With last season’s Emmy win under their belts, the Black Sails sound editing team takes a stab at another. In consideration this year is the Season 2 finale of the Starz original series, titled “XVIII.” Helming the show’s post sound is supervising sound editor Benjamin Cook, based out of 424 Post in Los Angeles. Cook gave us the details on the post sound workflow for the Emmy-nominated episode, along with a peek at Season 3.
Episode “I” took home the Emmy for series sound editing last year, and now you’re back with another nomination. How has the show grown sound-wise since Season 1?
There are always new places. There are new ships. The upcoming season has some new exciting places that we’ve never been before, which I can’t reveal, but they’re super exciting. They built two more ship sets, and we do our best to make each ship have unique sounds, to differentiate between the various types of ships. Also, for the upcoming season, we will be in more places on the interior of the island, outside of Nassau. So there are a lot of good things in store for Season 3.
Many of the same sound effects crew – Jeff Pitts, Brett Voss, and Jeff Wilhoit on Foley – have been with you since the very first episode. What do you feel you’ve learned together as a team?
It was all of the same people and the same Foley crew, with the exception of one of our Foley walkers, who passed away. But Jeff Wilhoit’s son filled in and they do a great job. The Foley team and Brett Voss were also nominated for an Emmy for their work on Game of Thrones. Working together this long, we have a consistency for sound, which helps with speed. Everyone knows the expectation level for the show and what the producers want. It makes the process go a lot smoother.
For Season 3, we brought in a new production mixer, Brian Milliken, and that was a big change. The production tracks sound fantastic, and so we’re super excited about that. As you know, we have a lot of production sound issues on the show. They are landlocked. They shoot it all at a studio in Cape Town, South Africa. They’re only about 100 yards from a freeway there, so traffic is always an issue. Then of course, you have to worry about all the modern sounds creeping into your soundtrack, because this is a period show.
Did series creators Robert Levine and Jonathan Steinberg change their approach to the show once they experienced the awesome sound you and your team can craft?
From day one they have really given me carte blanche to do whatever I think the show requires. They have an idea of what they want it to sound like, but they really gave me a huge amount of freedom and creative leeway. Initially, I gave them a lot of temp material that they could put into their Avid while they were cutting, so there weren’t a huge amount of surprises for the mix. The material I sent them to use in the cutting room was the same material that they used for the final soundtrack. Of course it was built out bigger and then mixed into a 7.1 environment, so it changed in that respect. A lot of the sounds were the same but there were just more of them, wider, and more around you for a more immersive experience.
We hear everything from chair creaks and chain rattles to cannon balls smashing into buildings in each episode. Tell us about the Foley workload for the show.
The show has a lot of Foley in general because it’s a period piece, and we’re dealing with a lot of textures like leather, metal from the swords, and ropes. There are a lot of different surfaces, from the boat to the floor in the tavern. You want different areas to sound different so the Foley team has their work cut out for them. They’ve done a great job, even differentiating areas on the ship. In the tavern, there is a wood deck that goes around the outside, and on the ground level, the floor is dirt and stone. It’s multitiered, so the team is constantly paying attention to where people are walking and where they are stepping down. It’s those details you don’t really perceive, but they just add to the realism of the show.
The backgrounds are filled with great boat creaks and ocean sounds. Are those field recordings, SFX libraries, or Foley?
All of the above. There are field recordings of a tall ship I recorded in Australia. The sound effects editor, Jeff Pitts, and I built a rig with ropes and pulleys, and that is a huge element for the ship sounds, and is always a part of the soundscape for the boats. There is Foley, and there are library sounds in there as well. It’s a combination of all of those things. It’s a very densely built show, probably one of the biggest builds for TV. We rival mini movies. The sound effects re-recording mixer, Mathew Waters, has his hands full and he really does an excellent job. He mixes Game of Thrones as well, so he’s used to having that much material and understands the level of show that we are trying to produce. He does an amazing job on the effects mixing.
On the first episode of Season 2, there is a fantastic opening sequence where they introduce Captain Ned Low [Tadhg Murphy]. There are so many neat things that happen in that sequence. It starts off with the sails slapping and it’s all around you. You’re enveloped in white and you don’t really know what it is. Then that transitions into a white surrender flag that you can see, and it pans down to a ship’s deck, and another ship comes in off-screen. That was all built with sound. There were no visuals for that. There was also very little music in that scene. It’s so full of tiny details, like when Ned Low walks across the screen, and there is a little wisp of wind that blows his hair. It’s a very light sound, very subtle, and it plays so beautifully. Matt did a fantastic job on the mix.
In “XVIII,” tension steadily grows from that first, quiet piano note until the moment when cannon balls strike Charleston. How did you use sound to build the tension throughout the episode?
At the very beginning, we used a lot of cicadas throughout the first half of the show in Charleston, and they ramp up. We used dog barks, and when Captain Vane [Zach McGowan] appears, we used dogs fighting, very subtly, off in the distance. Little touches like that really help to amp up the tension in a way you don’t perceive. They were just light little touches. We did some things with the cicadas where their pitch was rising as we were going through the scene. So it starts off in a lower pitch, and it gradually gets higher. It’s imperceptible but it’s enough that you get this forward momentum feel from it. We tried to do as many things like that as we could to constantly build that tension up to the moment when Silver [Luke Arnold] gets his leg cut off. When they pick up the axe, for example, we made the pick-up sound big. Just little things like that to really accentuate specific moments above the norm, to add a heightened sense to those effects.
In “XVIII,” there are two battles happening simultaneously: one on a ship and one in Charleston. What was the direction for sound during that sequence?
We’re always trying to keep it frenetic, so that was really the goal: to keep the energy level up, and to keep building the excitement and the tension. We’re always looking for ways to push the action forward. For sounds in a fight, like musket shots or sword hits, we might be accenting certain things to push that action forward. For example, there are some great sounds in the sequence when they bust the door down on the ship to get into the captain’s cabin to rescue Silver. They roll in these grenades, like smoke bombs, and it’s a sound we used on Season 1. It’s a great sound.
For the rolling sound of the grenades, one of the elements in there is a sound I recorded in my house. My upstairs bathroom has wood floors and so I set up mics close to the ceiling downstairs, under those wood floors, and rolled different dumbbells, some that were smooth and others that weren’t, which made a nice ‘ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk’ sound. We have a lot of opportunities to do extra recording for the show to gather new and interesting material, and that was one of the great sounds.
Another great example is the storm sequence in Season 1, where we recorded waves against windows. We sprayed water and threw buckets of water on windows. They were subtle sounds, really just different textures that make the overall sound for the show pop.
In “XVIII,” during the initial attack on Charleston, Flint [Toby Stephens] and Vane are fighting their way back to the ship, and the sounds are very loud and present. This contrasts with the final attack scenes where the top-end is rolled off, and it feels more surreal. Was that creative decision made during the mix, or was that an idea that was discussed during the design?
That was discussed in the design, and came from [executive producer Jonathan]Steinberg’s head. For that sound, he was really specific. He said he wanted it to sound almost like popcorn. That final attack is a very muted sound. We built everything out so that we could play anything they wanted as loud or soft as they liked. But keeping in mind that the top was going to be rolled-off, we knew the cannon blasts had to be a certain way, and so we had real elements in there but also elements that were a transition between the real and the surreal. A lot of that was designed from the get-go.
What was your favorite scene to design in “XVIII”?
The town run-through. I love that ‘under-the-helmet feeling.’ I did the sound for HBO’s The Pacific and it was a very similar idea. You always try to make it feel like you are right there in the action versus watching it. I use a lot of stereo sounds, and even five channel or seven channel sounds, that normally you just might use a mono sound for, so that it feels wider and more immersive. For a sound you might only have in the center channel, I expanded that around the room just so you feel like you’re in it more. The Foley on that run-through section was great. The guys are in shackles and there is some amazing detail for that in the sound. I love how the cannons turned out, and the muskets, and the guns. They all sound really good. I’m really proud of the whole thing. Also, I love the beginning of the episode with the single piano note and the door creak and the cicadas that change pitch. So there are quite a few things I love in that episode.
In the final moments of the episode, Max [Jessica Parker Kennedy] is bathed in the glow of all that gold. If you had a boat load of Spanish gold what would you do with it?
I would probably have to give most of it away. I wouldn’t know what to do with that much money. It brings nothing but trouble, that’s for sure, as people will find out in Season 3. It brings nothing but heartache and grief. Temporary pleasure? Maybe. But in the end….