Audio for TV: location audio, distinctive vocal cadences, quick turnarounds and puberty are just some of the challenges faced by audio pros working on today's episodics. Here's their stories and some tips

Post, April, 2003 by Christine Bunish

they may be the last steps in the post production process but audio editing and mixing play key roles in creating and enhancing the drama, comedy and reality of TV series on every broadcast and cable network.

SYNC SOUND COMPLETES SUCCESSFUL STAY IN OZ

New York City's Sync Sound (www.syncsound.com) spent seven seasons performing audio post for Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana's landmark Homicide: Life On The Street, then began the team's next series, HBO's Oz. With the show's 100-minute finale a couple of months ago, Sync Sound and its new feature and TV arm, Digital Cinema LLC, wrapped six seasons of audio post on the breakthrough prison drama.

Supervising sound editor/sound designer Tony Pipitone typically spent two weeks on the sound editorial and sound design of each episode, including creating new elements and making selections from a custom sound effects library.

"We tried to change the sounds from the first season to the last so we wouldn't be repetitive," he says. "Each year we spent about a week making new sounds and weeding out what we didn't like." For the last season, however, Pipitone "brought back a lot of sounds we used the first season to bookend the series. I don't know if anybody noticed it, but the first sound--a combination of drums and sound-design hits--you heard in the series, other than the theme music, was also the last sound of the show fading into the distance."

Some sound design did re-appear episode to episode. Instead of metallic, clanking jail doors, the sound of Em City's guard-controlled cell doors were given a pneumatic air release sound. Pipitone processed sounds such as whales and elephants to devise a subtle, drone-like ambiance for Em City's evening-to-morning lock down. He chopped up and filled holes in scenes with ambient background created from echoey location recordings on the Em City set.

Pipitone used Sonic Foundry's Acid and Sound Forge software, samplers, keyboards and effects processors, including Lexicon PCM 90, TC Electronic 6000 and Fireworx, and various Eventide processors. He discovered granular synthesis freeware, which expanded and altered sounds in a way "you wouldn't get with standard outboard gear."

Oz didn't have a lot of ADR. "Generally, the recordings were very good," Pipitone reports. "The biggest problem was The Box," the glass cell from which prisoner Hill did his narration. Early on, ADR was required because the enclosure made Hill's voice sound too hollow. Later, removing one or more of the glass plates gave Hill's location audio a more open quality, and production sound was used 75 percent of the time. Foley heightened dramatic, violent and intimate moments in the series, notes Foley artist John Hassler.

Oz episodes were conformed from the original DATs to picture, then dialogue and sound effects editing began. Pipitone and his colleagues used AMS Neve AudioFiles and Digidesign Pro Tools Mix3 systems with a large array of plug-ins.

On Sync Sound's large Digital Cinema stage, rerecording mixer Grant Maxwell used a 300-input AMS Neve DFC console for the Dolby stereo mix. He devoted one long day to the dialogue pre-mix and two days to mixing effects, music, Foley and dialogue with producer Irene Burns and music supervisor ChrisTergesen. Afterwards, Tom Fontana screened the mix with Pipitone and Maxwell and final changes were made.

NAB PLANS: Pipitone expects to skip NAB this year, but he's keeping his eye on controllers and interfaces for Pro Tools and new sound design software. Bill Marino, who's partnered with Ken Hahn in Sync Sound, plans to attend the convention where he will check out trends in 24-frame video products in both high definition and standard definition resolutions.

TODD-AO RADFORD TAKES ON BERNIE MAC

"Mixing for a half-hour, single-camera series has its own set of idiosyncrasies," declares John Cook, rerecording mixer at Todd-AO Radford (www.toddao.com) in Studio City, CA. On Stage V on the CBS lot, Cook mixes the dialogue and music while colleague Peter Nusbaum mixes sound effects and Foley for the Fox comedy Bernie Mac.

"We do all half-hours, multi-camera and single-camera shows, on this stage," says Cook "The trick is to get it all mixed, played back, signed off and laid back in a day."

According to Cook and Nusbaum, one day on the stage is sufficient time to produce a good product, especially since a lot of sound is prepped for them at Todd-AO Burbank. There, supervising sound editor Paul Tade teams with effects editor Peter Bergren, dialogue editor David Grant and music editor Thomas Bartke on a given episode of Bernie Mac four days before the mix.

Full backgrounds are built for the show, and everything is posted to a server shared by the Burbank and Studio City facilities.

"After the editing process is done, we log onto the server and download the material we need to start the session," Cook explains. He and Nusbaum have separate Digidesign Pro Tools 5.1 and Fairlight MFX-3plus workstations so they can pull up exactly what they need. Bernie Mac is built on Pro Tools and mixed to Dolby Stereo on an SSL 5000 console with a Flying Fader retrofit.