220 - The Last Of Us

[music] Your listening to Tom Benders, the Sound Designers podcast. Let's do this. [music] Hello and welcome to Tom Benders, where we talk with the Sonic artists behind our favorite films, series and games. My name is Tim Meerhead and I will be your host today as we talk about the show that everyone seems to be watching and chatting about around their dinner table. HBO is the last of us. The series is based on the massive video game of the same title and follows characters as they navigate a world trying to survive an outbreak that turns infected into monsters intent on killing everything in sight. But what separates the last of us from other clashes of the undead is that the clash of the undead is not the featured attraction but an added benefit. The character development is what's front and center and the action sequences serve to teach us new things about Joel and Ellie as they work their way across the country. In one episode, a character, Frank, says paying attention to things is how we show love. Well, the sound team must have loved it because the detail in this series is eminently impressive. Every scene is filled with audio details that make the moment stick. Joining us today is Supervising Sound Editor Michael Benavente and Chris Patalia. They're both with me in person at Formosa Group in Hollywood on stage two. Michael Benavente is the Supervising Sound Editor. It's nice to meet you Michael. How are you today? I'm good and glad to be here. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Chris Patalia is a sound designer on the last of us. Thanks for joining us Chris. It's nice to finally meet you. Nice to finally meet you too. This show, as I mentioned in the intro, is become like a worldwide phenomenon. It's something that everyone is talking about right now. The podcast, Tom Benavente, sent out a tweet asking if anybody had any questions for you. We found that the answers, the responses we got were global. From all around the world. I thought that maybe I'd use some of their questions to frame this interview. The first one I think is kind of an obvious one from two Daniels, one in Cambridge, UK, and one in Denmark. What kind of conversation did you have with the audio team from the game before you started working on this? It was at least on my end. It was pretty minimal, but you had some experience with them Chris. Yeah, I have some friends who were actually worked on the last of us two and some friends who worked on the last of us one. I had a lot of conversations with them about the game, about the world and about their intent and about the infected and about just everything that really went into the game and how they brought it to life. I was able to interpret that and translate it into trying to make it work cinematically for television. It was actually a lot of conversations mainly about making sure that the world is worn and rusted and decayed and that the ambiences and the doors and just everything and the effects really reflected that. Then on the infected side, it was mainly Christopher Hoon who designed those. He had a bunch of conversations with them and big shout outs to Jesse Garcia and both Jimenez and Phil Covats who really steered us into being able to translate that. Then on the Uid set in your introduction, you used the term monster and you just used the term infected and that was kind of monster was really wrong. It's trying to stay away from the word zombie. I was told I couldn't use the word zombie. The Craig Mason, the creator of the show, the wonderful talent of the creator of the show. He sort of let us know early on when we weren't quite going the right direction sometimes. These are human beings who are infected. That's why they hit and it's all stems from them struggling to breathe. The cordyceps go into their lungs and their brains and we had to make them sound human. I have mild asthma and my wife has very bad asthma and I know what that sounds like when you're having a really bad asthma attack. That's what I kept thinking we should go that direction. These are not supernatural creatures. These are human beings who are sick. That's why we tried to keep them as human sounding as possible. Let's explore that further. The sounds of the infected. It sounds very similar to the game. It's not the same sounds as the game. Is that correct? Phil and Misty, the two actors who did most of the clicker voices, I believe. I wasn't there for the game. We recorded them on an ADR stage and we had them watch scenes. Craig gave them direction to try things differently and then Christopher, who had a kit with their voices. Craig did some clicker type voices. Chris didn't clicker type voices on the tree if you did or not. As far as the clickers, we knew that there were legions of fans who knew that sound. If we were slightly off, we'd get shit. We still had to remain cinematic because this is a different medium that went you would play a video game up with. We basically tried to stay true to that sound so that the audience wouldn't say, "That's not right." They haven't. They really love the sound of that. That sequence in the museum with the clickers is one of the most things I'm most proud of that I've done because it just really. I watch it over and over. I have a nice, elaborate, loud, most thing at home and I love it there. I watched it in my editing room here and it's just really, really clever and makes me proud. Yeah, I think the big thing was the intent of that game and how translating that to. So it's like making sure that, as Michael was saying, just making sure that those sounds were really authentic and honoring that game. Those game sounds are so visceral and they really affected me as a huge fan of the game and as a player. I know that Chris Turhun put a ton of work in making sure that it was really honoring that while really translating that to the screen and making sure that each moment really played as a great moment of television and to tell the story in each little section. It was a really difficult task, I know, from just talking to him. I wish he was here to talk more about it for himself but just making sure that, as Michael said, that we're really just doing those sounds justice while also telling the story of Joel and Ellie in that museum and those clickers and later on. That scene in particular is about three people being as quiet as they can. Joel, Ellie and Tess, knowing that if they make one vibration or sound or footstep, which they do, it will draw the attention of something not so great. It will come get them. I like the difference between these sounds that the clickers are making and the quiet. I think it's great. Speaking about that scene, Frank Martin wrote to us from San Francisco when other productions would have put in emotional music. You guys were brave enough to keep silence. But silence is never actually silent. So do you want to talk about how you build silence without being silent? Well, in that museum because it's sort of been bombarded a bit, there's lots of holes in the walls and the ceiling and you see the ceiling collapse just before the clicker scene. Just hearing a little bit of air and the wind comes through the walls and drips. Those are not loud sounds, but they can be frightening, especially if you're trying to be quiet. Yeah, along those lines, one of the things that was really challenging, I think, throughout the show in general, but especially in that episode that you're talking about episode two, is making sure that each of the buildings felt really separate and different as they went from abandoned building to abandoned building. And that building, the museum, we really designed as an old, creaky, wooden, New England building, you know, something that could have been around from the 1700s, 1800s. And so that quiet is, but it's been left. You know, it's been abandoned. It's been just not taken care of. So we really built in the quiet with tons of little wood creaks and dust. And as they try and move along, like to avoid the clickers in that section, just making sure that every little section and every little sound really played to ground it and to show that it's quiet. You know, you don't really hear tiny scuffs or tiny little pieces of glass debris or even like a very small wood creek unless everything else around it is really quiet. If there's guns or something, you're not going to hear somebody step on a floor. But if they're really creeping, there was a lot of attention to detail to make sure that the space and the quietness was built in with these tiny little sounds and just lots and lots of little details to try and bring that to life. And we have to give credit to our teacher recording mixer Mark Fisherman and Kevin Roach. They, you know, they just knocked it out of the park and every episode I felt, but especially in those scenes with the clickers where they had to juxtapose the quiet with the creatures and just the placement around the room is where they're coming from because, you know, these clickers can't see you, but they can hear you as if you were Joel or Tess or Ellie. They're coming at you from all directions and you never know where you're going to hear something, something scary. Yeah, the same way that we really put a lot of attention on the sound editorial and design side of small sounds. They put so much beautiful attention into dynamics and into space and to making sure that everything was kind of placed at the right distance and felt like you were in these real rooms. You know, so it's as Michael said huge amounts of credit to them. Chris, you said that you were a big fan of the game. Michael before we started recording you would mention that you had not played the game. How did you come to get on this project 20 years ago. I had worked on a couple of the scary movie parodies, you know, scary movie two and then I got hired on scary movie three, which was directed by David Zucker. And I had to go to parameters New Jersey for a preview. We all went to like, fun records or some hamburger place before the preview and I met this pretty smart gentleman who was sitting next to me. It was Greg Mason. He had written scary movie three and we kind of hit it off and you know, we had a desire to do that. The Astros preview that night and a lot of us, I didn't care about the Craig was there, not but we were saying it so ho-grand and got particularly hammered because the preview had not gone well. The movie ended up getting really good and being a big hit. But so anyway, I really like Craig. He's very smart. I've really educated just a really smart guy and I always am interested in smart people. And so then he wrote Scary Movie 4, which I also did. And then he directed a film, another parody called Superhero Movie, which is quite funny. And I did that. I realized that that mix that, you know, for being a comedy writer, Craig is really into sound. Even though it's a joky movie, he doesn't want the sound to be joky. It's gonna, you know, sound like a real great movie. And so it was a lot of work. I mean, it was challenging. He wrote another movie, Identity Thief, the Seth Gordon directed and I did that so we sort of reconnected a bit there. Then I saw Chernobyl, which they did all the post in UK. And I thought, wow, Craig's really up to his game. And man, I'd love to work for him again. So basically when I read, I think probably in the trades are on, you know, deadline that he was doing this thing based on a video game called The Last of Us, which, you know, I'm 66. I did not know really anything about that game. I'd heard of it, of course. I wrote him a note. I thought, I still had his email, even though we hadn't probably talked in 10 years. That guy wrote me back in five minutes and said, if I do the show in the States, we do post in California, you've got it. That was it. And it happened, you know, and stuff. So, and then I learned more about the game. I have a daughter-in-law who's a big gamer and she, you know, is her favorite thing. And so we talked, she and I talked about it a lot. So I feel really blessed that it kind of came my way. I think I did a good job, but it was, you know, I feel really blessed. And Chris, how did you get on the project? I was a huge huge fan of the game, you know, I was like, well, I'm replaying those games and I was just blown away by not only the sound, but also just the storytelling of those characters and that world and what they did in a game. And when I found out they were doing it as a TV, she was like, oh my God, I need to do this, you know. And so I basically found out that Michael was doing the show. I got recommended by some really good friends who put me forward and I spoke with Michael and we started working never since. It was really awesome. - So you hadn't worked together before this? - No, no, but you know, he had high recommendations and I also admired his persistence. You know, if I give any advice to anybody young, don't be obnoxious, but, you know, get in there and say, I really want to do the show. And here's why and why I want to do this film. And this is why and why. And this is why I want to work with you because of this and this and this. So he was very good at that, you know. I thought, well, if anybody is that persistent and loves something that much, they're gonna put that much energy and love into the work. So yeah, that's where we went. - So speaking of it being a game and bringing the idea of the game to the screen, I think it's episode four. There's a scene, it's a massive scene. The infected are attacking them outside of Kansas City. Our main character, Joel, is on the second floor of a house and taking out infected as they're attacking Ellie. That scene is a pretty good parallel for a scene that's in the game as well. Do you want to talk about maybe how the differences between the game and the way you approached it for the screen? Chris, do you want to tackle that first, maybe? - Sure. One of the things as a player in the game is that you're the one shooting that gun. It needs to be tactile and you need to feel the danger of the other people around you, but you need to feel it's you who's doing that action. And so the gun shot is very important, but you also need to hear that gun 500 times in 20 minutes or an hour or however long you're going to be using that gun in the game. Each gun shot individually, I feel, and it has a game, as a player, it's so visceral. But if you made that as big and crazy and intense as you possibly could in a game, it would probably blow out your speakers, but also just become a little bit obnoxious as you hear just this massive sound of like a thousand times. So I really talk about honoring and intent for the gameplay. And so the idea of like as a player that this sniper is so intense is we really wanted to make that sniper as physically intense as possible, both when they're getting shot at and when Joel's using it, and just making it punchy and big and impactful and feeling every single bullet and every single shot. And so that was the big thing that we really focused on was like we needed to make this feel like intense, you know? And as a viewer, I think that because like the linear media, you hear that moment once as opposed to the 500 times as a player. And so we can really push it even further and harder and bigger than I think any game possibly could without blowing out their players, you know? So that was the big direction there was we just wanted to make that feel like just massive and visceral, you know? - As somebody who didn't play the game, I saw it as a dramatic sequence where Joel is really protecting somebody he's sort of falling in love with, you know? Who he fought earlier up, so he's a lone man sitting, you know, I don't know how far away he is, but he's in the house down the block. He's gonna shoot as sharp as he can because he's got to protect Ellie. Even just his facial expression, I don't know how many dialogue there are great. He's so determined and that's what I love. And I think the sound of the guns and the way he fires shows his determination. - Yeah, I think also really were fortunate. The storytelling and the edit and how it was directed and how it was shot really allowed for us to tell that story of like of Joel protecting Ellie as much as he can. So, you know, we were able to, I feel like push sound in different directions and make things like hyper real or intense and then pull back and get that detail just based off of how well this was made from all the other filmmakers. - Yeah, I think also because Ellie figures out quite quickly what Joel is doing as she's going through the crowd. So then she becomes a protector of Sam and I just, I like all that stuff. That was pretty cool. - I think the best part about the whole series too is I think you touched on it earlier. Obviously we're talking about the infected because it's such an exciting sequence. But the core of it is those characters in that story and their connection. And I think that's what makes this really stand out is beyond anything. It's just that story between those two people in this really abandoned, you know, destroyed world. Part of the job that the sound on the show has to do is tell a lot of kind of the undercurrent of emotions 'cause a lot of times our main character Joel, he's not the most talkative character that's ever been in a series. A lot of his emotions are all just through his facial expressions and sound has to support that. One of the ways it does that is with the ambiences. And the ambiences I imagine were not simple 'cause this is a world with no airplanes. - No, the world with freeways. - Yeah, the freeways are all shut down. It leaves you with wins and your creativity. - How do you? What else do you do here? Do you wanna talk about how you approach the audience? - I loved it because we can have these quiet moments and these simple sounds can cut through when most products I work on, they can't. There are a lot of scenes where, especially when they're on the balcony, I can't remember what episode that is looking down and they're infected. And if you saw their hair tussled a bit, then we wanna make sure we heard that sound, which a lot of times you can't hear, put in. All that stuff cut through, I've talked a few times about Craig Mazin and he's so great because he would ask us, we had this beautiful, fully-jobbed by Randy Wilson and his crew in Toronto and let's hear glass under those four particular footsteps. Let's hear a leaf crunch under those four particular footsteps. That's something most filmmakers don't get into, at least in my experience. And with Craig, he just, even though he's his great writer, he's also this great lover of sound and he just wanted all that stuff and it's a lot of work for us. So now we gotta do more footsteps with glass. But once we figured out his MO, it was, you know, brought us a lot of joy to make that happen because you'd actually heard it. - As you said, all that stuff brought a lot of emotion and detail and it told you a lot about the world. I mean, you were talking about wins. We spent a lot of time with wins. And as Michael said, we cut every single hair gust and every time you see something like blow, we made sure that we heard it because those quiet moments allowed us to build in a lot of detail and emotion. You know, abandoned buildings, everything. - Yeah, all those abandoned buildings creaked and they moaned and they rattled and every single thing had to feel dusty. So very, very early on before I even, before I think we had a frame of picture. I went out with two amazing recorded skypacquen and Christopher Fleeger out into the desert. We recorded abandoned buildings and we recorded junk and trash and, you know, old barns and you know, just metal, just abandoned scrap metal and sheet metal that had been left around. And these amazing textures that we were able to, then later on use as the basis for a lot of our spaces to try and sell all this quiet and the emotion of these scenes too, you know, like making sure that our insects and our birds were all right and real. And we, there's a lot of attention put in to make sure that if you're in Boston, you know, and it's one of the difficult things is a lot of these episodes don't have rear-current locations. You know, every single location is different in each episode and the time periods are different, whether that's, you know, fall into the, a nice spring or into the summer or into the deep, deep winter and snow. So we just really try to make sure like we're in, we're in New England in the fall. What does that sound like? You know, what is Texas in the summer or the spring sound like? What does this snow sound like when it's in the dead of winter and Colorado? Just putting that a lot of attention into that detail to try and bring that world in the emotion for those scenes. You know, I'm a Southern California boy so I don't know from snow very much. I mean, obviously I've been to snow. But I loved the cold sounds we came up with and these guys Chris and Gain came up with just because I felt the temperature drop even though it was all sonic. I don't know if snow really makes a sound when it falls but it does in our show and I believe it. Yeah, I was really proud of all the backgrounds and like Chris said, we were in a different location every week so it wasn't like the Seven Kingdoms where you go back and forth. You know, we just, we had to come up with something new, but it had to sound desolate every time. And it's hard to come up with a different desolation sound every week, but I think we pretty much nailed it. We'll see what season two does, but, you know, I think we're all, yeah, so. - There's a recurring motif, maybe, where Joel, our main character, has a panic attack. Visually, all he's doing is kind of leaning against a pole. The whole idea of the panic attack is all told through sound. Everything goes internal all of a sudden. Outside of the panic attacks, there's an external world. - You know, I would love to take credit for all that, but I think it all comes from Craig. Like that was, that was shaped really early from when we saw, like, and how he was designing those scenes. Craig, Maze and the show, on a really new ahead of time, but that's how those were gonna be played. That came to us in a shape. We're able to just enhance and play with, but all those ideas were presented ahead of time. - The tracks we got from the picture I didn't crew were pretty phenomenal. And we had an order to stick to them, and we did. But they were a great guide. We just expanded on them and, okay, this is what they did here. What can we do to give the same vibe, but just maybe up our game a little bit. So I really give credit to the pictures and their tracks were beautiful. - Another thing that stuck out to me, give a little background. We're recording the day after the MPSC Golden Real Awards. Last night, I was at the awards and I talked to your Foley team. And they told me that they were super happy with how loud the Foley played. I mean, maybe not loud, but how clear. - Yeah. - Clear, the Foley played. Was that a plan right away? Or did that evolve as they're showing on? - You know, Randy Wilson, like I said, his team in Toronto did all the Foley and they're terrific. I tried to use them as often as I can because they just do such detailed, beautiful work no matter what your budget is. They've really helped me out on smaller budget films. And the mixer, Kevin Rochart, effects mixer constantly said, "Who are these guys?" "This is some of the best Foley I've ever had "and I did under the banner of heaven before this "and I got the same thing from the mixer." It was like, "I love this Foley. "It's just so detailed." And when it's good, you want to use it and you can use it. It's not intrusive. It's not over the top. It doesn't sound fake. Randy and his team just really nailed it. I even cragged, "Mason, like the Foley." He was commenting on how good it was. So, you know, directors never commented Foley. - No. - But it was so beautiful. And it really worked with the sound effects. And they had the same issue. They couldn't be too big. It was a quiet world for them as well. And they also loved the project. I think if you love the project, you're gonna do your best work. So, and I think everybody involved that. This show's pretty great. So, let's really step it up. - I think it's also like, we really needed the Foley for a lot of this. Like, as you're talking about the quiet and the ambiences, and you know, we can talk about the reality of the sound effects of like cutting floor creaks to build space and things like that. But the foundation for getting those characters tied to the screen and like really attach them into the world as the Foley. It's the Foley and the dialogue, right? And so, between the two of those, like we really needed to play the Foley pretty forward and present because that's what's bringing and telling the story. And I think really that was the important thing. It's like whatever was telling the story in those moments is the stuff that we were playing. And since there's so much quiet, a lot of it is ambiences realistic grounded, detailed sound effects and Foley, along with the very beautiful clear dialogue that Michael's able to present. There's lots of quiet moments. There are also lots of loud moments. And one of the early ones is the playing crash in episode one. I was watching the show and I was obviously enjoying it. But when that playing crash happened, I like sat forward and was like, oh my God, that was amazing. It gets a good response. Yeah. Do you want to talk about how you built that? Like, it's something special. So-- That one I actually can't take. Okay, here we go. Yeah, I put it a lot of time into that. It was the first massive, massive moment and I think it really turns the show. That's a moment of real-- there's been so much tension ahead of that with infected grandmother that was attacking Joel's daughter and them trying to escape from their house and escape this world that's starting to become infected. And that to me is a moment of impact that then turns into-- and it releases the tension. And so it needed to be really impactful. And I spent a lot of time really making sure that it was both feeling that the tension was rising with the plane, but also that it was falling. So I was doing both rises and falls at the same time to try across different frequencies to try and make sure that the audience was kind of pulled-- Within jet engines, you mean? Yeah, yeah. So the engines was like the high end, the high, like, whiny parts were all rising into big tension risers and then having an engine that was low and basic and things like that were all falling almost like a guttural bass dive or a growl or something like that until that impact happened. It's great because that plane is not that close to us. It's kind of in the background, really. But we still had to feel like-- because you still got like people screaming and yelling and running, and they're in a truck. I think Craig and Neil putting that wheel breaking off the plane coming into the truck at the very end before we go to black really helped. It was a great punctuation. If it had just been the plane crash, it would have been wonderful. But that wheel coming at you, then silence, was fantastic, I think. Yeah, it ends it. Yeah, and I love how we come back from the black. We had to make sure that a little bit of time had passed by. So the crowd wasn't as crazy. You just hear a scream here, a scream there. You hear another transformer explode here or there. I love the space of the sound and that whole first episode because things are happening when the chaos on the world is sort of ending far away. But we still have to feel it. And if you were really there, you'd say, what was that? You wouldn't know exactly what that is. I don't really know what a transformer sounds like I've never had heard one blow up in my life. But it's just great that something is happening in the distance. And there's a car alarm going off here. All those little details, at least I felt sounded very real if that was a world we were living in. The plane crash moment is also plot wise. It takes us from the small town we're in to, oh, planes are falling on the sky. This is global. Yeah. So it really opens up the story as well. It's a really cool moment that I literally sat up when it happened. Oh, that's awesome. It was amazing. I really love that. The other thing that I wanted to talk about is the group, like the crowd-- episode one, there's giant crowd. And then-- The panic. I have to be honest, we're recording this before the last episodes have aired. So I don't know how the show ends yet. And I'm jealous that you do. For the shows that I've seen, we don't get crowds like that. So do you want to talk about how you built that panic in the crowd? Well, I use this really terrific loop group, Mark Sussman, Patty Connelly, Loops Quad. They're really good. They hire really good actors. And I like to layer things. And I like to shoot small groups. I don't like to shoot. If I have 12 actors, I don't have them all go once. I'll do three, three, four, and four. And I'll just rather do more passes. It gives me more control. And so, and I like to do a lot of buys, because I think those sell individual buys and that kind of scene. So, you know, I've got my beds and I've got my buys. And I've got my free clear callouts. I mean, I know anybody who does ADR, this is sort of standard. But I really like building the group. Because then you can have as much as you want. As actors, they background actors, they put in their best work because they really like the project. And they took time. And Mark and Patty are really good as far as, you know, watching the show and thinking about it. They don't just show up. They think, well, who would be good for this? Who would be good for that guy? How can we build this? They'll even tell me, let's not do it the way you'd normally do it. Let's do it this way for this one. And you know, I love their advice. So, it really was just building. And again, I'm amazed how much loop group you're here on the show. And they're on a ton of scenes with crowds in the whole series. But you do hear quite a bit. Yeah. And like all of that stuff was really like built the human element into all the chaos that we were doing. You know, and it really tied together. And once again, big credits, the mixers for being able to put everything and get them to feel like their individual events. But those loop group actors really built into the fear and the screams and the callouts and the panic while we were building glass and guns and crashes and, you know, everything else around it to make it feel like this town is collapsing as these people become infected and their brains become out of their control as they become just real instruments of aggression. And sonically, I get the vibe when you're watching it. It's happening so fast. And this all happens in one day on a Friday afternoon into the evening. And anybody who's lived through a pandemic, like all of us, it happened pretty fast. You know, we were tearing about this COVID thing and a week later we were all being sent out from work. My daughter was being sent home for our senior year in high school. I wanted the sound to feel that way. Like it wasn't a slow process. It really just got going. - And what about loop group for the infected? - The group infected. We kind of struggled with a bit because we didn't want it to sound corny. There's this, and I guess it's episode two, whether all, you know, sort of laying on the ground and they're awakened. We didn't want to sound monster and, ah, we, you know, we tried to avoid that. So we had some of that stuff. I'll be honest with you at first. I just didn't fly with Greg. And so it was a really good learning process. I mean, there were days where I was tearing my hair out. How are we gonna nail this sound? 'Cause he's not happy. And if he's not happy, I'm not happy. And I'm gonna hang myself. You know, so, you know, so, so there are, but we got there. And that's what's so great about Craig. He was, yeah, he got frustrated sometimes, but he was so patient with us. 'Cause he knew we would get there sonically. He knew we'd eventually get there. He really wanted to get it right and we really wanted to get it right. Because the game got it right, you know, and these characters got it right. And everybody really just spent the time and pushed as hard as they can and put as much effort into as they could to make sure that we really did this story in these characters' justice, you know. I think it was like true for anything, whether that was the infected or the plane crash or the ambiences, it was really about making sure we're honoring this story. - So, Michael, I looked at your IMDB credit list. You don't have, a lot in this genre. - Well, I did work on Super Mario Bros. with Bob Hoskins. - Oh, a video game. - Yeah, joke. - No, it's funny because every article I read before the show came out about like, you know, can this show break the video game curse? Mentioned Super Mario Bros. I thought, oh my god, I worked on that movie. I also worked on Street Fighter with Van Dam. - Oh. (laughing) - It is an interesting idea though, because video games to films or series has a reputation of not being a successful thing. And this show is, I think it's something like 98% on Ron's. - Yeah, it was like it's Bob. - This is the no one's talking about. - I've been doing this for a long time. I think I've worked on like 130 films, and I don't think I've ever had this kind of response with people that I went to high school with many, many, many years ago are contacting me. I was at a restaurant that, I guess a second episode of Probably Air with my brother here in West Hollywood, and my brother said, hey, they're talking about your show and the booth next to us, you know, and then sure enough, four seconds later, and the next booth. Oh, they're talking about your show and that, you know, it's like everyone was talking about it, and they still do. - Did you feel a pressure though to be like the one that made it work? - No, no, I didn't use that. I saw it as, this is a great project, whether it was based on a video game or not based on a video game, and we just got to make it sound as damn good as it can, you know, so. - And as the pictures started arriving, and you saw that you had to live up to something. - Right, right. Did you feel pressure there? - I had read most, I think I read all the script. I read most of the scripts, and I got to admit, that Craig scripts have sound notes in them. They're walking on leaves, the crunch of leaves, and this and that. And it just really helped you feel it when you were reading it. So when I saw these beautiful productions come my way, and I could actually see them on the screen, I wasn't surprised. I thought, okay, this is just as good as the script. Obviously better, but it made you want to work harder. - So originally Chris Terroon was supposed to be with us today, but he couldn't be, so he was, from what I understand, mostly in charge of the sounds of the infectives, is that correct? - Yes. - I can't answer this question, but I'm wondering if maybe you guys can tackle this a little bit. Other than you mentioned that the original voice actors brought back in, what else did he was used to fill those out? Or was anything useful? - Well, I know. - I know you had done some work. I mean-- - I know it was a lot of experimenting for him, mainly because there's these sounds from the game that sound amazing, similar to what we talked about with the sniper, but they're designed for a game where as a player you're supposed to understand something, and it's supposed to communicate for how you're supposed to act, as opposed to like selling the moment. And I think that there's a lot of difficulty there in terms of just really making sure that it feels like it's the game, but isn't the game, you know, because the game doesn't do all of the same actions in terms of how close something is to the screen, or in terms of every single little moment, in film they can really play those moments however they want, and they can act them out, and they can do different variations while a game is more scripted in terms of how it's supposed to design up like a player to act. So I think there was a lot of effort put into really making sure that it was as close as possible while being really visceral. It's hard to tell the difference, but like I know he put a ton of effort into that, and the other thing that was really difficult were the-- it wasn't the clickers, it wasn't, you know, the bloater is obviously-- - Well, he hadn't even talked about the bloaters. - Yeah, the bloaters are awesome. And like I think that's similar to the clickers in terms of trying to get it to be as close to the game, but there's everyday regular sick infected that aren't quite clickers yet. And in the game they have stages of like runners and stalkers and things that have unique signatures, but in this case, partly I think because the fungus is a little different than in the game, which was spores, and now it's these fibrous networks that are in their lungs, and in their-- I know there was a ton of effort that he put into a lot of hard work and a lot of experimentation to try and make sure that, as Michael had said previously, that these people sounded sick, and like their lungs are filled with this fungus and that they're breathing and emoting in a way that felt natural, but also felt visceral. And like as an audience member, it would put you on edge. - And I don't know if this is a secret or not, but I'm telling you anyway. Craig Mason did a lot of the creature voices too, yeah. So because he had so much fun with it, we always wanted him to do his pass, and we used a lot of it, you know what I mean? Nan is mostly Craig, you know, the infected grandma in episode one. So a lot of times Craig Mason would go to Chris's little studio at Warner Brothers, and they'd play around and they'd do stuff. And that was really fun. We really got to play around on the show a lot, you know, so we were doing that luxury. - Yeah, it was all about the performance for those people, for those characters. - That's pretty amazing to have like the director, creator, or whatever, taking part in the AD version. - Oh, he's all through this thing, baby. (laughing) That's something special. So we obviously cared about the sound a lot. - Yeah, yeah. - And we liked using him whenever we could. And it wasn't working, we wouldn't, and he knew that, too, you know what I'm saying. - Obviously this show had a large crew, it wasn't just you two. I do wanna give some shout out to you. - Well, we were the most important, but anyway, just kidding, of course. I had two dialogue editors, Joe Schiff, cut the majority of the show, and Thomas Boykin came in and helped us. - I think we had a big effect through depending on which episodes we were working on, and so big shout outs to Mitch Lesnar, Jacob Flack, Matt Yolkham, and Odin Bonitas, who all just did phenomenal work on the entire show. And then of course, our Christopher Hoon, who I wish we could have here and our rear-cording mixers, Kevin Roach, and Mark Fishman. - Yeah, great stuff. - Well, thank you very much for talking to us today. As I mentioned, the show is what everybody's talking about, and there's a reason for that. It's because it's a very high-quality show that pulls you in, and where other, I know I'm not supposed to use the zombie word, but where other films of this type of genre, there's a scene where, when they're in Kansas City, where they talk about going into the tunnels, every other project that's ever been made, when they go into the tunnels, they're gonna get attacked. In this series, they go into the tunnels and find something magical and beautiful down there that ends up being like a really big character driver. I was not expecting that, and it really separates it from other projects, and thank you for all your hard work on it. - You're right. - It was great talking to you today. - Great talking to you too, and I think it's just, we're so fortunate to have worked on something. - Yeah, really blessed, so thank you. - We're actually in person, we normally do these episodes for tone vendors over digital means virtually, so it's great to be here in person at Formosa Group, stage two in their Hollywood facilities. Big thanks to Erica, Jack, and Pat for helping set this up and doing the recording. Thanks a lot, we'll talk to you soon on your next project, hopefully. - Great, thank you so much. - Oh, thank you so much. - Tone vendors is produced by Timothy Neurhead, Renee Coronado, and Theresa Moro. Theme music is by Mark Strait. Send your emails to info@tone vendorspodcast.com, follow us on Twitter via @thetonebedders and join tone vendors podcast on Facebook. Support this podcast. You can use our links when you shop at Amazon or B&H, or leave us a tip. Just go to tonebedderspodcast.com and click the support button. Thanks for listening. - Are you looking for more audio-related podcasts to listen to? Tone vendors is part of the audio podcast alliance, featuring a handpicked selection of the very best podcast about sound. Be sure to hear the latest episodes from our friends in the community at audiopodcast.org.