WRITTEN BY KATE FINAN, CO-OWNER OF BOOM BOX POST
The first mix of any project, especially a long-term project like a television series, is always the hardest. Everyone involved in the sound package has done their best to put creative high-quality sound into the session. The mixing team have put in the effort to create a mix that they believe is of a quality that could air on television right out of the box. But, then the clients step into the room.
As a mixer, I try my best to do justice to the content. I use all of my tools to achieve balance and clarity. But the clients always have their own unique agenda of what’s important to the story for them, which plot-points need a little extra clarity from the sound, or which emotional beats are essential for the music to carry. There is no knowing these priorities and sensibilities until you’ve sat down in a room with the clients and gone through their notes one by one.
It’s important to keep an open mind during this process. The clients’ notes aren’t a list of all the things that you should have done better (or at least they shouldn’t be if you’re a competent mixer). They’re a list of personal priorities into which they’re giving you an essential window.
In addition to being open-minded, I’ve found that it’s also important to be mindful in your client mixing process. It’s easy to let the client notes flow and just skip from timecode to timecode without stepping back to reflect or summarize. But, you can do wonders for the making the future mixing process easier for the entire room if you take a moment and do just that.
It’s important to me to uncover and commit to memory all of my clients’ personal priorities and sensibilities in a concrete and intentional fashion. Sure, this process would most likely naturally happen over time, but I believe strongly that while pure exposure will make you better at anything given enough time, adding purposeful intention, or a pinch of mindfulness, to any process can help you to more quickly hone in on possible points of improvement and to carve out a concrete process for getting there. Here is how I personally like to do that with my client mixing.
After the first playback, ask for overall notes and impressions before diving into timecode-specific notes.
This is where you’ll find out where their general priorities are in the overall dialogue/music/FX balance. If they don’t have any overall thoughts, go ahead and ask if there are any things they wish they heard more or less of. I’ve had clients who want the music to play hero at all times and feel that it is sacrilege to edit or move a cue. Others view what the composers deliver to be just a jumping-off point in their creative process and feel no guilt when moving, cutting, or making drastic volume changes to the music. They even prefer that I do so before they step into the room once they’ve expressed their preferences. These are the kinds of workflow preferences that you want to uncover in addition to any balance preferences.
Keep track of your own overall thoughts as you go or write them down immediately after the mix has wrapped.
Maybe when you asked if the clients had overall notes, they said that they liked the balance and just wanted to tweak things here or there based on the situation. But then you noticed that they asked you to turn the music up during every fight scene. Or maybe whenever there was a montage, they wanted you to mute all of the foley. Or maybe they really hate hearing props because they find it distracting. All of these are great things to notice and quantify so that you can start each new mix with them in mind. Take a moment to yourself to ask what your top five takeaways are from any client mix session. This will help you to get there.
After the mix, repeat back to the clients what you’ve learned from the mix.
I feel like this is a bit counterintuitive but very important. It definitely feels like you should end a mix with everyone saying “This sounds so great, I can’t wait for the next one!” And I agree that you should. But, I also think you can build an enormous amount of trust and solidify common goals by admitting what wasn’t perfectly in tune with their preferences right out of the gate and saying out loud that you are committed to getting it even closer the next time.
We’re all professionals, and if you’re confident that you’ve done a professional-quality job, you don’t need to hide the areas where improvements can be made. The goal with this is to let the clients know that you have noticed what is important to them and that those things are now your number one priority for future mixes.
I like to say something like, “Great mix everyone! This one turned out so well and I know that the next episode is going to be even better now that we’ve started collaborating and I understand exactly what your priorities are. I made notes that you like the music to really swell in emotional scenes, that it’s fun to hear more foley when we don’t have any underscore playing, and that you want the tech sound effects to shine whenever we hear them because they add so much to the feel of the show. I’m really excited to dig into the next one.”
While this might feel like exposing your flaws for everyone to see, it’s not about saying what you did wrong, but instead about expressing that you noticed their preferences. I find that people love when you can summarize their tastes (especially if they have a hard time articulating them concisely themselves). It shows that you’ve been paying attention and that you care about bringing their tastes to the next mix and improving the process for everyone. Finding a team member like that is priceless.
After the mix, bring your notes back to the rest of the sound team and make a plan to integrate them into the next mix.
What can be done differently during editorial? Can the supervisor address any of their preferences in episodes which have been edited already but not mixed? Can an assistant editor help with anything during session setup? The bulk of the client preferences will probably fall on the mixer, but don’t forget to delegate where you can. Just be sure to bring the same attitude of improvement rather than criticism to the table when communicating with your own team.
Read through your concrete list of likes, dislikes, and goals before each mix.
This should be an ever-evolving document of where the clients are currently. In the beginning, it will help you to refresh your memory between mixes and also keep you current if their tastes are evolving with each mix.
Prime your ears at the start of your next mix by listening to the previous episode or one that you’re especially proud of.
This is especially important if you’re mixing other projects between episodes. This is a way to get your ears adjusted to he exact balance that these particular clients like. I don’t listen to a full episode, just enough to really let my ears get used to the overall volume, the room, and the balance: maybe 30 seconds to two minutes. It’s easy to want to dive right in, but I promise that this is a very small investment that pays dividends.
Continue the same process of communicating openly with your clients, making notes after each mix, and implementing them with each episode.
This process has always resulted in the client portion of my mixes getting shorter and shorter over time. As an added bonus, I’ve had a number of clients tell me that they’re much more comfortable communicating with me than with some of their previous mixers. They feel heard, they aren’t afraid to let me know when I’ve misunderstood them or haven’t quite accomplished a note, and they often tell me that it takes far fewer mixes to get past their “must have” notes and into their “wish list” items. I believe that this is because I make a concerted effort to achieve their must haves before they even walk through the door.