Sound Design at Edinburgh Napier University

Category: Television

  • How Do You Design the Sound of Reality? Sefi Carmel on Documentary Sound, Perception, and the Ethics of Construction

    Sefi Carmel

    How do you design the sound of reality?

    A whale dives beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Filmed from a distant boat, its tail disappears into the water and a splash is heard. The moment appears entirely natural, yet the camera crew may have been hundreds of metres away, surrounded by engine noise and incapable of recording anything resembling the sound presented in the finished film. Perhaps the splash came from a sound-effects library. Perhaps somebody dropped an object into water. Perhaps a Foley artist moved a scuba flipper through a bathtub. Does adding that sound make the documentary less truthful, or does it help audiences experience an event that genuinely occurred but could not be captured adequately during filming?

    During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, London-based sound designer, composer and dubbing mixer Sefi Carmel explored the creative and ethical questions surrounding soundtrack creation for documentaries. Drawing upon experience of mixing more than one hundred documentaries, he challenged the assumption that factual filmmaking requires a fundamentally different sonic vocabulary from drama. Dialogue, music, atmospheres, spot effects, Foley and abstract sound design can all contribute towards documentary storytelling. The crucial issue is not whether a sound was recorded at the moment shown on screen, but what its addition asks the audience to believe.

    Throughout the lecture, Carmel returned to a broad understanding of the soundtrack. Everything emerging from the speakers belongs to a single composition created in relationship with the image. Dialogue, music and effects may be separated technically, but audiences experience their combined movement through time and space. Like music, a soundtrack arranges rhythm, dynamics and timbre to communicate emotions and ideas. Documentary sound therefore involves much more than cleaning interviews and placing music underneath them. It is the construction of an audiovisual experience whose materials may come from reality while their organisation remains an act of filmmaking.

    Carmel began by questioning a belief he had held as a young sound designer. News reporting and documentary filmmaking had once appeared to occupy similar positions on a spectrum between reality and fiction. At one extreme, news aspires towards an account of events with minimal manipulation. At the other, drama openly asks audiences to accept scripted performances, constructed edits, designed sound effects and music intended to influence emotion. Documentary can initially appear closer to the first model, yet Carmel’s experience of the form led him towards a different conclusion. A feature-length documentary still has to hold an audience for sixty, ninety or more minutes. It communicates ideas, develops relationships, establishes places, controls pace and creates emotional movement. Those demands make it filmmaking rather than an extended news report.

    Understanding documentary in those terms considerably widens its creative possibilities. Music can shape emotional interpretation, sound effects can strengthen actions and atmospheres can establish locations that production recordings fail to communicate. Archive footage can be reconstructed into a convincing audiovisual world, Foley can restore physical detail and abstract sound design can emphasise an important transition or idea. Documentary makers have access to almost the complete filmmaking toolbox. With that freedom comes an ethical problem. If documentary claims a relationship with reality, how far can its soundtrack depart from literal recording before enhancement becomes deception?

    The whale provides a useful test. The animal really entered the water and its tail really created a splash, even though the filmmakers could not capture that sound from their position. Adding a plausible splash does not invent the event. It reconstructs an acoustic consequence already implied by the image, allowing audiences to experience the animal’s movement and scale more immediately without asking them to believe that something happened when it did not. Matters become more difficult when sound influences interpretation rather than restoring an unheard event. Carmel drew his clearest ethical line around speech. Reconstructing the likely sound of an action differs substantially from editing somebody’s words in a manner that changes their meaning or context. The latter can alter the evidence from which audiences understand an event. For Carmel, creative sound design remains legitimate when it serves the film without becoming a gross lie.

    A much less serious encounter with perceptual truth came during his work on a documentary about the Winter Olympics. Faced with a distant shot of a skier slaloming down a snowy slope, the director wanted the movement to have greater sonic presence. Library searches failed to produce a suitable recording, so Carmel created one himself. The director liked the result and repeatedly asked what had produced it. Carmel initially refused to answer, but eventually revealed the source: a knife scraping across toast. The sound had worked perfectly while the director perceived it as skiing. Once its origin became known, however, the illusion collapsed. The director could hear only toast and eventually asked for it to be removed. Nothing in the waveform had changed. Image, expectation and context had previously allowed one event to become another, while knowledge of the source created a new and apparently irreversible interpretation.

    Listeners do not identify sounds solely through their acoustic properties. Visual information, expectation, context and prior knowledge shape perception. A recording does not acquire credibility merely through sharing a physical origin with the object shown on screen, and a constructed sound does not automatically become deceptive through coming from somewhere else. Credibility emerges from the relationship between sound, image and meaning. Documentary sound design occupies a space between physical truth and perceptual credibility, requiring the designer to consider where a sound came from alongside what audiences understand it to represent.

    Reality presents another difficulty long before questions of creative enhancement arise. Documentary crews work in environments that cannot be controlled in the manner of a drama production. Interviews happen near roads, beneath aircraft routes, inside noisy buildings and beside machinery. Important moments may occur only once, leaving post-production dependent upon whatever the location recordist managed to capture. Documentary also has limited access to ADR. Replacing a contributor’s voice with a later studio performance can compromise spontaneity, authenticity and practicality. An imperfect recording of an essential contribution therefore has to be made intelligible and aesthetically acceptable even when the original conditions were hostile.

    Some problems are comparatively manageable. Low-frequency rumble can be reduced, while constant noises such as air conditioning, electrical hum or an aircraft cabin may respond well to noise reduction. Variable interference presents a much harder problem. An accelerating motorcycle can move through the same frequency regions as speech while continually changing its spectral character, making removal difficult without damaging the voice. Aggressive processing introduces further compromises. Equalisation can isolate the most intelligible part of a voice while leaving it thin and unnatural. Noise reduction can remove interference at the cost of audible artefacts. A line may become technically clearer but aesthetically less convincing. Restoration is not a contest to remove the greatest possible quantity of unwanted sound. Every intervention changes the material audiences hear.

    Carmel connected this problem to the idea of aesthetic disturbance. Drawing upon Ludwig Wittgenstein, he described aesthetics partly through the recognition of something being wrong: a picture hanging at an angle, for example, produces a disturbance that disappears when the relationship is corrected. Documentary sound can create similar disturbances. A close image accompanied by an unexpectedly distant, reverberant voice may produce audiovisual dissonance. Distortion attracts attention, while harshness, brittleness or excessive boxiness can make listening uncomfortable even when every word remains understandable. Intelligibility is necessary but insufficient. Dialogue also needs to feel congruent with the image and surrounding soundtrack, and a technically rescued voice can still undermine a scene if its perspective, spectrum or acoustic character appears disconnected from what viewers see.

    Modern restoration tools have expanded what can be recovered. Carmel discussed noise reduction, de-clicking, de-crackling, de-clipping, dereverberation and spectral repair as processes capable of rescuing recordings that might once have been considered unusable. Constant noise can sometimes be reduced substantially, while sophisticated interpolation may reconstruct clipped or distorted speech with surprising effectiveness. Greater capability does not remove the need for judgement. Restoration can erase information that belongs to the story. Crackle on an old recording may be technically undesirable while simultaneously communicating historical distance. The noise of an old shellac disc or archive recording can help audiences understand that they are hearing material from another period. Removing every imperfection may weaken the narrative. Technical possibility matters less than understanding what the existing sound already communicates.

    This tension between repair and preservation led to one of Carmel’s central principles: ideally, every layer of the soundtrack should be capable of telling the story. Dialogue carries narrative through words. An atmosphere can communicate location, weather, time of day and activity without spoken explanation. Music can reveal emotional direction. A forest atmosphere containing birds, wind and running water immediately places listeners within a particular kind of environment. Each layer contributes different information, and the complete soundtrack emerges from their interaction rather than from one dominant element surrounded by decoration.

    Documentary production rarely provides ideal materials, so those layers often have to support one another. Aggressively cleaned dialogue recorded on a windy location may no longer contain enough environmental information to make its setting believable. Carefully constructed atmospheres can return that context. Sound effects can reinforce actions the original recording failed to capture, while music can support emotional movement that damaged or fragmented production sound cannot carry alone. None of these layers needs to become conspicuous. A weak recording may become convincing once placed inside an appropriately designed environment, since audiences hear relationships between elements rather than evaluating every track in isolation.

    Voiceover introduces another distinctive element within those relationships. Casting is often a directorial decision, though Carmel argued that sound professionals can contribute valuable thinking when invited into the process. The appropriate voice depends upon the subject, intended audience and emotional character of the film. A documentary about the rise of a young pop group requires a different vocal identity from one exploring humpback whales in the North Atlantic. Performance matters as much as casting. Tone, energy, pacing and character shape the audience’s relationship with the film, while the chosen voice influences the space available for music, effects and atmosphere. Voiceover is part of the soundtrack’s composition, not information simply placed above it.

    Music performs an equally integrated role. Carmel distinguished between music existing within the world shown on screen and music functioning as score. Source music might come from a visible performer, radio, jukebox or other plausible location within the scene, while score operates outside that visible world and shapes emotion from another level. Documentary makers can also blur the distinction deliberately. An old rock-and-roll song treated with band-limiting and room reverberation might appear to come from a jukebox in a diner, allowing music to reinforce the setting, contribute historical or cultural information and perhaps help mask weaknesses in the location sound.

    Selecting or composing music requires an understanding of everything else occupying the scene. Dialogue-heavy sequences need music capable of supporting speech without continually competing for attention. Dense lead instruments or vocals can occupy perceptual and spectral territory similar to the human voice, forcing the music much lower in the mix. More restrained arrangements can create emotional colour while leaving space for narration and interviews. Other sequences allow music to carry more of the narrative. An expansive aerial view with little dialogue may support a large thematic statement that would overwhelm an intimate interview. Musical effectiveness in isolation matters less than the role a piece needs to perform at a particular moment and the relationships it forms with the rest of the soundtrack.

    Location dialogue complicates those relationships further. A controlled voiceover recording tends to maintain comparatively stable level and performance, while spontaneous speech can vary considerably. Contributors may begin sentences with energy and trail away as thoughts conclude. Music automation must respond to those changing patterns. A static reduction may leave quieter words obscured or make stronger phrases feel unnecessarily exposed. Mixing becomes a continual negotiation between intelligibility and musical continuity, with the soundtrack moving around the natural behaviour of voices that were never performed for the convenience of the mixer.

    Atmospheres perform several roles simultaneously. Most obviously, they tell audiences where they are. Traffic, birds, wind, room tone, distant machinery or human activity can define an environment before viewers consciously analyse the image. They also smooth editorial transitions. Documentary scenes are frequently assembled from material recorded at different moments, positions or even days, and a continuous environmental bed can help separate pieces of location sound feel as though they belong to a coherent space. Carmel identified another, less obvious function: atmospheres can contribute spectral balance. If a scene feels sonically empty within a particular frequency region, an appropriate environmental layer can help create a more aesthetically satisfying whole. The choice still needs to make narrative sense, but storytelling and sonic composition overlap here. Atmosphere can provide information, continuity and texture at the same time.

    Spot effects operate on a more local scale. A car door closes, a telephone is placed down or a gun fires. Brief synchronised events can reinforce visible actions and restore details absent from production recordings. Archive footage provides particularly rich opportunities for this kind of reconstruction, especially when historical images arrive without usable synchronous sound. Old footage may be silent or accompanied by narration and music unsuitable for the contemporary documentary. A battlefield sequence showing tanks, artillery and soldiers therefore presents the sound designer with an empty world that needs to be rebuilt.

    For Carmel, archive reconstruction can be approached with the same dramatic ambition used in fiction. Tanks can advance through the frame, gunfire can occupy different distances and artillery can establish scale, while wind across an exposed landscape gives the environment continuity. The designer might process the soundtrack to suggest historical recording technology or create a vivid modern sound world that places the audience imaginatively inside the event. A deliberately aged soundtrack reminds viewers that they are encountering archive material, while a contemporary reconstruction can reduce historical distance and make an event feel immediate. Neither choice is neutral. Both interpret history, leaving the designer to consider the relationship the documentary seeks to create between the audience and the past.

    Foley can contribute in much the same way, although documentary schedules and budgets rarely permit complete coverage. Selective use can still transform significant moments. A historical reconstruction showing chainmail being worn, armour handled or a sword drawn may deserve detailed physical sound even when none was captured during filming. If the moment carries narrative importance, there is no reason to reject Foley merely through an assumption that documentary sound must remain limited to location recordings. Abstract sound design extends the same principle further. Drones, impacts and heavily processed transitions can strengthen important ideas or structural moments, creating unease, giving a cut greater dramatic force or helping an audience experience a transition emotionally as well as intellectually.

    For Carmel, the legitimacy of these devices depends upon purpose. Dramatic sound should strengthen the film rather than substitute manipulation for argument. Documentary editing, cinematography and music already influence how audiences understand material, and sound design participates in the same process. Ethical responsibility lies in recognising what each construction communicates rather than pretending that construction does not occur. Documentaries are built from real people, events, evidence and places, yet films do not emerge automatically from those materials. Someone selects shots, orders sequences, chooses where music begins, decides when silence matters and determines which details audiences hear. Soundtrack creation is part of that authorship.

    Creative decisions are only part of the work. The documentary must also survive the circumstances in which it will be heard. Carmel emphasised that mixing begins with the destination. A theatrical documentary, television broadcast, online film and festival screening present different playback conditions and technical expectations. Format, dynamics, equalisation and level decisions need to reflect those contexts. A large theatrical environment can support substantial low-frequency extension and wider dynamics, while television playback may occur through much smaller speakers and in less controlled surroundings. Processing that creates clarity in one context can become harsh or excessive in another.

    Platform awareness connects technical delivery directly with audience experience. Spectral energy inaudible on small television speakers can still consume headroom. Extreme dynamics may work beautifully in a cinema while causing viewers at home to continually adjust volume. Loudness standards formalise part of that relationship, particularly for broadcast delivery, but Carmel’s broader point concerned the distribution of intensity across the film. Loudness can be understood as a budget. If every moment is treated as maximally intense, little room remains for genuine peaks. Dynamic planning becomes another form of storytelling, allowing contrast to carry dramatic meaning rather than treating level merely as a compliance problem.

    Compression and limiting require similar contextual judgement. A theatrical mix may use comparatively subtle master processing, preserving headroom and contrast, while television and online material may tolerate or require greater control. One version is not inherently superior to another. Each mix needs to function within the medium for which it is intended, preserving the film’s intentions under different listening conditions.

    Deliverables extend that responsibility beyond the primary audience. Documentary films may travel between territories and require new narration or dubbed dialogue. Music and effects tracks need to support localisation rather than reproduce automation created around the timing of the original language. Carmel explained the value of providing undipped music for this purpose. In an English version, music may be reduced beneath a particular phrase and raised again when the speaker stops. A translated version may take longer or shorter to communicate the same idea. If the music stem already contains automation tied to the English timing, the foreign-language mixer inherits a structure that no longer fits. Providing material without those dialogue-specific reductions allows the new mix to respond properly to the translated performance.

    A soundtrack therefore exists as more than a finished mix. It may need to survive new languages, platforms and contexts, and good delivery anticipates the work of people who will encounter the material later. Carmel ended with an even simpler responsibility: check the work. Quality control may appear less intellectually exciting than documentary ethics or perceptual sound design, yet it protects every creative decision made before delivery. A mixer can spend days constructing a sophisticated soundtrack and still send an unusable file through a routing mistake or export error. Recording or exporting something does not prove that the expected material exists in the resulting file. Listen to it. Watch it. Check it.

    That practical instruction sits neatly alongside the lecture’s larger argument. Documentary soundtrack creation moves constantly between interpretation and responsibility. Designers can construct sounds that were never recorded, rebuild silent archives, use Foley, shape emotion through music and introduce dramatic sonic devices. Those freedoms demand judgement. Does a sound restore an experience, clarify it, interpret it or falsify it? What does it ask the audience to believe? Does it support the film’s argument without altering the meaning of its evidence?

    Carmel’s lecture presented documentary sound as an art of constructing experience from incomplete reality. Location recordings arrive damaged. Cameras capture actions from distances at which their sounds cannot be heard. Archive images survive after their original acoustic worlds have disappeared. Interviews need to coexist with music, while fragmented scenes require atmospheres capable of making them feel continuous. The documentary soundtrack is built through responses to these absences. Sometimes the response is technological: remove a constant noise, repair distortion or restore intelligibility. Sometimes it is editorial: create a continuous atmosphere around fragmented material. Sometimes it is performative: add Foley to a significant physical action. Sometimes it is musical, shaping the emotional direction of a sequence. At other moments, the solution may be a completely unrelated object whose acoustic behaviour happens to make an image believable.

    A knife scraping toast can become a skier moving across snow, at least until somebody learns the secret. Reality does not arrive in post-production as a complete audiovisual object waiting to be preserved. It arrives as recordings, images, testimony, fragments and absences. Filmmakers decide how those materials should be organised into an experience that audiences can follow and understand. Sound designers participate in that process by reconstructing relationships between actions and consequences, voices and spaces, images and expectations.

    Construction and dishonesty are not the same thing. A documentary soundtrack can be richly designed while remaining faithful to the people and events it represents. Literal accuracy may sometimes be essential. At other moments, perceptual credibility communicates an experience more effectively than an unusable or absent location recording ever could. A splash can give weight to a whale entering the ocean. An atmosphere can return a damaged interview to its environment. Designed sound can give silent archive footage physical immediacy. Music can reveal emotional relationships without changing the evidence shown on screen.

    Documentary sound occupies the space between what happened, what could be recorded and what audiences need in order to understand and feel the film. Carmel’s lecture showed that this space is not a technical inconvenience to be hidden. Much of the creative work begins there. The documentary sound designer cannot preserve every sound of reality, since many were never captured in the first place. The responsibility is to decide what should be repaired, what can be reconstructed, what needs to remain imperfect and what must never be changed.

  • How Do You Mix Television Sound Under Pressure? Frank Morrone on Dialogue, Workflow, and the Art of Re-Recording

    Frank Morrone

    How do you mix television sound under pressure?

    A television soundtrack may contain hundreds of dialogue recordings, sound effects, Foley performances, backgrounds, ADR takes and music stems, all competing for space within a mix that must remain clear, emotionally convincing and technically suitable for broadcast. The audience should never become aware of that complexity. They should simply understand every line, believe every environment and remain absorbed in the story. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, re-recording mixer Frank Morrone explored the craft behind achieving that apparent simplicity. Drawing upon a career in film and television that began in 1979, and projects including Lost, The Strain, Sleepy Hollow and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, he revealed a discipline shaped equally by technology, organisation, collaboration and judgement. Throughout the session, one principle emerged repeatedly. The most effective mixing workflows allow enormous technical complexity to disappear behind the story.

    Morrone began by tracing a career that developed across several different areas of professional audio. His earliest work took place in music studios, recording jazz and orchestral film scores before following those recordings into the dubbing theatre and becoming increasingly interested in the way complete soundtracks were assembled. A move into post-production allowed him to work across dialogue editing, music editing and Foley recording before concentrating upon re-recording mixing. That breadth of experience shaped the collaborative philosophy running throughout the lecture. Unlike a music recording session, where one engineer may remain closely involved from recording through to the final mix, film and television sound brings together work created by many different specialists. The dub stage is where those contributions finally meet. Successful mixing therefore depends upon understanding not only the material itself, but the people, processes and decisions that produced it.

    Television makes this collaboration particularly demanding. Morrone described an industry in which track counts have continued to increase while schedules and budgets have become progressively tighter. Sophisticated surround mixes must be created rapidly, and emerging formats add further complexity without removing the need to support conventional playback systems. His response is not simply to work faster. It is to design workflows that remove unnecessary decisions from the mixing stage. As soon as he joins a project, he communicates with the supervising sound editor about track requirements and provides a starting template so that incoming material already fits an established structure. Organisation begins before the mixer enters the room. Under severe time pressure, the ability to find, control and compare material immediately becomes part of the creative process itself.

    This reveals something deeper about Morrone’s understanding of expertise. His templates, early conversations with sound editors, knowledge of production microphones, preparation of alternative takes and habit of printing completed passes all anticipate problems before they are allowed to interrupt the mix. The same thinking extends beyond the dubbing theatre. He considers how broadcast processing will react to dynamics, how a mix will translate to domestic systems and how material created for one format will behave when heard through another. Professional experience, in this sense, is not simply the ability to solve problems quickly. It is the ability to recognise where problems are likely to emerge and construct a workflow in which many of them have already been addressed before they become urgent.

    The scale of Lost provided a striking illustration. Morrone showed the students sessions containing extraordinary numbers of elements, including dozens of tracks dedicated to the Smoke Monster alone. Its identity emerged from a deliberately ambiguous combination of animal voices, pneumatic machinery, roller-coaster wheels and other contrasting sources, creating something that resisted being understood as either entirely organic or entirely mechanical. Those effects existed alongside hard effects, backgrounds, Foley, production dialogue, ADR, group recordings and substantial music deliveries. The technology available at the time imposed strict limits upon voices and processing, requiring careful decisions about resource allocation as well as creative balance. Complexity could not simply be solved by adding more processing. The session itself had to be organised so that the mixers could navigate it instinctively.

    Custom fader layouts and VCA groups became essential to that process. Morrone described arranging controls so that principal dialogue could immediately be balanced against ADR, group recordings and music, while different categories of material remained independently accessible. Music sources could be separated from score, while dialogue in different languages could be isolated for international deliverables. Every layer of organisation reduced the time between hearing a problem and solving it. This became especially important during pilot season, when mixers might receive unusually elaborate material without first having time to develop a workflow around the programme. A sufficiently flexible template must already be capable of accommodating whatever arrives. Preparation, in this context, creates the conditions in which creative decisions can still be made under pressure.

    The production of Lost also demonstrated the tension between creative ambition and delivery requirements. Morrone recalled the exceptional resources devoted to the programme, including a large pilot budget and Michael Giacchino’s insistence upon recording a live orchestra for each episode. Yet the soundtrack still had to survive the restrictions of television broadcast. The team therefore created a more dynamic version for DVD before producing a contained broadcast mix designed to survive transmission processing. A similar approach was later adopted on The Strain. The distinction mattered. A mix can remain technically within specification and still behave poorly when subsequent broadcast processing responds to excessive dynamics. Re-recording therefore requires mixers to think beyond the dubbing theatre. They are mixing for every system through which the programme will eventually reach its audience.

    Dialogue occupied the centre of Morrone’s approach. His first objective is always to preserve the production performance wherever possible. When ADR has been recorded, he wants to know why. A line replaced for performance reasons presents a different problem from one replaced to solve a technical fault. If the director wanted a different performance, Morrone respects that decision while keeping the original available as an alternative. If the problem was technical, he first explores whether the production recording can be repaired. Modern restoration tools have dramatically expanded what can be rescued, reducing the need to replace performances that may possess subtleties difficult to recreate months later in an ADR studio.

    When ADR is necessary, matching involves far more than applying equalisation and reverb. Morrone keeps production dialogue available alongside the replacement so that he can compare transitions directly, matching tone, acoustic environment, pacing and performance. He prefers to receive several strong takes and recordings from both boom and lavalier microphones, recognising that the microphone apparently closest to the production perspective is not always the easiest to integrate. Understanding which microphones and wireless systems were used during production can also provide valuable clues, particularly where transmission systems have imparted their own sonic characteristics. ADR matching consequently becomes a process of reconstructing relationships rather than searching for a single corrective setting.

    Technology has transformed that work, though Morrone repeatedly warned against allowing powerful restoration tools to encourage excessive processing. Noise reduction, spectral repair, ambience matching, EQ matching and dereverberation can rescue material that would previously have required replacement. Yet he deliberately removes less noise than might appear necessary when dialogue is heard in isolation. Once backgrounds, effects and music return, much of the remaining noise may be perceptually masked. Processing that sounds impressively clean in solo can leave dialogue lifeless and constricted in the finished mix. Morrone therefore keeps copies of original material and sometimes returns to less processed versions during the final mix. The objective is not the cleanest possible dialogue track. It is dialogue that remains natural and convincing within the complete soundtrack.

    His attitude towards restoration reveals a broader philosophy of technology. Morrone began working with magnetic tape, a Cat 43 noise reduction unit and a notch filter, and he clearly values the extraordinary capabilities available to contemporary mixers. Yet greater technical power has not removed the need for judgement. In many respects, it has increased it. The ability to remove more noise does not mean that more noise should be removed, just as the ability to place sound almost anywhere within an immersive field does not mean that every available position should be used. New tools expand the range of possible decisions. They do not determine which decisions are appropriate. Throughout Morrone’s lecture, technical capability remained subordinate to perception.

    This distinction between isolation and context became one of the lecture’s most important ideas. Morrone described television mixing as beginning with dialogue and music, establishing the foundation against which the effects mixer can develop backgrounds and action. Once those elements come together, the mixers decide what should drive the scene. Some moments belong to music, others to effects, while still others require a more subjective perspective or a deliberate reduction of material. Experienced mixing partners develop an almost instinctive understanding of one another’s decisions. If an effect obscures a line during an early pass, Morrone knows that a trusted colleague will create space for it during refinement. Collaboration is therefore more than the division of tracks between two people. It is a shared process of deciding where the audience should listen.

    The idea that sounds must be judged in context reaches far beyond balancing dialogue against effects. Dialogue that appears too noisy when soloed may become entirely convincing once the world of the scene surrounds it. ADR that attracts attention after twenty repeated comparisons may pass unnoticed when the audience encounters it once within a continuous performance. Group recordings that sound absurd under isolated scrutiny may perform their role perfectly when placed at the correct distance behind principal dialogue. Morrone’s examples repeatedly challenged the assumption that individual elements should be perfected independently. The meaningful unit of evaluation is ultimately the audience’s experience of the scene. A soundtrack succeeds through relationships between sounds rather than the isolated perfection of its components.

    Normally, the priority within those relationships remains dialogue. Morrone described it as both the foundation of the mix and the principal carrier of storytelling. His concern with intelligibility, however, extends beyond maintaining a technical hierarchy between dialogue, music and effects. It is fundamentally about preserving attention. His most revealing test is not a meter reading but a listener asking what somebody has just said. At that moment, the audience member has been pulled out of the story and required to think about the failure of the soundtrack. Clear dialogue therefore supports immersion precisely by avoiding attention to itself. The better the mix communicates, the less the audience needs to think about the process of communication.

    Yet the rule is not absolute. For one sequence in The Family, a child was being used as bait to attract a kidnapper in a crowded shopping centre. The environment needed to feel genuinely busy, yet the available collection of separate crowd recordings and reverberant elements never created a convincing whole. Morrone took a six-channel recorder into a real shopping centre, captured the food court from different perspectives and brought the recordings back into the mix. The result allowed the environment to crowd the dialogue slightly, which was precisely what the scene required. Clarity remains fundamental, but realism sometimes depends upon controlled difficulty.

    The shopping-centre sequence illustrates an important tension within Morrone’s approach. His practice is built upon strong principles, but those principles do not become inflexible rules. Dialogue normally takes priority, except when allowing the environment to interfere with it makes the dramatic situation more believable. Restoration should preserve intelligibility, except when excessive cleaning destroys naturalness. Acoustic simulation is valuable, except when recording the real physical relationship between people and space produces a more convincing result. Expertise therefore involves knowing the rules well enough to understand what they protect, then recognising the moments when the needs of the scene justify bending them.

    This willingness to leave the dubbing theatre and record real spaces appeared repeatedly throughout the session. Morrone discussed impulse responses, convolution reverbs and carefully developed presets for rooms, vehicles and other environments, all of which provide useful starting points for worldizing sound. Yet he remained pragmatic about their limitations. A real location does not necessarily sound like the space suggested by the finished image, and even a carefully captured impulse response may require additional reflection, delay or reverberation before it feels convincing. Cars present an especially difficult problem, combining strong early reflections from glass with highly absorptive surfaces elsewhere. Experience gradually produces a library of useful starting points, though listening still determines the final result.

    Sometimes no simulation is as convincing as returning to the physical situation itself. Morrone described a scene in which a group of foster children were supposed to be creating chaos upstairs while a conversation took place below. Studio-recorded group voices did not reproduce the peculiar combination of footfalls, structural transmission and reflections travelling down a staircase into another room. His solution was direct. He gathered children on the upper floor of a house, recorded from downstairs and captured the complete acoustic event as it occurred. No increasingly elaborate chain of processing was required. The physical relationship between performers, building and microphone provided what the scene needed.

    The pressures of television production make such judgement particularly important. Morrone compared television mixing to boot camp. Schedules leave little room for hesitation, and mixers must develop workflows capable of producing strong results quickly. Once a scene has been successfully mixed, he prefers to print it rather than trusting that automation will remain untouched throughout later work. Accidental writes, changed sends and technical errors can occur even in experienced hands. Printing completed work provides security and allows later changes to be punched into established stems. Efficiency does not mean rushing blindly. It means reducing the opportunities for avoidable problems to consume the limited time available.

    Long sessions also introduce a more human limitation: hearing fatigue. Morrone described working on the highly dynamic soundtrack of The Strain, where sustained exposure to loud material forced him to think deliberately about auditory recovery. His solution was simple but important. He left the room for short periods, walked and allowed his ears to recover while his mixing partner continued working. The two mixers could alternate demanding passes, giving each other opportunities for rest without stopping the session. After decades of mixing, one of the useful discoveries was not another plug-in or processor, but the value of leaving the chair for ten minutes. Professional listening depends upon recognising the limits of the listener.

    Morrone’s discussion of client relationships revealed another dimension of the re-recording mix that students may rarely encounter in technical demonstrations. Mixers are working with directors, producers and other clients who may have strong preferences that differ from their own. Morrone described situations in which clients wanted music loud enough to compete with dialogue. His responsibility was to explain the likely consequences, demonstrate how the mix translated at lower levels and on smaller monitors, and search for a compromise that preserved the client’s intention while protecting intelligibility as far as possible. The mixer offers expertise, but does not own the programme. Knowing which decisions are worth challenging and which require accommodation is part of the craft.

    His description of deciding whether an issue represents a “hill to die on” reveals a sophisticated understanding of professional authority. Expertise does not give the mixer unlimited control over the work, nor does collaboration require the abandonment of professional judgement. The mixer must advocate for the audience, explain likely consequences and make alternatives audible, while recognising that the final creative intention belongs to the client. Professional judgement therefore includes negotiation. Sometimes expertise means defending a decision. Sometimes it means finding a compromise that neither side initially imagined. Occasionally, it means implementing a choice that remains contrary to personal taste while ensuring that it works as successfully as possible.

    Technical fluency plays an important role in maintaining those relationships. When a client requests a change, Morrone wants to make it immediately, play it once and continue. Searching through tracks or repeatedly troubleshooting a familiar process changes the atmosphere of the room and interrupts attention to the programme itself. A well-designed session keeps the conversation focused upon storytelling and communication. The deeper the mixer’s command of the tools, routing and session layout, the less those systems intrude upon the creative discussion.

    This is another form of transparency. Morrone repeatedly returned to the idea that technology should disappear from the client’s experience, yet transparency does not mean that technology has become unimportant. The opposite is closer to the truth. Considerable technical knowledge is required to make complex systems feel immediate. Templates, custom layouts, routing, monitoring, printed stems and intimate familiarity with the workstation create an environment in which a creative request can become an audible result without breaking the flow of the session. Mastery becomes visible through the absence of friction.

    The growth of immersive sound has expanded this challenge further. Morrone described mixers as working between extremes, from Dolby Atmos and sophisticated home theatres to stereo playback and mobile devices with earbuds. His philosophy was to begin with the best mix possible in the most capable format, then ensure that it translates successfully into simpler ones. Immersive technology may offer extraordinary spatial possibilities, but Morrone remained cautious about using novelty without considering perception. In particular, he defended dialogue remaining anchored to the centre. Moving voices between speakers can alter timbre and create distracting changes that audiences may notice without understanding their source. New formats create possibilities, though they do not invalidate principles developed through decades of listening.

    His argument about dialogue placement is particularly revealing. Audiences do not need to identify the technical source of a problem in order to experience discomfort. Morrone described viewers sensing that something was wrong when dialogue moved around an immersive field, even when they could not explain precisely what disturbed them. This places an unusual responsibility upon the mixer. Professional listening must sometimes diagnose experiences that ordinary listeners can feel but cannot name. The purpose of expertise is not to dismiss those responses as technically uninformed, but to understand the perceptual conditions that produced them.

    The same concern for translation shaped his approach to low frequencies. Subwoofers vary enormously between listening environments, and domestic listeners frequently adjust them far beyond calibrated levels. Morrone therefore warned against depending entirely upon the LFE channel for the weight of a soundtrack. Low-frequency energy can also be carried through the main channels, creating a result that remains powerful across a wider range of playback systems. His experience of hearing a domestic subwoofer struggle with low-frequency material from Sleepy Hollow reinforced the point. A soundtrack must survive real listening environments, not merely sound impressive on a perfectly calibrated dubbing stage.

    As the discussion widened, Morrone considered the future possibility of mixes that adapt more intelligently to different devices and contexts. Streaming, immersive audio, virtual reality and personalised playback were already creating pressure for soundtracks to function across radically different systems. Yet his underlying philosophy remained remarkably consistent. Whatever the format, begin with the strongest possible mix, preserve the storytelling hierarchy and understand how human perception responds to the result. Technology changes quickly. The responsibility to guide attention and communicate narrative does not.

    Questions from the students returned the discussion to practical preparation. Morrone strongly supported editors delivering material that is already sensibly balanced before it reaches the stage. Dialogue editors who use clip gain to create consistent levels save valuable mixing time, while backgrounds and effects arriving close to useful operating levels allow the mixer to begin creatively rather than first correcting avoidable problems. He described requesting particular editors for demanding productions precisely for this reason. Good preparation is noticed. In a professional environment where a pilot may need to be mixed in only a few days, the person who consistently delivers well-organised, intelligently balanced material becomes someone mixers actively want on the next project.

    His discussion of ADR offered another deceptively simple lesson about perception. Morrone sometimes works on difficult replacement lines privately through headphones while the effects mixer is making a pass. The client then hears the finished line only once in context rather than listening to it repeated dozens of times during adjustment. Repetition directs attention towards the repair and teaches the listener exactly where to expect it. The same awareness shaped his humorous rule about never soloing loop group in front of a client. Background conversations that work perfectly as part of a scene may sound absurd when isolated and scrutinised. What matters is not whether every element survives examination on its own, but whether it performs its intended role in the scene.

    These examples reveal that Morrone is not simply mixing sound. He is managing attention, expectation and knowledge. Once listeners have been taught where an edit exists, they may hear it differently. Once an element has been isolated, they may judge it according to criteria that have little relevance to its actual purpose. Perception is shaped not only by acoustic information, but by what listeners have been encouraged to notice. Part of the mixer’s craft therefore lies in protecting the audience’s experience from unnecessary awareness of the mechanisms used to construct it.

    Yet group recording could also become a powerful storytelling tool. On Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, episodes moved between international locations while much of the production remained based in Los Angeles. Carefully performed local-language group recordings, combined with music and other environmental elements, became essential to establishing each location convincingly. Here, group material could be brought forward rather than hidden. There was no universal rule governing how loudly an element should be mixed. Its appropriate level depended upon what the scene needed to communicate.

    By the end of the session, Morrone’s account of re-recording mixing had moved far beyond faders, plug-ins and delivery specifications. The technology matters enormously, as do templates, routing, restoration tools, monitoring and control surfaces, but those things serve a larger process. A mixer must understand performance, storytelling, perception, collaboration, translation and the subtle politics of working with clients under pressure. The session may contain hundreds of tracks, yet the audience should hear a coherent world rather than the complexity required to construct it. Morrone’s lecture revealed a craft built upon anticipation, contextual judgement and the careful management of attention. Preparation preserves the possibility of creativity under pressure. Technical knowledge allows technology to disappear from the conversation. Rules provide essential foundations, while experience reveals when the needs of a scene require them to bend. Great television sound is not created by making every element impressive or every recording perfect in isolation. It emerges from understanding what the audience needs to hear, recognising what they should never need to notice, and making hundreds of individual decisions feel like one continuous experience.

  • How Does a Crowd Find Its Voice? David Monteath on Crowd ADR, Performance, and Creating Believable Worlds

    David Monteath

    How does a crowd find its voice?

    When audiences watch a film or television programme, their attention naturally settles upon the principal actors. Far less notice is taken of the countless background voices that transform a collection of images into a believable social world. Conversations drifting through a restaurant, murmured discussions in an office, distant arguments in a crowded street or the indistinct atmosphere of a busy marketplace all contribute to the impression that life continues beyond the central characters. Remove those voices, and even the most carefully photographed scene can feel strangely artificial. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, David Monteath returned to the University as a Sound Design alumnus to explore the specialised craft of crowd ADR. Drawing upon more than three decades working as an actor and voice artist, he demonstrated that believable crowd performances depend upon observation, improvisation and an understanding of dramatic context rather than simply recording large numbers of voices. One principle underpinned the discussion. Context is king.

    Rather than replacing the dialogue of principal actors, crowd ADR creates the sense that an entire world exists beyond them. A small group of performers may become the customers in a restaurant, the spectators at a football match, the passengers waiting on a railway platform or the crowd gathered in a courtroom. Individual conversations overlap, reactions ripple through the group and emotional responses emerge at precisely the right moments, creating the impression that every person visible on screen possesses a life extending beyond the immediate story. Audiences rarely notice these performances consciously, yet they immediately recognise when they are missing. Scenes that lack convincing crowd performances often feel unexpectedly empty, regardless of how carefully they have been photographed or edited.

    Monteath repeatedly challenged the assumption that this work consists simply of creating background noise. Crowd ADR is first and foremost a form of acting. Every performance responds to the circumstances of the scene, the relationships between characters and the emotional atmosphere established by the director. People waiting quietly in a hospital corridor behave differently from supporters leaving a football stadium. Conversations in an expensive restaurant differ from those heard in a busy café, while voices surrounding a royal procession carry a very different energy from those accompanying a political protest. Every reaction, interruption and fragment of conversation exists to support the dramatic reality of the scene rather than to attract attention in its own right. Authenticity emerges from understanding how people genuinely behave in different situations, not from making scenes louder or busier.

    This emphasis upon dramatic context shaped every practical discussion throughout the lecture. Monteath encouraged students to think beyond individual words and instead consider the circumstances in which those words are spoken. Before deciding how loudly to speak, how quickly to react or even what might be said, performers first need to understand where they are, who surrounds them and what is happening within the story. The same phrase may require entirely different delivery depending upon whether it takes place in a library, an airport, a football ground or the middle of a battlefield. Successful crowd performers therefore begin by observing people. Everyday behaviour, casual conversations, shared laughter, hesitation, disagreement and excitement all provide material that can later be adapted naturally within the recording studio. The objective is not to invent behaviour, but to recognise and recreate it convincingly.

    Perhaps the most revealing insight from this opening part of the lecture concerned the relationship between realism and audibility. Many beginning sound designers instinctively assume that important sounds should always be heard clearly. Monteath argued for almost the opposite approach. Successful crowd ADR often succeeds precisely when audiences remain largely unaware of it. Background voices should usually be felt rather than heard, contributing movement, texture and emotional energy without competing with the principal dialogue. Monteath returned repeatedly to the idea that audiences should sense the presence of a living world long before they consciously identify individual voices. Crowd ADR achieves its greatest success not when listeners admire the performance, but when they accept the world on screen without ever questioning how it came to life.

    One of the most valuable themes running through the lecture concerned the difference between sounding natural and sounding believable. These ideas are not always identical. Performers working in crowd ADR rarely speak at the same level they would use in everyday conversation, yet exaggeration can become equally unconvincing. Monteath described the continual process of judging how voices should sit within the perspective of the scene. A performer passing close to the camera requires a different vocal presence from someone crossing the background several metres away, while conversations taking place outdoors demand a different energy from those occurring in confined interior spaces. Every decision depends upon dramatic perspective rather than fixed performance rules. Context, once again, determines everything. For sound designers, these distinctions become equally important during editing and mixing. A crowd recording that sounds entirely convincing in isolation may feel unexpectedly prominent once placed alongside production dialogue, Foley and ambience. Perspective therefore emerges through the relationship between every element of the soundtrack rather than through any individual recording considered on its own.

    This attention to perspective extends beyond volume alone. Monteath discussed the subtle adjustments people make instinctively when speaking in different environments. Outside, voices naturally rise in level before settling into an appropriate projection as people unconsciously judge the surrounding space. He compared this process to a form of echolocation. Speakers continually test their surroundings, modifying projection almost instantly until their voice feels appropriate for the environment. Recording inside a studio removes many of the environmental cues that normally guide these unconscious adjustments, requiring performers to recreate them deliberately. The challenge is not simply to speak more loudly for an exterior scene, but to reproduce the natural behaviour that accompanies speaking outdoors. Audiences rarely analyse these details consciously, though they recognise immediately when they feel unconvincing. Successful crowd ADR therefore depends upon recreating patterns of human behaviour rather than merely increasing vocal intensity.

    The physical demands of crowd ADR also proved far greater than many students had expected. Scenes involving panic, conflict or large-scale action often require sustained shouting over many hours, placing considerable strain on performers’ voices. Monteath reflected upon sessions in which actors had pushed themselves to the point of temporary vocal exhaustion, particularly when recording intense battle scenes. Curiously, he observed that shouting repeatedly inside a recording studio often proves more tiring than raising the voice naturally outdoors. In everyday life, people instinctively project according to their surroundings. Within the artificial environment of a studio, performers can find themselves holding unnecessary tension in the throat in ways that feel surprisingly unnatural. Maintaining vocal health therefore becomes an important professional skill alongside acting itself. It also reflects another aspect of professional sound design that audiences rarely consider. Recordings capable of conveying fear, excitement or urgency often depend upon performers sustaining physically demanding work throughout lengthy recording sessions while preserving consistency from one take to the next.

    The discussion of large battle sequences illustrated another revealing aspect of the profession. Crowd performers may spend an entire day creating layers of screams, reactions and movement for scenes involving hundreds or even thousands of people, fully aware that much of their work will eventually disappear beneath music, sound effects and the principal action. Monteath recalled recording material for a major battle sequence in Game of Thrones, where hours of physically demanding vocal performances ultimately became almost imperceptible within the finished soundtrack. Rather than expressing disappointment, he presented this as an inevitable consequence of professional sound design. The objective was never for individual performances to stand out. Their purpose was to contribute energy, scale and credibility to the scene, even if audiences remained almost entirely unaware of their presence. The irony is that some of the hardest work in post-production often becomes the least conspicuous in the finished mix.

    Monteath’s recurring phrase, “Context is king,” captures this philosophy particularly well. Every vocal decision derives from the dramatic situation rather than from the performer. Voices rise or fall according to the surrounding environment, emotional reactions emerge in response to the unfolding action and every fragment of conversation exists to reinforce the illusion that life extends beyond the principal characters. Successful crowd ADR is therefore measured not by how clearly individual voices are heard, but by how convincingly they allow audiences to believe in the world unfolding around them. Like many aspects of professional sound design, its greatest achievement lies in remaining almost invisible while making the fictional world feel entirely real.

    The lecture concluded with a discussion that moved beyond recording techniques and towards the broader decisions that shape professional sound design. One student described the challenge of creating the atmosphere for a bank robbery scene. Adding more and more voices had seemed the obvious solution, yet the result quickly became cluttered and distracted from the drama. Monteath’s response illustrated once again why crowd ADR depends upon judgement rather than quantity. Real crowds rarely behave as a single, unified group. Even in moments of fear, surprise or excitement, different people react at different times and in different ways. Some remain silent, others whisper, a few call out, while many simply watch events unfold. Attempting to represent every visible person with an equally prominent vocal performance often produces a soundtrack that feels less realistic rather than more so. Believability emerges through carefully judged variation, allowing individual reactions to appear and disappear naturally instead of competing continuously for the listener’s attention.

    This observation extends well beyond crowd ADR. Throughout post-production, sound designers continually decide what deserves the audience’s attention and what should remain part of the wider acoustic environment. A convincing soundtrack is not created through the accumulation of detail, but through the careful organisation of that detail into a coherent dramatic experience. Crowd performances occupy a role similar to ambience, Foley and environmental sound. They establish context, scale and emotional texture without constantly demanding attention. Their purpose is not to demonstrate how much work has been carried out, but to convince audiences that the world extending beyond the principal characters already exists. Like every other element of a soundtrack, their success depends upon supporting the story rather than competing with it.

    Towards the end of the lecture, discussion turned to the growing influence of artificial intelligence within the voice industry. Monteath acknowledged that AI is already beginning to affect areas such as commercial voice-over, where some clients have started experimenting with synthetic voices. He regarded crowd ADR rather differently. While aspects of the work may eventually become automated, authentic crowd performance depends upon subtle variations that emerge naturally whenever people work together. Voices change over the course of a recording session as performers become tired. Emotional intensity shifts between takes. Individual personalities influence rhythm, timing and vocal colour in ways that are difficult to predict or reproduce consistently. These variations might appear inconvenient from a purely technical perspective, yet they contribute directly to the richness, unpredictability and authenticity that audiences instinctively recognise as human. Technology will continue to evolve, though observation, collaboration and performance remain at the heart of believable sound design.

    For sound design students, perhaps the most valuable lesson lay in the way Monteath described his profession. Crowd ADR may appear to occupy the margins of post-production, hidden beneath dialogue, music and sound effects, yet it influences how audiences perceive almost every scene they watch. Every murmur in the background of a restaurant, every distant conversation in a station concourse and every carefully judged reaction during a moment of crisis contributes to the illusion that life continues beyond the frame. These performances do not simply fill silence. They create social spaces that feel inhabited, allowing viewers to concentrate on the story without questioning the reality of the world surrounding it.

    Throughout the lecture, Monteath returned repeatedly to one deceptively simple principle: “Context is king.” Crowd ADR succeeds not through memorable performances or individually recognisable voices, but through creating the impression that every environment extends beyond the limits of the frame. Every carefully judged laugh, argument, whispered conversation and fleeting reaction reinforces a believable social world without distracting from the principal narrative. For sound designers, this represents a broader lesson that reaches far beyond dialogue replacement. Successful audio is rarely measured by how noticeable it becomes. More often, it is measured by how completely it allows audiences to believe in the world they are experiencing. Crowd ADR exemplifies that philosophy. It remains one of the least visible aspects of professional sound design, yet it is also one of the crafts that most quietly transforms moving images into convincing places inhabited by believable people.

  • How Do You Make an Orchestra Fit Inside a Television Show? Phil McGowan on Recording, Mixing, and the Sound of Star Trek: Picard

    Phil McGowan

    How do you make an orchestra fit inside a television show?

    At first glance, the answer appears straightforward. Musicians gather in a studio, microphones are placed around the room, a conductor raises a baton, and the music is recorded. Yet during his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, recording and mixing engineer Phil McGowan revealed a process that is considerably more complex. Drawing upon his work on Star Trek: Picard, McGowan described a world of orchestral recording that combines musical performance, engineering, editing, production management, and problem-solving. By the end of the lecture, it became clear that recording an orchestra is only one small part of a much larger process. Throughout the lecture, McGowan repeatedly returned to the importance of preparation, organisation, and communication. Although microphones, software, and recording techniques played important roles, many of the challenges he described ultimately concerned coordinating people, decisions, and workflows across an unusually complex production process.

    McGowan began by introducing the recording sessions for the third season of Star Trek: Picard. Across ten episodes, the score was recorded using large orchestral forces, with most episodes featuring a sixty-five-piece ensemble recorded at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank. For the majority of the season, the orchestra was divided across separate recording sessions. Strings and woodwinds were recorded together, while brass was recorded later. Only the final episode brought the entire eighty-piece orchestra into the room simultaneously. Although audiences often imagine a film score as a single orchestra performing together, McGowan explained that modern production frequently relies upon these layered recording approaches. Recording sections separately provides greater flexibility during mixing while allowing music editors and dubbing mixers more control later in the production process.

    Yet even before a note is recorded, a surprising number of decisions have already been made. The placement of every section within the room affects both the recording and the eventual mix. Strings, woodwinds, brass, piano, harp, and other instruments each occupy carefully chosen positions. Microphone placement becomes equally important. Looking at the recording diagrams shown during the lecture, it was difficult not to be struck by the sheer number of microphones involved. Individual sections receive dedicated spot microphones, larger groups receive overhead microphones, and the entire orchestra is captured by an array of room microphones positioned high above the ensemble.

    What was particularly interesting, however, was McGowan’s repeated emphasis that the most important microphones are often not the closest ones. In a well-designed scoring stage, much of the orchestra’s character emerges from a relatively small number of carefully positioned room microphones. Spot microphones provide detail, definition, and control, though the overall impression of the orchestra often comes from the way the ensemble interacts with the acoustic space itself. Rather than constructing an orchestral sound entirely from individual instruments, the recording process begins with capturing the orchestra as a unified musical body.

    This relationship between detail and cohesion appeared repeatedly throughout the lecture. Modern recording technology allows engineers to place microphones extremely close to instruments. Individual players can be isolated with remarkable precision. Yet McGowan’s approach demonstrates considerable restraint. Spot microphones are available when needed, though many remain relatively low in the final mix. The objective is not to maximise separation. Instead, it is to preserve the sense that listeners are hearing a single orchestra performing together within a shared acoustic environment.

    Recording the orchestra is only the beginning. Once the sessions finish, the material enters a complex process of editing and mixing. Here, McGowan’s role becomes particularly interesting. The raw recordings arrive alongside extensive collections of programmed material supplied by the composer. Modern television scores often combine live orchestral recordings with sampled instruments, synthesizers, percussion libraries, pads, textures, and electronic elements. One of the mixer’s responsibilities is deciding how these different layers should coexist.

    What emerged from the lecture was a strong preference for using the live recordings whenever possible. Sampled instruments often provide useful support, additional weight, or subtle reinforcement, though McGowan repeatedly emphasised that the live orchestra remains the foundation of the sound. The samples are rarely intended to replace the musicians. Instead, they are carefully blended into the mix where appropriate.

    Organisation becomes essential at this stage. Large orchestral sessions generate enormous numbers of tracks. Strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, piano, harp, synthesizers, effects, and auxiliary elements all require separate management. McGowan demonstrated how sessions are organised into stems, allowing different components of the score to be adjusted independently later in the production process. These stems become particularly important when the music eventually reaches the dubbing stage, where it must coexist with dialogue, sound effects, Foley, ambience, and every other element of the soundtrack.

    This relationship between music and the rest of the soundtrack formed one of the most revealing parts of the discussion. Audiences often imagine that a score reaches the screen in essentially the same form in which it leaves the recording studio. McGowan demonstrated that the reality is considerably more complicated. The music mixer occupies a position between composition and final dubbing, shaping material that must eventually coexist with dialogue, Foley, ambience, sound effects, and every other component of the soundtrack.

    This creates an unusual challenge. During the mixing process, the final soundtrack often does not yet exist. Dialogue may still be evolving. Effects tracks may be incomplete. Editorial changes may continue arriving. The mixer therefore works partly with the present version of the programme and partly with an anticipated future version. Decisions must account not only for what is currently on screen but also for what will eventually happen when the material reaches the dubbing stage.

    In this sense, music mixing becomes an act of translation. The composer’s intentions need to remain intact, though they must also survive the practical realities of television production. A passage that sounds spectacular in isolation may compete with dialogue once the final soundtrack is assembled. A delicate orchestral texture may disappear beneath effects. A dramatic crescendo may need flexibility if the editorial structure changes. The mixer therefore balances musical priorities with narrative requirements, ensuring that the score remains expressive while still serving the larger needs of the programme.

    McGowan described the importance of communication throughout this process. Conversations with composers, music editors, producers, and re-recording mixers help establish how the material will ultimately be used. Stem structures become especially valuable here. By separating different orchestral and electronic elements into organised groups, later stages of production retain the flexibility needed to support storytelling decisions. What appears to be a purely technical workflow is therefore deeply connected to narrative concerns.

    Seen in this light, the music mixer occupies a remarkably important position within the production chain. The role involves much more than balancing levels or applying plug-ins. It requires understanding composition, orchestration, recording, editing, post-production, and storytelling simultaneously. The objective is not simply to make the music sound good. The objective is to ensure that the music can fulfil its dramatic function once every other element of the soundtrack is finally assembled.

    Questions of storytelling therefore remain central throughout the process. Although the lecture contained detailed discussions of microphones, reverbs, routing structures, and plug-ins, these technical topics were rarely presented as ends in themselves. Instead, they were framed as tools supporting dramatic communication. Reverb is not merely an acoustic effect. It helps create scale, atmosphere, and emotional character. Stem structures are not simply organisational devices. They provide flexibility for storytelling. Even microphone choices ultimately serve narrative goals.

    A particularly striking example emerged in McGowan’s discussion of reverberation. For Star Trek: Picard, the production deliberately embraced a more expansive orchestral sound inspired by earlier generations of science-fiction scoring. Rather than pursuing absolute clarity or dryness, the score was allowed to inhabit larger acoustic spaces. The resulting sound connects contemporary production practices with earlier traditions of science-fiction scoring associated with composers such as Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner. Listening to McGowan describe these decisions, it became clear that technical choices often carry historical and aesthetic significance as well.

    The lecture also offered a fascinating glimpse into the practical realities of large-scale media production. Television schedules are rarely generous. Recording sessions must fit within union regulations, musicians’ availability, studio bookings, editorial deadlines, and dubbing schedules. Scores are often recorded while other parts of the production remain unfinished. Picture edits may continue evolving. Visual effects may still be in development. Deadlines continue approaching regardless.

    Under such conditions, consistency becomes invaluable. McGowan described how recording setups, templates, routing structures, and mixing approaches are designed to remain stable across multiple episodes. Establishing reliable systems allows creative decisions to happen more efficiently. Rather than reinventing workflows repeatedly, engineers can focus their attention on the musical and dramatic needs of each project.

    Another recurring theme throughout the lecture was collaboration. Large orchestral productions depend upon extensive networks of expertise. Composers, orchestrators, contractors, recording engineers, Pro Tools operators, music editors, re-recording mixers, musicians, producers, and showrunners all contribute to the final result. No individual controls every aspect of the process. Instead, successful productions emerge through coordination between specialists whose work overlaps at crucial moments.

    Listening to McGowan describe recording sessions, one gains a strong sense of the trust involved. Musicians are trusted to perform complex scores with remarkable efficiency. Engineers are trusted to capture those performances accurately. Music editors are trusted to manage revisions and conforming. Dubbing mixers are trusted to integrate the score into the larger soundtrack. The finished music reflects not only technical skill but also a highly collaborative production culture.

    Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the lecture was the way it challenged romantic ideas about orchestral recording. Popular accounts often focus on dramatic moments: the orchestra enters the room, the conductor raises a baton, and the music comes to life. Those moments certainly exist. Yet McGowan’s account suggests that the real craft often lies elsewhere. It lies in preparation, organisation, consistency, communication, editing, and the countless small decisions that allow large productions to function successfully.

    Looking back across the lecture, what emerges most clearly is not simply a story about recording orchestras. It is a story about connecting different stages of a creative process. Recording sessions, editing workflows, stem preparation, music mixing, and final dubbing all form part of a chain in which every decision influences what follows. Managing that chain requires technical expertise, though it also requires communication, anticipation, and an understanding of how music functions within narrative storytelling. Every stage of the process involves balancing competing demands. Technical precision must coexist with musical expression. Flexibility must coexist with consistency. Individual details must support larger dramatic goals. The orchestra must sound impressive in its own right while still serving the needs of the programme.

    For students interested in recording, mixing, or film music production, this may be the lecture’s most valuable lesson. Technology remains important. Microphones matter. Software matters. Recording techniques matter. Yet none of these elements exist in isolation. They are part of a larger system whose purpose is ultimately narrative. The audience does not hear microphone placements, stem structures, or routing templates. They hear music supporting a story.

    For Phil McGowan, the challenge is not simply recording an orchestra. The challenge is shaping hundreds of performances, thousands of audio tracks, and countless technical decisions into something that helps bring a fictional world to life. By the time audiences sit down to watch Star Trek: Picard, most of that work has become invisible. The orchestra feels as though it simply belongs there. Achieving that illusion, however, requires an extraordinary amount of craft.

  • Sound Advice: John Rodda’s Insights into Production Mixing

    John Rodda’s online guest lecture offered an engaging and in-depth exploration of the world of production sound mixing, drawing from his extensive experience across film and television. With a career spanning 35 years and work in over 40 countries, John has established himself as a leading figure in the industry, contributing to productions ranging from documentaries and dramas to major feature films. His lecture provided a rare glimpse into the craft, techniques, and challenges of capturing high-quality audio on set.

    John Rodda

    A Journey Through Sound

    John began by sharing his journey into sound mixing, highlighting how his background in theatre and electronics laid the foundation for his work in film and television. His early experiences included building computers in the late 1970s and working on corporate films and news coverage before transitioning into drama and feature films. He detailed how he navigated the industry at a time when union regulations created significant barriers for newcomers, requiring perseverance and adaptability to succeed.

    Key Roles in Production Sound

    John emphasised the collaborative nature of sound production, highlighting the distinct but interdependent roles within the department:

    • Production Sound Mixer: Oversees all aspects of sound recording on set, ensuring high-quality dialogue capture. They operate the primary recording equipment, balance microphone levels, and collaborate with the director to maintain the intended audio aesthetic. Additionally, they liaise with post-production teams by providing properly labelled sound files and detailed reports.
    • Boom Operator: Responsible for positioning the boom microphone to capture dialogue while staying out of the frame. They must anticipate actor movements, adjust positioning accordingly, and minimise unwanted noise. Boom operators often work in challenging conditions, ensuring optimal sound capture in dynamic filming environments.
    • Sound Assistant: Supports both the mixer and boom operator by setting up equipment, managing cables, placing wireless microphones on actors, and troubleshooting technical issues. They also help maintain sound logs and ensure the smooth operation of the sound department throughout filming.

    Each of these roles contributes to delivering clear, high-quality audio, ultimately enhancing the storytelling experience.

    Adapting to Industry Changes

    John reflected on the evolution of sound recording technology, from mono Nagra tape recorders to sophisticated multi-track digital systems. He discussed how advancements such as wireless microphones and timecode synchronisation have improved sound recording flexibility while accommodating modern filmmaking techniques, including multi-camera setups and wide-and-tight shot combinations. Current industry hardware has significantly improved efficiency and reliability, with modern digital recorders offering multi-track recording, high-resolution audio, integrated timecode systems, and advanced metadata management, enabling seamless file transfers to post-production. Wireless microphone systems now feature extended range, improved RF stability, and digital encryption, enhancing dialogue capture even in challenging environments. Additionally, timecode synchronisation tools ensure frame-accurate alignment between cameras and audio recorders, streamlining workflows and making location sound recording more adaptable for complex setups.

    Challenges and Solutions in Sound Mixing

    John provided practical examples of overcoming sound challenges on set. While working on Downton Abbey, he had to radio mic every actor to meet the director’s preference for unrestricted camera movement. The historical costumes posed additional difficulties in concealing microphones without compromising sound quality. To mitigate these issues, he collaborated with the wardrobe team and developed discreet mic placements that preserved clarity while remaining hidden.

    Another notable example involved a dinner scene, where the clinking of silverware risked overpowering dialogue. John strategically positioned boom microphones and used lavalier mics hidden within costumes to isolate voices while maintaining natural ambiance.

    Similarly, while working on Shackleton, extreme cold conditions threatened equipment functionality. He employed insulated batteries and performed regular system checks to ensure uninterrupted recording.

    For Airport, John devised a wireless timecode system that allowed independent sound recording, enabling him to position himself optimally while the camera moved freely in a busy airport setting.

    Memorable Projects and Industry Recognition

    John shared stories from notable projects, including The Fifth Estate, Longitude, and Shackleton. Longitude, a historical drama, posed unique challenges in capturing the sound of intricate mechanical clockwork, which was integral to the story. In The Fifth Estate, which dealt with the WikiLeaks controversy, he had to navigate fast-paced newsroom settings and international locations, ensuring clear dialogue in constantly shifting environments. His ability to adapt to different genres and production styles has earned him industry recognition, including a BAFTA for Airport and a nomination for Paddington Green. John also spoke about his time on 24: Live Another Day, where he balanced complex action sequences with high-pressure recording environments, demonstrating how experience and quick thinking are essential for a sound mixer.

    Advice for Aspiring Sound Professionals

    John advised aspiring professionals to develop technical skills, gain hands-on experience, and build strong working relationships within the industry. He stressed that attention to detail is key, as minor sound issues can become major post-production problems. He recommended learning about different recording techniques, experimenting with mic placement, and understanding the physics of sound to become a well-rounded professional.

    He also highlighted the importance of being adaptable and proactive. On sets where unexpected technical issues arise, being able to think on one’s feet and offer quick solutions is invaluable. He recalled an instance on 24 when a hidden microphone placement failed during a take, requiring an immediate, seamless backup solution to avoid disrupting the shoot.

    Additionally, he encouraged those entering the field to shadow experienced professionals, seek mentorship opportunities, and remain up to date with industry advancements. Sound recording techniques and equipment continue to evolve, and staying informed about the latest innovations ensures ongoing career growth.

    Conclusion

    John Rodda’s lecture provided invaluable insights into the world of production sound mixing. His extensive experience and practical knowledge underscored the critical role of sound in storytelling. As technology continues to evolve, his insights serve as a testament to the enduring importance of high-quality sound in film and television. For those looking to enter the field, his expertise offered both inspiration and guidance, reinforcing the idea that persistence, adaptability, and a strong technical foundation are crucial to success.