Audio for TV

Post, Jan, 2002 by Christine Bunish

ew and expanded audio post facilities in New York City and Los Angeles are designed to meet the extensive sound requirements and quick turnarounds demanded by network television and the Public Broadcasting System today.

SOUNDSTORM WORKS 24

A leading provider of custom sound design and sound editing for feature films, Burbank's SoundStorm (www.soundstorm.com) has launched a new division to handle post production sound for television, headed by award-winning supervising sound editor William Dotson. He is lending his expertise to the much talked about Fox series 24, which, due to its serial nature and its premise of covering a crucial 24-hour period in realtime, is particularly sound intensive.

Sometimes 24 employs quad image boxes onscreen, each box with a full sound build complete with ADR, sound design, Foley and a full mix. "It's literally four shows running at the same time," Dotson says. Apart from the set for the CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) government control room, the show is shot entirely on location in the LA area, so ADR plays a big role in audio post, as does sound design, which lends a special emphasis to the passage of time.

Five of SoundStorm's 50 edit bays are devoted to TV work and more can be tapped as needed. They are outfitted with 24-bit Digidesign Pro Tools Mix Plus systems and Fairlight MFX3 digital audio workstations. "The Fairlights are a great platform for Foley, ADR and dialogue, and Pro Tools is wonderful with its DSP and sound design plug-ins," Dotson notes.

Foley is performed at SoundStorm by mixer Shawn Kennelly and Foley artists Laura Macias and Vinnie Nicastro, who have a collective reputation as "an extremely excellent film Foley crew," Dotson says. He spends "a lot of the budget on Foley, more than usual for a TV show, 24 deserves nothing less."

Jeff Whitcher handles the sound design from his studio in San Pedro. 24 co-executive producer and director Stephen Hopkins (see an interview with him on page 20) frequently contributes suggestions for sound design himself, Whitcher notes. "He's really in tune with sound. It's so refreshing to work with someone who understands what the possibilities of sound are when you turn it loose."

Whitcher tends not to rely on background beds or tracks, but instead creates very specific sounds. "Because the show takes place in real-time, and now we're shifting from night to dawn to morning, over the course of an episode we'll have the crickets go out as LA birds begin to sing. I have to get up early and listen and get it right."

Whitcher is especially pleased with a December episode that featured a number of hospital sequences. He created "creepy drones" in a hospital room and did reverb processing and pitch shifting on some female breaths recorded in his Pro Tools Mix3 system.big surprises."

The mix for 24 is done at The Enterprise in Burbank where lead mixer Michael Olman mans an AMS Neve Capricorn digital console.

"I'm a big fan of the Neve sound and have worked a lot with their other consoles," says Olman, "I looked forward to getting back to a totally-automated console, especially for this show, which is the busiest and most difficult show I've ever worked on."

Olman reports that "we spend more time putting the show together than going back and fixing things because of the automation. This isn't always the case. Some shows spend more time fixing than mixing."

With only 18 hours to mix an episode and no budget for overtime, Olman can "hit the ground running" thanks to all the "pre-post production" he, Dotson and effects mixer Ken Kobett do once they have tapes of the final Avid cut in hand.

He also credits the fully-automated Capricorn, outstanding mixing from Kobett, the fact that Whitcher is online for the mix and "fantastic" work by ADR mixer Paul Drennan at West Wind -- there are usually 120 to 160 lines of ADR scattered throughout every episode -- to giving him the speed and flexibility he needs to deliver on such a tight schedule.

"The Enterprise has full bandwidth T-1, so we can do live streaming video and audio with Macs and ibot cameras," says Dotson. "Jeff [Whitcher], who has a Mac G4 tower, watches digital 44.1 kHz audio and full-motion video of the mix in realtime. He can send us a fix via the broadband T-1 line to Pro Tools in the back room, and it's almost instantaneous."

ADR supervisor Cathie Speakman has a similar G4 tower set-up. "It's a more efficient way of communicating," Dotson emphasizes, "It's the wave of the future, but it's happening now. We use it every week."

Although it was Dotson's goal to build and mix 24 in 5.1, that hasn't happened yet. "We do a surround mix but this year we're all going to battle for 5.1.1 think all shows should be mixed to 5.1 because it's getting common to do a DVD of the run of the show and most network primetime broadcasts are HD."

VARSITY CHALLENGED WITH CABLE WORK

Officially launched last October, New York City's Varsity Entertainment (www.varsityent.com) is a full-spectrum entertainment production company that specializes in an array of services, including program packaging, post production and original program development. Its 15,000-square foot facility features a large Pro Tools-based room with Mackie digital D8B board and a 15-by-20-foot studio adjacent for voiceover and recording. A second room for creative services and music composition also has a Pro Tools system plus MOTU Digital Performer, for scoring to picture, and a voiceover booth.