The members of the highly celebrated sound team that have played a crucial role in enhancing the appeal of The Bear, a popular streaming series turned widespread cultural phenomenon, have already been showered with awards for their rightly acclaimed work on the series’ first season. As the series’ second season looks set to become a major contender in this year’s awards conversation, the members of the team once again find themselves back in the limelight. For Steve Giammaria (Supervising Sound Editor), Evan Benjamin (Dialogue Editor) and Scott Smith (Production Mixer), this is an opportunity to highlight the tricks of their trade and emphasize the role that this aspect of the post-production process plays in shaping television as a medium.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with the members of the team about key moments in Season 2 of The Bear, the complications inherent in crafting that all-important fork throw sound, and their unique creative process.
Zita Short: Many critics have noted that the second season of The Bear represents a significant departure from its predecessor in regards to its tone and level of dramatic intensity. How did these stylistic developments effect your conception of the series and the role that sound design plays within it?
Steve Giammaria: I would agree that it’s a departure in certain ways. There was a definitely a conscious effort made during those first few episodes to establish that this is a new baseline of sound for The Bear. It’s the same as Season 1 but you swap out cooking for construction so it’s still a bit of a development. In that first scene, we establish that you’re still in a familiar territory, with all the characters yelling at each other, but you just swap out pans for sledgehammers. Then you have that shift to Copenhagen, which is a very different environment.
You also have that quiet moment with Richie electrocuting himself. You’re reminded of the chaos that’s waiting for him at home. You get an episode that focuses on flashbacks that explain why the members of the Berzatto family are so dysfunctional and troubled. It has its own particular sound of chaos and yelling and overlapping. By the end, you reach a new baseline of sound; with the contrast between front of house and back of house. It sets up Season 3 and we’re definitely thinking, from a sonic perspective, about how to tell this story.
Evan Benjamin: Like Steve said, there’s definitely a change that occurs when the series shifts focus to a more high-end restaurant and the characters get to go off on side quests. It’s much more refined than the restaurant that Richie is in. There’s less screaming and everyone’s very calm. In some ways, it was very easy for us to do our jobs because the editors set everything up so well. All these places are very different and the restaurant in Copenhagen is not at all like the crazy sandwich shop in Chicago. I also feel that the characters are what makes it interesting to watch so you can shift the action to different locations but the audiences are still primarily interested in them.
ZS: The series has been commended for presenting an impressionistic vision of the high-stress environment that the employs at The Beef inhabit. Often you take an experimental approach to creating the vibrant soundscape heard within scenes that take place in the kitchen. This approach really comes to the forefront in Episode 10. Could you discuss some of the factors that influenced your decision to adopt this artistic approach?
SG: We can’t really take all the credit for that. We have the producers and the editors who put the scaffolding in place to ensure that we can come in and approach things from a creative perspective. When considering every scene, we have to discuss what we think the scene would sound like realistically and what it would sound like emotionally. Do those two things jive? For something as simple as a conversation between Richie and Sugar in the office, we have to ask questions about how long prep will take and does that help or hurt the emotion of the scene. You’ll get as granular as considering whether more dish forks need to be featured in the scene. It’s all that sort of stuff. It’s all about the emotion of the scene and sometimes you do have to choose between the sounds of realistic bubbles and plates being cracked. You really want to support the emotional subtext behind each scene. You find yourself attempting to manipulate the audience’s emotions or, alternatively, stepping back a bit and giving them some breathing room in between scenes that feature sonic onslaughts.
ZS: In Episode 7, you craft an entirely new soundscape that serves to represent the upscale, high-class dining atmosphere found at the restaurant Ever, which is perceived as a more ‘respectable’ dining establishment than The Beef. How did you tackle the contrast between highbrow and lowbrow culture?
SG: We were showing that there’s an equal amount of intensity at the restaurant Richie goes to but it’s a different kind of intensity. It’s more measured and that’s captured in the ticking clock noise heard in the score. You also get to see how Richie doesn’t fit into this environment. He goes on this epic pizza run and you get this very clear sound effect of him throwing the pizza down but he brings an intensity to the restaurant that stands in contrast to the quiet precision of the chefs who surround him. We wanted to ask how Richie fits into this world and how would people from this foreign environment react to him?
EB: I think in that respect it’s all hushed conversations and even when tense conversations are had, they are carried out with care and professionalism. It’s so crazy to watch Richie show up there like this bull in a China shop. He learns something from his time there and walks away from the experience with a real sense of purpose and direction in life. That conversation he has with Olivia Colman at the end involves her teaching him how he should go about the rest of his life. It’s a moving moment because you also get to consider how Carmy’s leadership style differs from that of other top chefs. She treats even Richie, who is only present at her restaurant for a few days, with a great deal of respect, and ends up changing his outlook on life. So much of his behaviour is altered after forging this connection with her. We work on these episodes out of sequence and I remember being surprised to see him in a suit. When he declares that he’s the kind of guy who wears suits now it comes out of left field. It’s such a great change and feels like the sort of thing Richie would do. Olivia Colman’s character [Chef Terry] respects him and tells him that Carmy sees how much potential he has. It’s a very beautiful moment.
ZS: Several reviewers have compared the effect created by the show’s playful treatment of dialogue to the overlapping dialogue effect found in several notable Robert Altman films, such as MAS*H and Brewster McCloud. In spite of this, you still place a heavy emphasis on ensuring that lines of dialogue can be clearly heard by audience members without the aid of subtitles. Did this present any difficulties for you?
Scott Smith: I place a big emphasis on planning ahead and determining exactly what I need to do to ensure that the process runs smoothly when working. As best as I can, I try to include some elements that give the viewer a sense of the environment that they are in. When the kitchen staff responds to Carmy, I employ a separate microphone to play with the acoustic space and avoid creating a flat, one-dimensional environment. This is very different from Altman’s approach. I am very familiar with those films and actually worked on Nashville (1975). The Altman approach involves mic-ing everybody and rarely using the boom mic. Lavaliers are everything. It’s an interesting approach because it forces the viewer to determine what’s important in a scene but it also robs the scene of a point of view and a sense of the space that you’re in. Everything is one-dimensional. You can play around with sound channels and do some interesting things. Even though it’s multi-channel it’s very different to a show like this. Here, generally the intent is to guide the viewer into a position which conforms with what Christopher Storer is attempting to portray. On set we become the hunter-gatherers of the film department. We hope to go out and get as much as we can from our surroundings.
ZS: You note that the sound design of Michael’s fork throw in Episode 6 held a special thematic and emotional significance within the series. Could you walk us through your creative process and the steps that you took to craft that particular sound?
SG: In that whole section it was quiet and intense right before. Then you have the fork throw – which incites a table flip. Then all hell breaks loose. It needs to go up again for a car crash after that. You can’t just have it get louder every time because that would be unwatchable. The actual dynamic range, in real life, of going from quiet whispers to an intense car crash is insane. You can’t realistically present that. We filtered through a range of different options for the fork throw and received a lot of material from the Foley guys. After deliberating, we settled on a version of that sound that was impactful without taking the audience out of the experience. We needed to set up the table flip and then the car crash. The chaos peaks and then starts to die down a bit. You need somewhere to go before the car crash. We devoted a lot of time to considering how to create this effect. We also had to make technical and artistic trade-offs to obtain the desired result. You want to hit those emotional beats with the needed intensity while also creating something that can actually be listened to.
ZS: You’ve placed a lot of emphasis on the importance of the collaborative process within your field. Would you mind discussing your specific artistic approach to crafting a vision for the series?
SG: It’s very methodical – at least in post. Scott lays the tracks for us and works with the raw material. The process is generally pretty measured because when they turn over the picture to us from the spotting section, we talk about it and play each scene. That’s when we have discussions about what this project should sound like. The picture editors have temped in a scaffolding, or a structure, for us to play around with. They’ll put in sounds that serve as temporary stand-ins for the work that we do. If they haven’t provided a base, you can’t just throw it in there at the last minute. Everyone that we work with is very good at keeping in mind the importance of sound as a tool that gives other creatives room to do what they need to in their own field. Evan also does his thing, which is slightly more on the technical side. We also owe a lot to the Foley team up at Alchemy and feel as though we’re all contributing our own little piece to a much bigger project. We all work on our own little pieces and then I find myself collating everything and bringing it together.
ZS: How does the awards campaigning process impact your relationship with your profession?
EB: I don’t think it does. It’s nice to get recognition but we haven’t been doing this exact same kind of thing for a long time. It comes up in screenings, which I’m not used to, but you generally just try to make the story work.
SG: Scott rolls up in a stretch limo (laughs). It’s really gone to this head.
SS: That’s why I’m always late (laughs).
SG: It’s uncomfortable. That’s why this is actually an intervention (laughs). The recognition is very nice but it’s all in service of story. We’re all about trying to move people emotionally.
EB: You want the people you work with to be great and fun to work with but with this show, you have the added dimension of it feeling special. I’m sure these guys have also worked on projects where you think it’s going to be great during production and then it fails to go anywhere. I think The Bear has everything going for it and that’s a wonderful privilege. The resonance of creating something great that a lot of people watch is exciting.
ZS: In the contemporary era, do you feel that there is a wider understanding of what your specific roles entail?
EB: I think so. I think that’s the same for everything. Everything is understood, everything is open. With social media and the internet, everything is opened up. You might say that The Bear itself is about a phenomenon that has traditionally been confined to secretive, closed-off spaces. There is a certain fascination that celebrity chefs still exude. You meet people and they’re interested in what you do. I would say that was not the case traditionally. Online technology makes it easier for them to understand what you do.
SG: It is easier to learn how everything works nowadays. You don’t have to have connections in the industry. You don’t even have to watch DVD Special Features from the early-2000s that explain what we do in detail. It’s great to know that the general public has some awareness of what your job entails.
EB: The explosion of media outlets has caused bizarre resentment for Americans but it’s exciting to think of audiences getting some clue as to what happens behind the scenes. You also get to know who worked on the sound for a film. We all take issue with the fact that credits for older films often don’t list key members of the sound department. That is something that we fought for and it means that budding young cinephiles can gain an easy introduction point to what exactly it is that we do.
SS: Now people actually have the opportunity to pull the curtain aside and see how the soup gets made. It’s great.
ZS: What do you think has established The Bear as a cultural phenomenon?
SG: The sound. It sounds terrific (laughs). I also think that it’s about family, more specifically found family, and everyone has at least one troubled relationship with a family member. On a very basic level, you also have the fact that almost everyone has eaten at a restaurant and that gives it an acceptable, relatable quality.
EB: When the characters are that good, I think it’s pretty riveting to watch them go at each other. To me the characters are more of everything. Wherever they go you want to follow them and see what they do.
The Bear is now streaming on Hulu in the United States and Disney+ internationally.
still courtesy of FX
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I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.