Originally posted on Broadcast Tech
Picture Shop completed audio post on the Motive Pictures production.
Picture Shop has completed audio post on upcoming five-part crime noir drama Get Millie Black, which is now available on HBO in the US and will come to Channel 4 in the UK next year.
The Motive Pictures production spans two very different worlds; London, UK, and Kingston, Jamaica, as an ex-Scotland Yard detective returns to Kingston to work in missing persons and finds herself on a quest to solve a case that will blow her world apart. The majority of the show was shot in Kingston. Downtown Kingston is a vivid and vibrant place which created opportunities and challenges for the sound team, which was headed up by re-recording mixers Gareth Bull and Gibran Farrah at Picture Shop in London. Bull and Farrah mixed the audio in 5.1 using ProTools on an Avid S6 console.
The diverse locations demanded a rich and multilayered soundscape. Entrusted with this challenge was Picture Shop’s London-based sound editorial headed up by sound supervisor Tom Jenkins and dialogue supervisor Timor Oren, with work taking place over many months at the post house’s Lexington St. facility.
One of the key sound challenges was retaining dialogue clarity in busy urban locations, which was made more complicated by having to manage a mixture of patois and regional accents. The team used noise reduction tools such as Hush Pro to retain some location material, which would have otherwise been unusable. However, there was still a sizeable technical ADR count and creative ADR requests, which would involve main cast based both in the UK and in Kingston.
Cast leads were UK and New York based, and their ADR was recorded in Picture Shop’s London ADR studios on Lexington St. and in New York with Picture Shop supervising remotely. A majority of the cast were based in Jamaica and to facilitate their ADR sessions the Picture Shop sound team worked closely with Creative Sounds, a recording studio based in Kingston. As these ADR sessions were so pivotal to the show, production decided to send Farrah and ADR supervisor Kallis Shamaris to oversee and record the sessions along with HBO’s production team. To ensure a seamless workflow, Picture Shop’s engineering team built a bespoke portable ADR kit that matched its London studio. This kit was then used by the team to adapt Creative Sounds’ studio to better suit a broadcast ADR setup, whereupon the Kingston based actors could then work their magic.
Gena Desclos, EVP of post production at HBO/Max, commented: “Picture shop sound in London did an amazing job enhancing the beautiful sounds and dialog of Jamaica. This was a particularly challenging assignment for the mixer, sound and ADR editors but between the work they did in both London and Kingston, the sound of the show is authentic, rich, and vibrant.”
Exec producer Jami O’Brien added, “It was a pleasure working with Gareth Bull, Gibran Farrah, Ben Tat, Kallis Shamaris, and the entire Picture Shop team in both London and Kingston. Their professionalism and technical expertise were matched only by their artistry and creative enthusiasm. They did miraculous work capturing and seamlessly mixing the show’s substantial ADR and local sound, always with keen instinct for performance and authenticity - whether that meant working with our cast in London, New York, and Kingston, or capturing an impromptu loop group session at Creative Sounds in Jamaica. Truly a fantastic team.”