The New York Times recently wrote that the just-released Season Two of Severance will “blow your mind”—and we couldn’t agree more. Created by Dan Erickson and Ben Stiller, the Apple TV+ drama is smart, spellbinding, distinctly original and packed with surprises.
For those who aren’t already devoted fans, the show centers on Mark Scout (Adam Scott), leader of a team at Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a “severance” procedure that surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives.
Goldcrest Post provided post services for both seasons of the show, including picture editorial support, sound editorial, ADR and sound mixing. Editorial for Season One began in 2020. Due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, Goldcrest supplied both onsite production offices and edit suites, and remote editing systems for individual editors, with everything linked to a central server.
“Mixing at Goldcrest with our team has been a great experience,” says Stiller. “Bob and Jacob are in sync with our creative process and so good at what they do that the experience is always one where it’s about how we can enhance the creative vision, with a baseline of knowing everyone is totally committed to making something as good as it can be.”
Diana Dekajlo, the show’s co-producer, says that the arrangement worked so well, they chose to continue the hybrid approach for Season Two. “We’re a remote friendly show,” she explains. “Whether we’re at Goldcrest, our studio in the Bronx or at home, our workflow is seamless. I conduct remote daily meetings with my immediate staff, and weekly meetings with editorial and VFX, and we talk to each other as if we were just down the hall. It makes for great staff cohesion.”
Sound post production is led by Re-Recording Mixer Bob Chefalas, Supervising Sound Editor/Re-Recording Mixer Jacob Ribicoff and Supervising Dialogue/ADR Editor Gregg Swiatlowski. Nicole Tessier oversees mix and sound editorial scheduling, while Raina Cagio produces ADR and loop group sessions.
Dekajlo points out that, due to the complexity of the show, consistency in the sound team has been essential. “It’s a tricky show,” she observes. “Bob, Jacob and Gregg know our procedure and what we expect when we walk into the room. They’re great creative partners in terms of understanding what we want and how to get there. They contributed fun and interesting ideas that helped us build on what we did in Season One.”
Like the show itself, its soundtrack is complex and created with care and precision. As Dekajlo explains, “there are no extraneous bits of dialogue, sound effects or music.” She notes that sound plays a big, if subliminal, role in establishing the culture of Lumon Industries, and in underscoring the show’s frequent shifts in tone and reality.
Ribicoff says that’s what makes working on the show so much fun. “We begin in an ordinary office environment, which is outwardly like work environments many of us experience in life, but then we descend into the surreal,” observes Ribicoff. “The challenge is in how we make those transitions, how we move from apparent normalcy into something nightmarish.”
Chefalas adds that, in some cases, achieving the right tone required limiting sound rather than maximizing it. He points to the ambience the team created for Lumon’s secretive Macrodata Refinement department. “We made the MDR as quiet as possible. It feels claustrophobic,” he observes. “There is no echo in the room. It’s dead. To create that effect, we had to be very careful with how we balanced various mics. A boom mic tends to sound big, and we didn’t want big.”
Ribicoff says that the production of the soundtrack was a smooth, collaborative effort between the show’s creators, the production staff and the editing department. “We’re on the same page,” he observes. “It began with the first spotting sessions where we came to a common understanding of the world that we are creating. Every step from there has been rewarding.”
“Everyone at Goldcrest is proud of our involvement in this project,” Chefalas adds. “Shows like this don’t come along very often, and when they do, you give it your all. It’s a career highlight.”
