Post-production company Post Logic Studios (Hollywood) has completed audio mixing and finishing for many reality and variety television programs, such as The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Who Wants to Marry MyDad, Project Greenlight, The Jamie Kennedy Experiment and many others.
The company’s audio division assigns a dedicated audio specialist to see aproject through from beginning to end. Based on the company’s history withsound for reality and variety programs, mixers Connor Moore, Fred Howard, Jamie Ledner and Andy Griffith are well-versed in tackling the heavy dialog editing, noise reduction, mixing and music editorial that is required on these shows, and take advantage of the on-site Avid Symphony and telecine bays.
According to Ledner, “A show like Who Wants to Marry My Dad will run a six- to eight-episode arc that comes to a closely guarded surprise ending. Because the producers do not want the finished shows languishing in post, they are often cut and finished just days prior to air. All of the audio is unscripted, with anywhere from five to 20 people miked remotely, so one of the main issues we face is cleaning up noise and zeroing in on what is important and allowing that to be heard.”
The Jamie Kennedy Experiment is a hidden-camera show that features a combination of actors alongside everyday people who end up as the target(s)of a given gag. In most circumstances, these individuals can’t be miked, so mixer Howard must rely on creative methods to elevate the sound of their voices in post. “We frequently dust things off via sound editing, usually through a balance of editing and mixing. If these traditional techniques prove to be unsatisfactory, we’ll go to whatever lengths necessary using plug-ins or outboard processing as required. As a result, we are able to restore audio clips and eliminate the need to use subtitles that may have been inserted prior to the audio edit. Ultimately, because we’ve done so many years of this type of work, there are well-developed solutions and sensibilities to apply to the audio problems we regularly encounter on these shows.”
Moore has been doing the audio mix for The Bachelor and The Bachelorette since these programs first premiered. He is currently working on The Bachelor and High School Reunion. “A lot of the shots are captured in unpredictable environments, with radical extremes of level and background noise. On The Bachelor, there is always the inevitable ‘fountain shot,’ where people are conversing and the sound of rushing water is as loud as the dialog. These are always tricky sequences that require a lot of smoothing.”
For more information about Post Logic Studios, visit www.postlogic.com.
