With The Four Seasons, Netflix has brought Tina Fey's latest project to the world. The miniseries focuses on the friendship between four married couples. It captures how the dynamic between the couples changes when one of them goes through a divorce.
Behind the sound effects for The Four Seasons is James David Redding III. James used Krotos Studio and Reformer Pro to achieve the creative vision of the show, sharing his process in this exclusive interview.
"The one thing that came in really handy on this project was the AI Ambience Generator. What was great about it was being able to use screenshots and quickly come up with four layers." James David Redding III
Hi, James. How did you end up working on Netflix's The Four Seasons?
I've been working with Little Stranger Productions, which is Tina Fey's production company, since about 2006. I've done a lot of their TV series: 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Mr. Mayor. So we have a good rapport with them. It came about very organically just because we've had such a good relationship.
What were the considerations that you might have discussed regarding the sound of The Four Seasons?
With a lot of the Little Stranger productions, sound effects are meant to be organic. They are meant to highlight certain actions for comedic effect. For The Four Seasons, it wasn't as over the top as, say, 30 Rock or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It was much more subdued.
One of the biggest challenges was that every two episodes are a different season. So we weren't ever in the same place. We were always moving. The challenge was that I couldn't reuse things. Sound does change over the seasons, so you have more or less birds depending on what part of the world you're in, for example.
Comparing this 30 Rock, which is silly and it's highly comedic, The Four Seasons has a slightly more serious aspect. Do you find that the sound plays up to those genres?
Yes—sometimes in comedy, you can go a little bit over the top as far as trying to add emphasis. It's just the same almost as in acting. You have this performance part of it that you have to hit the right accent.
I'm following what they're giving me and improvising with them. I'm trying to make sure that my performance of sound matches the actor's performance and matches the writer's performance.
Working on projects like this to get an understanding of how you would approach a project like that is really interesting to hear.
I've worked on so many different types of projects over my career. I like blending them. In The Four Seasons, there's an explosion. I've worked on enough dramas—Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Americans; I've done enough explosions! But at the same time, there's also "make them jumping into the lake as funny as the scene is." And so, the water splashes are a little lighter and a little funnier.
So I like the fact that I have been able to jump genres so much and pull from each genre to help the other.
Would you be able to talk us through creating the sound effects for a single episode, for example?
On a series like this, I want to be able to get through a sense of the show. By laying down the background, I'm getting a sense of the episode. But I'm also doing the nitty-gritty of what has to be done and gridding out the backgrounds.
So I always start with a rough pass of ambiences and getting an idea of what happens throughout the episode. Then I go back in and I start putting in the normal hard effects.
Next I'll add the accent pieces to spice it up a little bit. The mindset is more: "Oh, this door was good, but now that I'm listening to the dialogue a little bit more and I've got an idea of what they're going for, let me add this oomph to it to make it seem a little harder".
I make sure that the audience gets it by adding the sounds that are necessary and things like that. But that's my process. The whole time, I'm doing broad strokes, getting to more fine and finer details.
We had five days for this, which was an average time for what we get for a half-hour series. If I had more time, I could do other wonderful things with it. Less time would make it a little tough!
You've been an avid user of Krotos for many years now. Which ones did you rely on the most for this project?
Krotos Studio Pro has been a great tool for triggering, performing, and rearranging sound effects. The one thing that came in really handy on this project was the AI Ambience Generator. What was great about it was being able to use screenshots and quickly come up with four layers.
In this series, they often use establishing shots, especially at the start of each episode. And then usually about halfway through the episode, they'd do another series of them.
Those shots would last maybe a second or two. I could take a screenshot, pop it into the ambience generator, and it would populate it with keywords: "Here are your birds; here are your streams."
Then I could mix it to my liking because now it gives you two XY pads that you can control. I do the multi-output of each tab where I get the stems and put them into the edit session. Then I can hand that over to the re-recording mixer.
Then there are also things that happened I would need, for example, a wind. There's an episode where there's some extreme weather, and so I needed to be able to create some wind whipping around and such. And the weather presets in Krotos Studio Pro came in again, so I can just move my XY around. It gives me a tactile feel where I'm almost conducting the wind and blowing things around. It was really great!
One of the things I love about the Krotos Studio Pro is being able to go in and put in my own sounds. I have so many recordings that I've done over my career. I have this great bird sound from upstate New York, and one of the settings was actually upstate New York!
So I took that and I could put it into Krotos Studio Pro. And then, since you can pick the granular engine for it, it made it a new background. It wasn't the same bird coming back every minute or whatever. It changed it around and did so seamlessly.
Were there any circumstances that you found challenging to make sound effects for?
For the skiing episode, Krotos Studio Pro and Reformer Pro both played a pretty strong part.
Skiing is hard to edit the normal way. The shots tend to be longer, but our recordings aren't necessarily longer, right? Because they have quick-bys or onboard-type skiing sound, and you need to make them move.
I added the skiing sounds to Krotos Studio. I could change the pitch and create moving Doppler effects. It's more than just using a Doppler plug-in. I can adjust the gain and pitch to create movement throughout.
We have six main characters that we're following. So I had a lot of skiing to do! This helped me add movement to sounds I didn’t have before. I could also change things quickly, so each skier had their own unique sound.
You've worked on various projects and explored many genres. Are you convinced by the idea of Krotos Studio Pro being a professional-level tool?
It's a really great multi-tool.
The pro vehicles, which...WOW! I wish I had those that during The Four Seasons!
It has this drivability that we didn't have before, which is amazing. It's also so flexible that if you feel like you don't have what you need, you can make it. There are a lot of plugins, a lot of tools that we buy, and they're great. But often, you're like, "How long is this going to last?"
With Krotos Studio, you see the development. You get updates that show work is happening behind the scenes. You're getting more for your money each time. You're getting new sounds. You're watching this thing grow
Watch 'The Four Seasons' Now on Netflix, and Try Krotos Studio for yourself with a Free Trial.