha and Elodie running, laughing and doing cartwheels in the sand. Ocean surf is breaking against the rocks with a cover of Pat Benatar’s song “We Belong” playing at full volume. It’s these transitory moments in the season that I really think define the show’s sound, focusing the listener on something small or intimate and then smoothly transitioning the soundscape into something much larger, with lots of elements playing all at once.

This series is lighthearted, and PEN15 is a comedy, while the indie film Lorelei was straight drama. How does your workflow change, if at all, depending on the project?
There’s a long answer and a short answer here. Principally no, you still strive to create the most enjoyable and informative listening experience possible. The goals are always the same from show to show, but there are definitely distinct differences between genres. You look to different parts of the story and different visual moments to inform your sound editing.

Lorelei (which was just at Tribeca and is being released on streaming platforms soon) is a straight drama, so there are longer scenes with less cuts, which often allow you to pick up on the subtlety of character physicality. Sometimes a character fidgets, and adding sound to reinforce that physicality adds to the storytelling.

In PEN15, which is a comedy, there were clear moments for awkward pauses in between lines of dialogue. Keeping sound out of the way of those beats really helps punch the comedy of a given scene. Knowing the genre you’re working on is very important, and having an encyclopedic database of films within that genre helps to focus the sound for the film you’re working on.

What tools do you use in your role?

I’m a big fan of iZotope’s new RX 8. It’s got so many great noise reduction modules, and it allows you to be incredibly surgical in your work. I used a lot of RX 8 Dialogue Isolate as well as the standard De-rustle, De-click and De-plosive on Trinkets. RX 8’s new Music Rebalance was a true godsend. There were so many times when I’d have a big music moment where the song had lyrics in it, and it would be playing over the top of dialogue. Music Rebalance really helped me gently reduce the volume of the lyrics embedded in the music track.

Because the show was mixed in Atmos, I had to use a few new EQs, compressors and reverbs on the 7.1.2/4 busses. FabFilter’s Pro-Q 3 EQ and Pro-MB multiband compressors worked wonders on the dialogue. Exponential Audio’s Symphony 3D and Status 3D were great additions to the mix template.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years.