The Project
Splice completed audio post-production for the second series of BBC Two scripted comedy White Gold created by Damon Beesley. Set in Essex in the mid-80s, White Gold tells the story of a double-glazing showroom led by charismatic salesman Vincent Swan (Ed Westwick) and his unscrupulous sales team (Joe Thomas & James Buckley). Senior post producer, Lydia Thatcher looked after the project which was delivered to BBC as stereo as well as BBC Worldwide and Netflix as 5.1 surround sound.
Audio Post-Production
Senior dubbing mixer, Matt Baird, mixed the series using Pro Tools 12 on the 16 fader Avid S6 M40 control surface. He was assisted by dubbing mixer, Ben Worlidge, who handled dialogue editing and some heavy pre-mixing to ease the pressure up against a tight post schedule. Both made use of newly released iZotope RX7 Advanced noise reduction tools and Halo UpMix which was used to make the classic sounds of the 80s work in 2019 surround sound. The BOOM effects library provided most of the atmospheres and spot FX, complemented by field recordings captured by the Splice team over the years. AudioEase's Speakerphone 2 was used for creating a variety of 80s phone and radio effects. Mahoney Audio Post recorded foley, having previously worked with Splice on People Just Do Nothing (Series 5).
The dialogue is fast-paced, one-upmanship and director, Damon Beesley and producer, Phil Gilbert, like to hear it front and centre to make sure the audience doesn't miss a thing. Matt and Ben conformed all the mics into the master timeline and kept them all instantly available to make sure they could always use the best available recording for every word of every single line. ADR is kept to a minimum, to be sympathetic to the moments captured on set. White Gold takes stylistic inspiration from Scorsese's gangster films and often uses his signature bold tracking shots. This presents one of the biggest challenges in terms of dialogue with the movement and switching between boom and radio mics, Altiverb and Match EQ were invaluable to Matt for these shots.
The 80s soundtrack is particularly stand-out and one of Matt's favourite parts of working on the show. He used various tricks to make sure the music sits nicely under the dialogue, squashing the spikey synths and lead vocals to force them to the background and micromanaging the intensity of the music in response to each moment within the scenes.