Behind the Sound of ‘The Right Stuff’ Series

The Right Stuff series from National Geographic on Disney+ — based on the homonymous bestseller by Tom Wolfe — recounts the early days of the U.S. Space Program and examines the lives of America’s first astronauts, the Mercury Seven. Here, Emmy-winning supervising sound editor Walter Newman talks about creating the show's 1960s era-authentic-and-NASA-approved sound.

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Disney/National Geographic

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Imagine a tranquil sunny day, sitting in the bleachers beside your family watching the test flight of a rocket that’s supposed to propel you into space. Inside Mission Control, it’s all systems go. Ignition. Liftoff. The Atlas rocket ascends in a guttural, popping roar of fire and force. As it climbs upward, you explain to your kids what you would be feeling strapped into that capsule on top. Then, BOOM. The rocket explodes. Excitement and awe expire in the black smoke streak that now stains the sky. What follows is shock, and sirens, and incertitude.

That historical MA-1 launch is brought to life in the Disney+ series The Right Stuff , which chronicles the lives of the Mercury Seven astronauts vying for a chance to fly to space. Although the series is a dramatic reimagining of these lives and events, it’s more fact than fiction. On the sound side, five-time Emmy-winning supervising sound editor Walter Newman — at WB Sound — even consulted with NASA experts to ensure the accuracy of the Atlas rocket’s sound.

Here, Newman talks about designing by-gone rockets from modern recordings, editing in hundreds of switches for Mission Control and the Mercury capsule, cutting Foley effects, recording remote group and ADR, finding VO talent to match the quality and cadence of 1960s radio announcers, and more!

What were series creator Mark Lafferty’s goals for sound on The Right Stuff? How did he want to use sound to help recreate this time in history?

Supervising Sound Editor Walter Newman

Walter Newman(WN): Since it’s a period piece, set in the late 50s – early 60s, we pretty much had to go straight period sound. The main object was to not get ‘spacey’ or sci-fi. Everything had to be pretty factual.

When we were done designing the sound of the jets and rockets, we had to play them back for a consultant from NASA who would comment on whether they sounded real enough. The jets and rockets of that time period had to sound ratty. They don’t sound like the pristine jets of today. They had to sound rough.

The main thing was being realistic. There was only one thing in the whole show that we took liberties on, but that was a story point and so we had to enhance that sound quite a bit.

For the jets and rockets, were there existing collections of recordings that you were able to pull from?

WN: Yes. Warner Bros. (where I work) did the original The Right Stuff film. Not that we would use those rockets from 30 years ago but it gave you a good basis for how it should sound. We can pretty much manufacture all of that stuff. We didn’t have the liberty of going out to shoot jets or rockets during the pandemic; we couldn’t even go to work! This whole show was quite a different ballgame because of the pandemic. That was really challenging from top to bottom; it was a whole different work parameter. That was more of a challenge than anything.

Did you have access to WB Sound’s rich resource of effects? Were you able to connect to their sound servers from where you were working remotely?

WN: My main sound effects editor is Ken Young. He has an inordinate amount of sound libraries. Yes, we could connect with WB Sound’s server from home (they made a way for us to do it) but we pretty much did it on our own. We have our personal libraries; I have a ton of rocket ships at home and jets. But these were old school jets so we basically had to manufacture what they sound like with different effects from different jets and planes and you name it.

But these were old school jets so we basically had to manufacture what they sound like with different effects from different jets and planes and you name it.

Our whole process was different. In general, before the pandemic happened, I would spot the show with the powers that be, and I’d take my notes back to Ken and our dialogue editor Darleen Stoker. We’d discuss it, go back and forth; we’d check stuff out and enhance things.

But this time around, it was totally different. Our process now heavily incorporates Zoom, or phone calls, and you have to be specific about what you want. Our normal process of reviewing every piece of the sound — to enhance sound effects or drop effects — before it went to the mix stage has disappeared.

What was your collaborative process like with your sound team during the pandemic?

WN: In the past, I would go spot the show with the producers and showrunners and get a chance to read the room and figure out what everybody wants. I’ve been pretty lucky with that throughout my career. You just read people. It’s a huge thing that’s incredibly underrated. You kind of know what you can get away with and you know the direction they want to go and how far they want to go. You figure out how big you can go.

You just read people. It’s a huge thing that’s incredibly underrated.

This was different. There were no people to read. I was on a Zoom call with Jennifer Davidson (executive producer) and Joshua Levey (post producer) and Chris Long (executive producer); I would Zoom with Ken and Darleen, put up the episode, go through it, and email notes after that.

ADR was a whole other question. That was a nightmare.

Sound effects-wise, the three of us have all worked together for 25 years. I know how they cut. It wasn’t like hiring a bunch of people and guessing. I knew what I was going to get. I knew it was going to be 95% there and that other 5% you just fix on the stage. But this time around, after they got an episode, there was much phone review of sound effects, dialogue, and ADR and then it would just get shipped straight to the dub stage.

ADR was a whole other question. That was a nightmare.

And because of the pandemic, the fewer people on the stage the better. There could only be a couple of people on the stage at the same time. My editors couldn’t go up there but I could. It was me and Chris McGeary (music editor), Joshua Levey, and the re-recording mixers Aleksandr Gruzdev and Brad Sherman.

It was just different and you had to adapt. I don’t know that anyone watching would know the difference. I think, producer-wise, they wanted the best show they could get and the result is that no one would know if this show was done pre-pandemic or during the pandemic. I think it turned out really well.

And what about the Foley process? Because this world of the 60s is so tactile, and hands-on was there a significant amount of Foley? How did the Foley teamwork on the show?

WN: Foley is a whole different thing. I have a Foley guy Peter Reynolds, who’s been programming my Foley for more than 10 years. We’d go through the show and he would call me with any specific questions.

With Foley, we cue all the footsteps only.

With Foley, we cue all the footsteps only. We cue the different surfaces and whether they have space boots on, or whether they’re on the tarmac. Those footsteps are cued specifically for the actor and what they’re wearing in what environment. Then, Peter cuts all of our Foley out of a Foley library. We have millions of Foley sound effects. If we need anything special then we’ll have it shot. But mainly, we cut Foley almost like we cut sound effects and it’s much more specific, much more on the money.

But mainly, we cut Foley almost like we cut sound effects and it’s much more specific, much more on the money.

We work with Foley artist Sanaa Kelley and she walks Foley with another artist from time to time, Matt Salib, and her Foley mixer is Jordan McClain. We get back their Foley, review it, and Pete goes through it all and makes sure everything lines up. Then we send it to the stage.

Our Foley props and effects are cut like sound effects because there are a lot of actors — you have seven astronauts, seven wives, and all their children. There are all kinds of people in this thing. That’s really time-consuming to do all of their footsteps plus props and get it into sync. So we find the best way to do it is to let Sanaa perform the footsteps (and she did a great job) and then Pete would cut in the other Foley sounds from library. The times that we needed specific Foley, because this is a tin can of the space capsule and it has to sound a little different, that was pretty much cut as sound effects with additional effects as sweeteners on top.

Let’s look at the opening sequence, with John Glenn and Alan Shepherd lying awake in the dark waiting for their day to start. They go for a run and it becomes this competitive race at the end. Their morning jog is juxtaposed with shots of the shuttle being prepared for takeoff. How did you use sound to help tie these parallel events together and support the feeling of anticipation?

WN: The sound in the beginning is pretty bare. You hear a ticking clock. They’re waiting, and at that moment, neither one of them knows which is going to be the astronaut to go into space. It’s down to those two and one is going to be the backup.

You see them running and it shows a competition between Glenn and Shepherd. You hear their breathing and that adds that feeling of competitiveness. Both actors recorded their own breathing later in ADR.

The radio voices you hear in the background were a big deal.

You hear the banging on that spaceship and you know where you are. We’re not going to be subtle about it. We go in big. You hear the engine idling and the steam coming out and the radio frequencies in the background (which were also a big deal because they had to match the staccato type voices of the late 50s).

The radio voices you hear in the background were a big deal. They had to be mixed with the original voices of Walter Cronkite or John F. Kennedy or even the countdowns of the time. And as the show progresses, we had a lot of them.

You have to get the right kind of voice. You have to get a voice that isn’t too smooth and sounds like a disc jockey. The actor can’t sound like he’s from 2020. He has to sound like he’s from the 1950s.

We went through quite a few people to get that kind of sound. We had quite a few auditions of people trying to manufacture that sound so that you wouldn’t all the sudden hear Walter Cronkite in the background or some mission control guy and then we segue to the “fake” one. It had to match.

His chewing is telling you that he didn’t really want to be there with John Glenn.

In the scene where Glenn and Shepherd are eating breakfast, and they’re having filet mignon, it was important to hear Shepherd chewing and eating. It was his way of expressing angst. His chewing is telling you that he didn’t really want to be there with John Glenn. There are a lot of subtle details like that.

In addition to the radio voices, were there other opportunities to get creative with dialogue on the show?

WN: The dialogue on the show was recorded really well. They did a great job of recording dialogue on the set. Everything that was in there we pretty much used.

ADR was a different story. You have seven astronauts, seven wives, and all the NASA personnel on–screen and no one would go to an ADR stage to record their lines. Because of the pandemic, the stages were closed.

We had Brian Armstrong who figured out a way to record the ADR from home, but in doing so, you are subject to all of the actors’ Wi-Fi setups. And everyone sounds different because of their different Wi-Fi connections. Some people’s Wi-Fi would drop out. Some people’s Wi-Fi was weak. Some people’s Wi-Fi was being drained by their kids playing video games in the other room. That was really a challenge until we figured it out. By the third or fourth show, we pretty much got it.

It was odd because the actor who plays Gordon Cooper was in Ireland and his ADR sessions over Zoom (or whatever we used!) sounded the best. One of the actors lived in an apartment building in Burbank or Glendale where the Wi-Fi was shared by the entire building and his connection was questionable at best.

We did tons of group ADR which was a whole other ball game because you have eight or nine people in group.

We did tons of group ADR which was a whole other ball game because you have eight or nine people in group. We were told we should record one person at a time. Cut one person at a time and mix that with the second person and so on. We have hundreds of cues in each episode because of Mission Control or wherever they are. Brian figured out a way to have all eight people on at the same time which really saved a ton of time.

We have hundreds of cues in each episode because of Mission Control…

That worked but you still have the problem of all these people being in their separate homes with different Wi-Fi and someone’s dog would be barking outside or there would be a lawnmower or someone’s ceiling fan kicks on. It’s not like being in a pristine environment of the ADR stage. Also, if an actor turns their head and their voice flanges and they’re mixed in with everyone else then you have to re-shoot it. It was quite a challenge.

I have to give Brian credit for figuring out how to do it. And, for the most part, the group was great. They stuck with it despite the challenges. For the first episode, the group took about 10 to 12 hours to do because we didn’t know what we were doing. By the time we were done, we were getting through group in 4 to 5 hours.

I love the sound of Mission Control, with all those switches and knobs. Can you tell me about your work on those?

WN: In the day, in the early ’60s at Mission Control, you had switches instead of our modern-day beeps and boops. We used hundreds of different kinds of switches to make it sound interesting.

Being in a spaceship in those days, there were no beeps. No alarms. There were just switches. In a later episode, when they blast off and the astronaut has some issues, we had to make that scary without alarms and beeping. You have to make that shuttle rattle, like it’s going to fall apart. I stole a philosophy from Ford v Ferrari where they’re racing the Cobras and Corvettes and the cars are rattling like crazy. It sounds great and there is no extra stuff.

We tried to do something similar. For instance, in the first episode when the two jets are chasing each other and Cal Cunningham goes down. As the jets are chasing each other, on the mix stage the whole room is shaking. As Cal starts to crash and his engine flames out, in a contemporary show you have the luxury of beeps and alarms going off to enhance the action or the peril of the pilot. That is the only place where we put in a kind of alarm as he’s about to crash, just to heighten it a little bit. But, that’s the only place in the entire show where something beeps.

Our sound effects mixer Brad Sherman killed it. He did a wonderful job of building that up, and then again in a later episode when the capsule actually takes off.

That was a huge challenge, staying with the parameters of the 60s and making it exciting.

Another thing we enhanced was ‘The Mastiff’ which is the machine that spins the astronauts around and simulates the experience of tumbling inside the capsule in space. That’s in Ep. 3 and Alan Shepherd has some issues with it. We did our research and discovered that the machine didn’t make a lot of noise but we decided to enhance the drama of it. We went a little “Magic Mountain” on that thing. But the sound sells it. And when we played it back for the powers that be, they didn’t have one note on it. That’s great. Sometimes you have to cheat just a little bit.

What would you want other sound pros to know about your work on The Right Stuff?

WN: We tried to be as specific as possible. We tried to be as close to what anything would sound like in that period and the mix brought it all to the forefront.

Unfortunately, when it plays on TV, it doesn’t play like you mixed it which is a pet peeve of mine. You mix this big, beautiful show and the room is shaking when the rocket ship is blasting off. But you can’t get that at home. You lose a lot of stuff by the time it’s aired. And each network has their parameters for assets and you have to work within those.

I think we did the best we could under a really trying circumstance. We got the very first episode at the end of March and we had it for two days before a 3-month shutdown. There was no knowing when you’d go back or what you’d do or how it was going to work or even if we’d have to wait to finish this next year. It was an unusual experience.

The pandemic was the challenge. I had Ken and Darleen with me. I’ve been working with them for 25 years and knew that what they would do for the show would be great. But the challenge was the pandemic and figuring out a way around what you do. We did. As did other crews in Hollywood have done by now. Their approach may be different but it worked.

All that said, I saw the first two episodes on the air and I think it played pretty well. It’s a rich show; it’s classy and people seemed to like it.

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