If something has felt more and more from the very first disclosure of the MDR office at the beginning of “Severrance,” It is entirely through design. But there is an art to create invisible anxiety – and to maintain the feeling of worry like our understanding (yes, our wild mistake) by Lumon Industries has changed under Apple TV+ Series driving.
Surveillance audio editor Jacob Ribicoff and re -recording mixer Bob Chiefs have part of the responsibility for the ineffective presence of Woe, Frolic, fear and/or evil inside the walls of Lumon. It is often their emphasis on specific sound design and Foley elements that make small weekdays feel so strange and potentially threatening; Differences in how music and dialogue play inside the cut floor versus outside it also contribute to our sense of claustrophobia or the confusing openness in the outside world.
So IndieWire Craft team was enough for Ribicoff and Chefalas to ask them not just for the specific audio cocktail mix that makes “Severrance” Elevator transition between “Innie” and “Outie” so visceral – even though they were kind enough to give it to us – but a broader picture of how they approach sound inside Lumon, and how they slowly took it up while they were in conversation with each section of Apple TV+ Series.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Indiewire: Some of what is so wonderfully scary with Lumon’s deteriorated floor is that it is this really sterile feeling in combination with strange, Throwback computers/technology that sounds very distinct. How do you approach that balance?
Ribicoff: For the type of background that, started and turned off the computers, I came with a historical gumbo of computer sound mixed and then played very low. For the refining sounds there were some classic 8-bit pip and whooshes. For the keypad, we could have a keypad from the shooting that was sent to the Foley house and we continued to record it per section synchronized and matched the production.
Indieview: “A historical gumbo” feels like a very lumon strategy. If you had to choose one or two, what feelings are the most important thing to get over about the MDR office through sound?
Manager: Although the MDR office is a very large empty room, we want it to sound insulated and airless. Very little reverb and quiet enough to hear sounds from the computers. For the “Innie” world, much is replaced by the production movement with Foley so that it can be mixed in the right environment.
Indieview: Tends something to become more emphasized in Innie or Outie Worlds when it comes to the level of the atmosphere in the mixture, how to approach sound effects, Foley, etc.?
Ribik: There is no doubt that the Outie world breathes in full airy, windy, realistic, dynamic surround, while the Innie world remains quite LCR (left-center-right panning) and claustrophobic. But for the “Innie” world during both seasons, there is a gradual development towards Weirder, more dynamic, surreal environments as each season moves towards the conclusion.
Manager: With the Innie world we lean on the sound of Foley. Especially in hall scenes where we had to remove most production foot tracks and replace them with Foley. The balance between dry foley and its reverb would constantly change depending on the site.
Ribik: One of the really fun and rewarding aspects of working with Ben (Stiller) and his image editors have been to what extent they have leaned and raised Foley for stories and to emphasize the physics of the character – like the many wild runs sequences through Lumon Corridors. Bob used all his best tricks to drive footprints through high music lines during the mix. Fantastic!
Indieview: The mix really feels like the perfect balance in the music with the physicality of the footprints. I imagine that you have a library full of atmospheric whooshes for the elevator transitions from Innie to Outie as well.
Ribicoff: There are basic elevator sounds – doors and engines that rise and fall. There is the “Fritz” sound, which you hear when the character’s eyes are closed and fluttered while they “pass”, which is a combination of high -ranking beeps and sharp static nails cut in sync. There is the elevator’s ding, which comes from an aircraft defense tone. Then there is a suction type that really helps with the Zolly shoots that zoom in and out on the characters’ faces. That’s it. Oh, and sometimes a low effect here when the elevator lands at the end of the sequence. No two sequences are quite the same.
Indieview: It’s so cool. I am curious about how you think about any difference between what sounds are emphasized when we are in Innie versus Outie mode, especially in places that we may not necessarily notice.
Manager: For the dialogue mix, I tend to benefit the Boomms on the Outie world and let the atmosphere and all movement be heard. With the Innie world, Boomms can make the rooms sound too big and they must be gently circled.
Indieview: I would also like to hear about how you have collaborated over departments during the show’s two seasons. Will any interesting decisions come from these conversations?
Ribicoff: I worked primarily with Geoff Richmond, the supervisory image editor and legs. We had a first spot session before season 1. At the beginning of season 1, I had the idea that the room tones for different parts of Lumon could be derived from the sound of breathing, either human, animals or monsters, and could have a swirling quality – because lumon is Like this evil host who outputs the lives of its employees. Ben and Geoff very wisely cured that idea and said: “Let’s start ordinary and get more surreal strategically as the story develops.”
In addition, they often asked me for a collection of sound effects that they could cut with while shaping a given section before the audio team formally came on. The show is so vividly designed that some of my best conversations were with the section itself.
