Designing and Mixing the Gripping Sound of ‘Dope Thief’ – with the Formosa Group Sound Team

After their mega box-office success on Gladiator II, Ridley Scott and Peter Craig started work on the crime-drama Dope Thief – now streaming on Apple TV+. Set in and around Philadelphia, the series follows two friends and small-time criminals, Ray and Manny. The pair pose as fake DEA agents and rob local drug dealers. They aren’t criminal masterminds by any means, so when they get roped into robbing a drug-processing house run by an actual criminal empire, they find they’re in way over their heads.

Here, supervising sound editor Marla McGuire, re-recording mixers Stephen Fitzmaurice and Danielle Dupree, and sound designer Jonathan Golodner – at Formosa Group – talk about working with Craig and Scott and how that collaboration positively influenced the sound of the show, what it took to find the sound of a show based on two anti-heroes, designing and mixing realistic gunfights, and using sound to build tension and support the incredible on-screen performances. They also go into detail about their work on specific episodes, like Ep. 1 directed by Scott, Ep. 8 directed by Craig, Ep. 6 with the big gun battle, and much more!

Dope Thief — Official Trailer | Apple TV+

Dope Thief is set in and around Philadelphia. Can you talk about setting these scenes through sound? Did prod. sound mixer Teferra McKenzie capture any location ambience, from Philly and the surrounding areas where the story unfolds? Or, what were some sources for the sounds of these locations?

Sound Supervisor Marla McGuire

Marla McGuire (MM): There weren’t too many backgrounds from production. There were some instances, like the bagpipes at the funeral and Sherry singing, where we did have production. Jonathan mainly pulled the sounds for Philly from libraries.

Peter [Craig] and Ridley [Scott] were really specific about the loop group, wanting their accents to be authentic to Philly. For instance, Manny’s neighborhood is Hispanic, but also it’s Dominican. The showrunners were very detail-oriented about those types of things, so I dialed those in with loop group.

Sound Designer Jonathan Golodner

Jonathan Golodner (JG): I pulled from various libraries, and kudos to sound effects editor Michael O’Connor, who did a lot of the backgrounds for the series. He does a great job.

I’ve always been one for authenticity, so I’m always looking at a map and where are they outside of Philly – for example, out at the farmhouse, where exactly is that, and what kind of birds and wildlife are there? It was shot in the spring, but it was supposed to be winter. So I had to adjust what I was hearing in production. We can’t have those birds. It had to be winter birds.
 
 
 

MM: Stephen [Fitzmaurice] probably had to suck out certain sounds from the production tracks that would give that away.

Another thing, regarding setting the locations with sound, is that the showrunners wanted the audience to be able to place where we were. For example, both the hotel and the storage unit were on the harbor, but we wanted to have signature sounds, like different buoys or harbor bells, for each of those locations. Sometimes it was night. They wanted the audience to be able to clock where they were.

Re-recording Mixer Danielle Dupree

It was the same thing with Ottsville, which is where the shootout takes place, and the Loebsack house, with different crows or specific birds. Jonathan and I worked on finding those, and then Danielle would tastefully mix those in.

Danielle Dupree (DD): To piggyback off of what Marla was saying, narratively, the locations had a really big draw. You see that reflected in the characters that Peter and Ridley created. It was almost as though the locations were a character in and of themselves, and were reflected in the characters who lived there.

Stephen Fitzmaurice (SF): Being ‘authentic’ was one of the sound goals for the show. That’s such a great word. Marla and Karol Urban (dialogue editor) are both absolute wizards with fill. Call me weird, but I love fill. Marla and Karol know how to find pieces of production to help glue everything together so you feel like you’re really there. It’s such a great way to maintain that realism, that ‘authenticity’ they were looking for.

Re-recording Mixer Stephen Fitzmaurice

I remember Billy Rich (picture editor) was talking about a moment where Ray is approaching the farmhouse, and he wanted us to know that it was really important to Ridley that we keep the footsteps from production for that walkup because they’ve got this great crunch that doesn’t have a smooth, sneaky texture that you might otherwise get from a foley stage — something you might expect. It was important to be authentic to those locations, and so we made sure to keep the rawness of those footsteps. That was an idea we tried to apply throughout the series
 

Let’s talk about that first episode directed by Ridley Scott. You’re being introduced to Manny and Ray, and their fake DEA operation. The episode is so filled with tension. Can you talk about how you supported that through sound?

SF: Philosophically, my approach, first and foremost, is to stay out of the way of great performances. The artists on screen do such an amazing job in this show. The leads – Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura – are amazing. They give just brilliant moments. There are so many great secondary characters. I love the interplay between Sherry and Manny throughout the series. The way those two work together just feels so vibrant and so real.

my approach, first and foremost, is to stay out of the way of great performances

To your question about finding ways to support and enhance those moments in the show, on my side of the board, much of that is taking away sounds that will distract you from the magic they’re putting on screen. Then, we find ways to support and enhance what they’re doing. It’s making composer Dominic Lewis‘s score sit in to help do the work of adding tension to a scene, or have everything feel authentic.

There is this great moment in Ep. 1 with an offscreen gunshot that just takes your doors off. Danielle did such a great job with that moment. In the scene, there’s a shot upstairs, and we’re downstairs. There’s a great moment where we have just the right pieces of Marla’s fill, whimpers from ADR adds, and breaths to keep everything tense until, then, of course, all of the strongest effects that Jonathan and Danielle have to offer us.

we did spend a bit of time working through the general arc of dynamics for that episode – when to be loud and when to pull back

DD: It was definitely a push and pull of finding moments to settle into the quiet and the tension, and be okay with it being quiet and getting out of the way, and then finding areas to push the heightened feeling of things, like the heightened feeling of the truck, and the heightened feeling of the foley – that sense you get when you are on edge. So, it was a dance, and we did spend a bit of time working through the general arc of dynamics for that episode – when to be loud and when to pull back.

But when you have a great script, great performances, and great direction, it’s a lot of fun and relatively easy.

JG: It was written and directed extremely well, and so it wasn’t hard to fit in what you needed to fit in. It just works.

When you were pre-mixing the show (getting your first playback ready for the showrunners), how did you decide to shape it?

SF: It’s interesting. This was a unique experience for me because in a traditional broadcast environment, we go through and pre-dub. We’ll get ourselves together and work with our post producer to get something we feel like is ready for the showrunners. Then, we show them.

we were fortunate to have Peter Craig available to pop in while we were still doing our premix work

On Dope Thief, we were fortunate to have Peter Craig available to pop in while we were still doing our premix work to check in and help direct us so that we knew we were pointed in the right direction for the style and the vibe that he was looking for.

A lot of the time, especially as you get to know the show a few episodes in, you feel like you know what this show is and where we’re at with it. And so you put things together. But it was so important that he was there because so often he would just nudge us in the right direction, and say, “This is beautiful and glorious and you’re doing great in that, but over here, we need a change.”

And in Ep. 8, we made big changes during the premix. I was really grateful that he was available to do that.

DD: It was more of a feature workflow (where you have the client at your disposal for more time) than a traditional television one, which was a blessing. It really speaks to Peter Craig’s leadership, making himself available for creative collaboration on that scale.

One of the bigger things is that he let us take a lot of music out and sometimes put music in.

One of the bigger things is that he let us take a lot of music out and sometimes put music in. We had a lot of collaboration over when sound effects were going to lead, or when music was going to lead. We weren’t afraid to try something and have it not work, and then rearrange it, and then maybe put some of it here, take some away, and put some of it there. Overall, he was a generous collaborator, and we’re grateful for that.

MM: It was amazing working with him. Sometimes you work with people and you can’t vary or stray from the temp at all. They’ve got so many preconceived notions, and you feel you just need to accomplish exactly what they want. And then they’re not around, and a lot of it’s subjective, so it can be challenging. But with him, he basically said, “Here’s my idea. What can you bring to the party? I trust you. Let’s collaborate.”

And he was around for every bit of the ADR recording. He wasn’t around for the editing of the ADR. He just let me do my thing. And he had very few notes, which was amazing considering there was a ton of ADR.

DD: That speaks to your talent, Marla.

I was able to create with him different workflows than I’d never had before, like getting him involved with the minutiae

MM: I appreciate that, but also, I was able to create with him different workflows than I’d never had before, like getting him involved with the minutiae so that he’d get the cue sheets and know what’s up. He’s a writer, so he would correct my spelling or grammar, or whatever. And that was fine because I wanted him to have exactly what he wanted.

And so it was a nice little workflow that I don’t always get because the showrunners don’t have the time to go over all my ADR sheets, much less be in the sessions.
 

Kudos on the ADR! There looked to be some challenging scenes for production, like Ray and Sherry down by the water, talking about Manny. The wind was blowing so hard. That whole scene must have been ADR, but it didn’t sound like it…

MM: Actually, it wasn’t. There was only one line of ADR there because it was low and all the noise would come up with the volume. Stephen made that scene sing, and then we just flew in that one line.

SF: You’re not supposed to tell her which parts are ADR, and which aren’t!

Haha, I just thought it had to be ADR because the wind in the location was blowing so hard. I thought there was no possible way the production sound mixer could have gotten that clean. It seemed impossible!

DD: Leaning into the wind helped us in that scene. There was no need to hide it. We even added to it. That’s the emotionality; that’s the character of the location playing into the narrative. It’s not just a place; it’s what they’re feeling, what they’re going through.

In Ep. 2, Ray visits his dad in prison. Can you talk about playing their voices through the glass?

SF: We really tried to go for a natural sound at this location, without being distracting. Later in the series, we do more, but here we weren’t afraid of the ping of the glass once Ray leans into it as the scene progresses. I love Accentize’s Chameleon for this. The plugin is fantastic, and you’ll find it all over the show. Getting it just right can be a little tricky, but it’s great for capturing and re-using resonances, even short ones like this.

we weren’t afraid of the ping of the glass once Ray leans into it

Later in the series, Manny and Sherry talk through the glass. There’s phone futz, there’s room resonance, and there’s yelling, so we should hear some un-futzed dialogue that’s rolled off coming through, and of course, there’s ADR.
 

In Ep. 2, Ray and Manny visit the farmhouse. I love the persistent dripping water sounds, and how they get into Ray’s head when he finds the body in the tub. He kind of loses his nerve there. Can you talk about your sound work for this scene?

DD: I loved the dripping sound design. We hear it in most episodes. It was a great way to connect the many different locations, and one of our many tools in building tension. I think it subtly refocused the audience to Ray’s perspective, his continued stress and violence closing in around him.

MM: Another shout out to Peter [Craig]. He basically gave me carte blanche and, by extension, Jonathan and Michael as far as sound design.

Peter […] gave me carte blanche and, by extension, Jonathan and Michael as far as sound design.

There were moments where they didn’t ask for sound design since music was doing something, but I said to Jonathan and Michael, “Just play around with this. Let’s see if we can do something, and let’s see if it works well with the music, or maybe we can lose the music.”

I remember that was one of those moments, once Ray sees the body in the tub. Your sound design, Jonathan, was just great for that moment.
 

In Ep. 4, Mina goes to the cook house and finds the little girl in the backyard, listening to the broken Read-Along book, and that memory transitions to Mina, present-day, using the electrolarynx. What went into creating the sound of the Read-Along book? And can you talk about that great transition into Mina’s performance?

MM: That ended up being one of the most challenging moments of the show to dial in and get right for Peter’s ear – to get what he was looking for.

It starts with a loop group actor’s voice reading the part.

It starts with a loop group actor’s voice reading the part. They had done a really good job in the Avid temp track, so I matched the editing as far as stuttering it. And I played around with different processing, using Audio Ease’s Speakerphone and other plugins, but I ran out of time, so I handed it off to Stephen.

SF: For that particular moment, we tried a bunch of things. And ‘trying a bunch of things’ was emblematic of how we approached a lot in this show. The futzes might have been Speakerphone or McDSP FutzBox or Trash (by iZotope).

‘trying a bunch of things’ was emblematic of how we approached a lot in this show

There are a couple of cool new features in the latest version of FutzBox called “Rectify” and “Chop” that let you really wreck the sound in fun ways. We decided to go kinda analog with the sequence in the sense of using AudioSuite plugins to render rather than as inline processing. So, we’d take a section of dialogue and process it with a set of filters to bake in the processing. Again, it might have been FutzBox, or Soundtoys Decapitator. We tried a bunch of stuff and then cobbled together our favorite parts from each.

In that particular moment, we ended up going with the loop group actor’s processed performance into this Electrovoice performance from Mina, which was production. It was a complicated transition. It had to feel smooth and real from the sense of believing that it’s actually coming from the Read-Along book that we see the child playing with. So, I’m excited to hear that worked well for you as a moment.

MM: One funny thing about the electrolarynx, I toyed with the idea of doing some ADR of Mina through that, but at the end of the day, I felt that her original performance sounded authentic, and we can understand what she’s saying.

I toyed with the idea of doing some ADR of Mina through that, but […] her original performance sounded authentic

There was that one moment going into the main title when Mina is with the speech therapist, who is telling her to really enunciate. That’s production. I just didn’t think we were going to be able to recreate it. Normally, I wouldn’t take that risk. I always try to deconstruct things so that we have the options. If that’s not clear enough, it’s going to be hard to clear it up because it’s baked in. But I just didn’t think that we were going to improve on that performance.
 

And what about Mina’s dialogue without the electrolarynx? Of course, she has to whisper. What were some challenges in getting that to play in the mix? Or, how did you help to make it sound loud enough to be understood yet still feel like a whisper?

MM: Marin Ireland is an amazing actor. There was a lot of ADR, for example, in the scene in the conference room when she’s talking about her partner, Jack. There were a lot of temp lines that we had to change, and Marin was able to recreate that scratchy, whispery, ‘broken vocal chord’ sound.

There were a lot of temp lines that we had to change, and Marin was able to recreate that […] ‘broken vocal chord’ sound

I had her loop a bunch of lines, but then I muted what we didn’t need so that we just used the parts of the ADR that were absolutely necessary. But it was only because of her ability to recreate that sound that it was even an option. Otherwise, we’d have to go with all ADR.

SF: That’s something Marla does as part of her workflow. That’s just how she approaches all ADR, which is maybe different from some other supervisors. But she genuinely does try to put in ADR just for the moments where we absolutely need it.

Marla does such great work using Synchro Arts Revoice Pro to find a way to bring the ADR into production

Throughout the show, we’ll be going back and forth between ADR and production – taking this word from ADR and these four words from production, and then this syllable from ADR and these other pieces from production. And then, okay, yeah, we’re going to take this whole line from ADR. So it’s not snippets every time, but it can be. She’s really great. Marla does such great work using Synchro Arts Revoice Pro to find a way to bring the ADR into production when maybe the actor hasn’t matched it perfectly during the original recording. She’s great with it.

MM: There was so much ADR in this show that I relied on Jonathan to mostly supervise the effects and then work with Michael and Danielle. I was involved, but not as involved as I normally would be. I want to give them props for that. I was thrilled to be able to focus on the DIA/ADR challenges and then hand it off to Steve, who brought it all to life.

SF: You can get everything as perfect as you want, but if effects and foley haven’t created the same environment and the same feel, it always just feels a little funny.

Ep. 4 has that great shootout in the quarry (with the birds circling overhead just before things go down). Can you talk about your approach to this scene? (Love the Molotov cocktails sounds!)

DD: These battle scenes were so fun to build. As always, it was all about story, so we had to go beat by beat to make sure the audience could follow the choreography. Controlling the chaos and keeping it dynamic, Steve and I went through the sequence a few times, moment by moment, to hand off depending on whether that moment should be effects or music-driven.

the goal for that scene was to somehow make that battle end up as crazy as Cyrus

SF: There’s such a great character in that scene: Cyrus. Cyrus is just insane. And so the goal for that scene was to somehow make that battle end up as crazy as Cyrus, which is a challenge because that dude’s bananas!

JG: The guns were coming from so many different places, and Danielle handled the perspective on the guns. I just recall the sniper up in the hills, and I wanted to make that very distinctive. But that scene was challenging for sure. There was a lot of chaos.

MM: For the loop group, the bikers in the quarry, they’ve got their Boston accents, and then the guys with Cyrus have more Philly accents, which, in the chaos of everything, might not poke through very much, but it was another detail.
 

And the huge ring of keys that Ray is fumbling with as he’s trying to get Cyrus’s truck started so they can get out of there. Was that foley?

MM: That was a combination of foley and production sound. The foley team at Post Apocalypse Sound was great. They’re really good at the details, like the detail of the pin in the grenade and the handling of that. They did sweeten the gore as well.

One of my favorite foley moments was in the hotel at the end of Ep. 1, when Ray is pulling shrapnel out of his shoulder. You hear the tweezers and the gore, and the little tinks of the metal as he drops them into that dish.

gore sound libraries get overused, so it’s nice to have something fresh in there

JG: I always like to collaborate with the foley team and just combine things that I put in with what they do. They typically will do more of the detailed sounds, like those little tinks, and they sweetened up the gore. I think gore sound libraries get overused, so it’s nice to have something fresh in there.

MM: I also give them a shout-out for the footsteps. Not every foley team is going to pull it off in a way that fits that moment with scuffs and weight. Sometimes it can sound a little tippy-tappy. With Post Apocalypse, though, it sounded lovely. It sits in there and acts as the glue, grounding the characters in the scene.

Those barefoot steps in Ep. 8, as Son Pham is walking across the stone bridge in the park. Those sounded amazing…

MM: I think that might’ve actually been Dustin Nguyen, the actor who plays Son Pham. It might’ve also been his breaths when he is standing there naked. I usually double cover, and we just see what works. And so I had loop group do it, and I had the actor do it, and I think we ended up using the actor’s ADR breaths.

Stephen loves breath. It allows him to really dial everything out so that you’re just with the character and their breath

I know Stephen loves breath. It allows him to really dial everything out so that you’re just with the character and their breaths, if the breaths are clean. So I really liked that moment.

The show’s creator, Peter Craig, directed Ep. 8, so, of course, he’s involved with every aspect of this episode – including sound! What were his goals for the sound team, and for using sound to tell the story in this episode?

DD: Working with Peter is about as good as it gets; he’s an ideal collaborator. He gave us a lot of freedom to creatively experiment, and that was such a fulfilling experience. He’s a writer, so we made sure his script and the actor’s delivery were protected. The show is a great example of how easy everyone’s job is when you have a beautiful script and incredible actors.

MM: In Ep. 8, it’s revealed who the character of ‘the voice’ is. When we see the character, he isn’t super dangerous-looking. He’s just this guy. For earlier episodes, Peter wanted the voice to have a lot of gravitas and be scary. So early on in the process, when it was still just a temp, some of the temp is Peter, not even the actor. He asked me to do some treatment on the voice. So I ended up just quickly throwing together a few different tracks: one with some reverb, one with EQ-ing because it comes through a walkie-talkie or from the hospital speaker, and one using Krotos Dehumaniser. Then I pitched the whole thing down just to give it a little more weight.

Peter wanted the voice to have a lot of gravitas and be scary.

I ended up doing that every time you hear the voice throughout the show. I was doing that and sending it to picture editorial. By the time we got to the stage, they really loved it. So I was able to hand it off to Steve as a starting point, to use as a mix of all three or just the lower frequency. And then Steve would put it in the space, put it in the walkie-talkie, or put it in the speaker in the hospital, for example.

in every scene, a huge percentage of the scene, was temped ADR

The main thing about Ep. 8 that was so interesting to me is that when I first saw the episode, it was wall-to-wall temp ADR. So it was hard to even watch that episode, to be honest, just because in every scene, a huge percentage of the scene, was temped ADR. The reason for that was because Peter was collaborating with Apple, and they were having him take scenes out and move scenes, and rearrange scenes, and so they needed to put back in information that would make sense based on the changes. I thought, “I’ve got my work cut out for me.” But Peter was so reassuring. He said, “I’ve heard all about you. It’s going to be great.”

SF: He’s right. You’re a wizard, Marla. It wasn’t a problem at all.

MM: Thank you! Well, the funny thing is that Peter emailed me saying it’s all going to be great, and if not, we’ll blame VFX!

So my experience with Ep. 8 was just feeling like I had more on my shoulders than I normally do, as far as shaping the storytelling.

SF: The main thing I wanted to touch on with Ep. 8 was the idea that our heroes are seriously flawed. And the way we approached the mix initially was – and this was me falling into some of the tropes we’ve all come to expect for the finale, for the big finish – to play this in a very epic style of everything coming together and culminating. That was not what Peter was looking for. The way we had originally presented it to him during the pre-mix was with really big music throughout, pushing and driving everything. He said that this is not who these characters are, that these characters are not action heroes. They are people who, in many ways, are stumbling their way through this mess that they’ve built for themselves.

we had to go through and rethink how to mix that last section without driving big music through everything

It’s not a show about action; it’s a show about characters and who they are and how they get through this world that they’re in.

So that meant we had to go through and rethink how to mix that last section without driving big music through everything. And it became a very different show from what we had originally presented. And it’s fantastic. It was clearly the right thing to do.

I had to let go of my preconceptions of what a finale is, so that it can be what this show is

I had to let go of my preconceptions of what a finale is, so that it can be what this show is. In the end, it was great the way we were able to be with the characters through the finale in a very different way than what you might expect.

MM: As far as the effects – other than that directive to have signature sounds, artifacts that would place us in different locations – we had free rein. I was able to work with Jonathan and Michael O’Connor (sound effects editor), who did a great job. We had so much latitude to craft the sounds and put some really cool things in Ep. 8, like in the graveyard, we put in woodpeckers and all these little detail sounds which were different from the cold weather birds we had in earlier locations. I thought that was pretty cool.

Shout out to Michael, who did the effects for Shermie the dog. There was one moment when Theresa was storming out of the hotel, and Ray says something so loud that it startled Theresa and the dog. There’s this little effect of Shermie going, “Aaarp!” and it just totally made the moment.

JG: One thing I learned from this episode is that I don’t like cutting dogs.

Shermie was great, though. I think he was the only unflawed character.

It’s a cute dog, but he’s a real character in the show, and you’ve got to sell him.

For the first couple of episodes, I cut Shermie, and then Michael came on board to help out. I said, “Michael, I hate to do this to you, but in addition to the backgrounds, can you cut Shermie? I just can’t stand it anymore.” It’s a cute dog, but he’s a real character in the show, and you’ve got to sell him. Honestly, he’s one of my favorite characters.

MM: Some of his sounds really did steal the scene! Some of those sounds were from production. As I was cutting the dialogue in the first couple of episodes, I would sometimes pull out the little Shermie sounds and then add them to Karol’s dialogue PFX edit, just as an alt to the sound effects. But Michael did a great job of finding sound effects that sounded just like that dog from production.

it wasn’t the same dog. All those effects were mixed and matched, and fortunately, it worked.

JG: I had done the first couple of episodes, so I had collected a bunch of sounds that Michael could select from, and then he added to that. But, it wasn’t the same dog. All those effects were mixed and matched, and fortunately, it worked.

Favorite episode for sound? Why?

DD: My favorite episode was Ep. 6. Speaking for myself, that was one that Peter allowed a lot of creative interpretation from us. I was happy at the end of it when my partner was like, “Whoa,” after watching the episode.

the main point of the narrative […] was trying to hide their conversations with music coming from a boombox

Across the board, (Stephen can speak more to his work on balancing the dialogue and the music because that was nonstop needle drops), the main point of the narrative when they were hunkering down after Ray got shot was that his dad (who is out of prison now) was trying to hide their conversations with music coming from a boombox. It was an incredible amount of work to be able to balance that, but Stephen can talk more about that.

SF: It was really fun and challenging. There were so many futzes in that episode, and so many different things that we were trying to accomplish with them, and not just musically.

For the boombox, we needed to feature it, and then we needed to get it out of the way. Going back to what Jonathan had mentioned about needing to feel authentic, we really tried to make each of these pieces feel like it was what it really was.

playing Ray’s perspective through that process was, as Danielle was saying previously, about pushing and pulling

Ep. 6 just went absolutely everywhere. We’re playing it natural, and then Ray gets hit with some drugs and the rules just break. There are addiction themes in the show, and so there’s so much tension around that, and what does it mean? So, playing Ray’s perspective through that process was, as Danielle was saying previously, about pushing and pulling and finding the piece to feature that is most appropriate for the moment. Episode 6 had a lot of pieces and a lot of perspectives, so it was super fun.

MM: On that same episode, Jonathan can talk about the gun battle. It was a six-minute gun battle, and at some point, we dive out of the music completely. That’s amazing because normally it’s wall-to-wall music in a gun battle. The music’s driving it, but in this case, getting back to the word authentic, we needed to hear, to feel, to sense the grittiness of that battle. So I would add bits from ADR, loop group, or the principal actors, just little nuances of breaths and efforts that normally I might not have bothered with because it would’ve been wall-to-wall music, and you never would’ve heard it. So it was fun to be able to do that level of detail.

It was a six-minute gun battle […] we needed to hear, to feel, to sense the grittiness of that battle.

And a shout out to Brian Tyree Henry because he looped almost the entire scene, catching the lines that he needed to and also doing breaths. He was really in it, so by the time he got to that one line where he calls out “Dad!” as Manny is dragging him into the hospital, that wasn’t just beeped in for the word “dad.” He did the whole run into that.

JG: I remember when we had talked about the shootout, you had said, “Hey, there isn’t going to be music, and you just get to make it sound real.”

sometimes people overcut the guns. They put too much in. You have to realize that people in a gunfight aren’t continuously firing their weapons.

I’ve found in my experience with gunfights that sometimes people overcut the guns. They put too much in. You have to realize that people in a gunfight aren’t continuously firing their weapons. So, in my approach, I would find holes where it would be appropriate to have silence, and then the gun battle picks up again. That was a challenging scene to cut for sure.

DD: Jonathan and I spent a lot of collaborative time going back and forth and adding quite a bit once we realized that there wasn’t music. I think that at the beginning, there was a question of maybe we would have music in. And early on, there was a version where we tried music through a lot of it. Once it was clear that music was not going to be there, we really had to add for narrative, so that we can differentiate the people, we can track what’s going on, and also feel intimate with the characters.

Jonathan gave me a bunch of different guns – different for each group. The biker gang had all different guns, but they were the same type. Ray, Manny, and the Phams had different guns, but all had to feel connected.

We spent a lot of time on attaching the foley to the people

We covered what they were wearing, too. We added a lot of foley updates that we flew in. For the Phams, we had tactile vests. They came in prepared for battle. For the biker gang, we had leather, chains, and denim. We spent a lot of time on attaching the foley to the people so that even though there wasn’t a ton of dialogue, there was a lot of communication between these characters that felt real in that moment. It was tense.

Also, they did a great job shooting the gunfight. There’s a mini car chase in there briefly. They had some great camera work between the two cars where they were racing towards each other and then almost hit. They had great POV shots.

That whole episode is a masterclass on building tension and excitement

That whole episode is a masterclass on building tension and excitement. It’s long and it’s nonstop, but it’s not fatiguing. Every next step has some place to build to. I felt like we were constantly leaning in for the next thing instead of being like, “Oh my God, when is this onslaught going to end?”

MM: When the cars almost hit as they go by each other, there was that sound effect, which was my favorite in the whole series. Do you remember that moment?

DD: I do. That was another famous Jonathan sweetener that we got to fly in once we realized we had some space for it.

SF: That was great, but I think my favorite was the ‘truck squish’ in Ep. 2.

DD: You know it works when you hear everyone during playback in a dark room go, “Oooouch.”

I’d say my favorite for sound was Ep. 2. I felt there was a lot of storytelling to be told through sound

JG: I’d say my favorite for sound was Ep. 2. I felt there was a lot of storytelling to be told through sound, more so than maybe some other shows that I’ve worked on. For instance, the contrast between the starkness of the backgrounds and the crows in the distance in Ep. 2 as they come up to the Loebsack house, and then with the water dripping. It just created this whole climax for the gun battle.
 

Going back to Ep. 6 and the loud music, how did they handle that on set? The actors did a great job of ‘projecting over the music,’ but I’m guessing the music was all added in post…

SF: Yeah, that was all added afterwards. There was great intensity from the actors there. I really enjoyed the way that the different personalities played against it. Bart (played by Ving Rhames) is so dry; he’s such a great foil for everybody else in the scene. He’s walking around with this boom box, and we’re going up and down with the music. We hear folks off-stage. It keeps coming back to what Danielle was saying about pushing and pulling, moving between source and the score, and transitioning between them in ways that ultimately don’t distract from the great performances on screen.

I really liked the licensed music choices. Some of it worked so well with the characters’ performances, like when ‘Grandma’ Pham digs the bullet out of Ray’s leg, and he gives that super long scream that feeds into the licensed music track that was playing. Did the actors have an idea of what kind of music would be playing under their voices as they’re given their lines?

MM: I think so. I think some of that was written into the script, but that doesn’t always work out. I think they knew the Mars mixtape was ’80s bubblegum music. Like when Ray is upstairs, and he ends up shooting the boombox because he just couldn’t take it anymore. So, they had an idea of what music it would be without knowing the exact song.

What did you learn while working on the sound of Dope Thief? What will you carry with you from your experience on this show?

JG: Going back to the storytelling aspect, I’ve applied this throughout my career, but this show in particular reinforced it. The storytelling benefits from the contrast of sounds and building up to a climax, as we had in Ep. 2 leading up to the gun fight. It just created this whole thing to climax for the first real gun battle in the show.

The storytelling benefits from the contrast of sounds and building up to a climax

MM: I learned that I really love working with Peter Craig! As I mentioned earlier, I developed a new workflow that I hadn’t used before, just because of his level of wanting to be involved with the minutiae in a good way. Sometimes, if a director or showrunner is with you for every step, that can slow things down. Like, you’re on the ADR stage and they’re socializing with the actors, or they’ll like a performance that I know is not going to work because the pitch isn’t right or something.

Even if the work takes many hours and is laborious, when you’re working with great people and great storytellers, it’s a delight.

But none of that happened with Peter. He wanted to be involved with every step and the minutiae, and so that’s when I decided to send him the cue sheets, have him weigh in, and correct any grammar or spelling. That way everybody was on the same page. When he’s at an ADR session, he would weigh in on the performance, but then he would ultimately give me the final say on whether it’s going to work or not. That’s a level of respect and trust you don’t always get.

So bringing it back, I also learned that there are going to be shows that I do in my career that stand out as far as having great people who are really fun, really caring, really dedicated, really collaborative, and just a delight to work with. Even if the work takes many hours and is laborious, when you’re working with great people and great storytellers, it’s a delight. It’s why I wanted to do what I do to begin with. So I learned to not give up on that dream because there are going to be shows like this.

SF: I’ll definitely echo that I loved working with this great bunch of people. I finally got to work with Debra Lovatelli, who was our post producer on the show. She’s absolutely fantastic, and she really set the stage for us to work with people who allow you to collaborate both logistically and creatively to find ways to make the show as good as it can be.

we mixed this show in Dolby Atmos, and Alex Gerbrandt (re-recording mix tech) suggested that we consider using 9.1.6 beds.

On the technical side, we mixed this show in Dolby Atmos, and Alex Gerbrandt (re-recording mix tech) suggested that we consider using 9.1.6 beds. We did, and it was a new and interesting experience for me. Pro Tools supports 9.1.6 as a native panning device. But to put that into the Atmos deliverables, Alex had to translate our 9.1.6 bed into something that would work effectively in the renderer. And he was able to do that really, really effectively. We did a bunch of back and forth, figuring out how to make the setup translate well both to the room and to be true to the down mix. It was super fun, and Alex was an absolute pro in guiding me through that process.

A big thanks to Marla McGuire, Stephen Fitzmaurice, Danielle Dupree, and Jonathan Golodner for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Dope Thief and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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