Author by su fang tam
David E. Kelley’s court miniseries “Assuming Innocent” delivers a closing argument at the trial with confident, seemingly decent lawyer Rusty Sabich (Jake Gyllenhaal). His words set the core ego of the series: “I will provide evidence to show you that the defendant committed the crime. Now, if you find it very likely, you must let him free. My job is to prove guilty in reasonable doubt,” he said.
In this courtroom, Apple TV+’s psychological drama, Rusty’s idyllic family life – with his wife Barbara (Ruth Negga) and two teenagers – was brutally murdered and killed in her house when he was accused of killing his lover and prosecutor Caroline (Renate Reinsve). Re-recorded blenders Larry Benjamin and Chuyue Christina Wen helped maintain the ambiguity of Rusty’s role in the murder to keep viewers guessing until the end.
Frequent flashbacks uncover the rusty motives and the details behind the incident. But every time, Rusty becomes a very unreliable narrator: he keeps changing his story. As he said in different scenarios, it’s a sound and visual resale,” Benjamin said.
Wen added: “Dream space and flashbacks are what I make the most sense. For flashbacks, we did a lot of work with the voice editorial team to cleverly trick the audience into questioning Rusty’s story.”
Cinemontage: Even if this story takes place today, we don’t have much of it firmly pushing it firmly in the 2020s, except for the iPhone. Even though Sabic’s kids were teenagers, there were few mentions of social media. At one point, Rusty and Barbara dance to Patsy Cline’s “crazy” on flashbacks to the good days. How does the sound play out with this retro vibe?
Larry Benjamin: Yes, it’s like a retro, Vibey Show. Trevor Baker is an excellent lead editor who works with us to blend the voice. We did a lot with music. We make the audience feel upset by changing the tone to make the song sound like an old record. You will hear the recorded scratch noise. The recording was originally original, Christina added that the surface noise sounded like a record. You didn’t really notice it, but you were upset.
Movie: How do you make it sound like Chicago when the show is mainly filmed in Pasadena?
Chuyue Christina Wen: In every vast city we see the train, our voice director Nick Forshager and Sound Effect director Scott Sanders made sure I had the right sound to make the train feel like we were really in Chicago.
Benjamin: The biggest thing is for sale in Chicago and suburbs, where Rusty’s family lives. We have rolling thunder, heavy rain, “L” trains, occasional jet or helicopter overhead, bus and sirens. They are out of reach, rather than distracting the story, they are subconsciously indicating that we are in the city city.
Movie: Much of this story takes place inside the prosecutor’s office, inside Rusty’s House or Courtroom. How do you make them sound like real living spaces?
Benjamin: We will also survive the city when we are indoors. Director’s producer Greg Yaitanes doesn’t want it to be an acrobat. So we hear kids upstairs or someone listening to music. Barbara is doing laundry – we can’t see it, but maybe there’s a pair of sneakers tumbling on the dryer. These ordinary voices sell, this is a real place to live. The prosecutor’s office is very busy, so we signal people’s density.
Cinemontage: How do you keep the mundane court voice alive?
temperature: We deceive the audience with our voice. Nick and his Foley team, including Foley Mixer Ron Mellerers and Foley editor Brad Bakelmun are amazing. My job is to treat these benefits. The court reverb makes these Foleys feel like they are happening in court, and the “surround verb” sells out the size of the room. The game reverb matches the production quality of Foley, so it sounds realistic. I worked closely with Larry to make sure my Foley got the same approach to the conversation. Foley needs to match the quality of the production sound and match the atmosphere and size of the room.
Benjamin: Even if they are not talking, we leave people in court through a cough or a clear reverb of our throat. We have a sound tip when people move in their seats – the sound type of church benches, the wood squeaks. You will hear the click string of the stenographer machine. I added reverb to their voices. There is always a camera that shoots wide, which means there isn’t much prosperity. So I rely heavily on the Lavalier microphone to sell distance and perspective. Stratus 3D has a nice lush reverb.
Movie: With the evidence taking him, Rusty’s only way to develop a strategy and clear his head is the only time he has been swimming. Talk about voices treating these scenes.
temperature: As he ponders Carolyn in the pool, it sounds like we are flooding this reality underwater, which makes the audience believe we are in his mind. Underwater sound designs often appear when he thinks of her. Since the series is Atmos, I have water on my head. Whenever Rusty considers Caroline, we will drown with him.
Benjamin: As he swims, the rusty man enters a meditation state as he is, and we see through his prism. Scott provides many sound designs for these flashbacks. When flashback, we also used the sound of water outside the pool. This is what I call “enter soup” and when we relax the conversation and other sounds to make them echo, a little “sour”, then we can get into his headspace. We combine discordant sounds with fractions to create a sense of uneasiness.
Cinemontage: What is it like to work on discordant musical clues as the walls begin to get stuck in Rusty?
Benjamin: This is a unique performance. Usually, the concerts are censored and I don’t even get stems, just full stereo composites. But we have a very compressed schedule where the producers hear scores or tips before playing the pass. So Trevor and I worked more in the mixing phase than usual. We got 10-16 different stems, mainly from composers like percussion stems, orchestral stems, synthetic stems, drums, perch, and then we added layers like Stabs, hits, etc. Then we send it to [music editor] Dean [Menta]they laughed at the change, expanded the prompts as needed, and did anything we didn’t cover on the stage.
Cinemontage: What are the more challenging scenes that can be pinned with music?
Benjamin: Among the pilots, Rusty received a call about the Carolyn murder, who quickly told Barbara before rushing to the scene of the crime. There are 10 different iterations and arrangements for this sequence. but [executive producer] JJ [Abrams] Hope the melody is clear and the performance looks. He wants it to be fun and to attract you musically. So we provide a hint for later scenes and reused with simplified piano notes to convey our place in Rusty’s Headspace, which has become a template for reassembly prompts from Scratch. Another big music moment is the ending. As everyone prepares for the verdict, the music rises, becomes more crazy and intense, and then once everyone sits in court.
Cinema: Crazy flashbacks on their romance, from violent and fierce to mean. How do you convey the obsession, depression, love and anger between these lovers?
Benjamin: We wanted to keep it very organic and carnal between Caroline and Rust. Nick’s co-visitor Kathryn Madsen is an amazing ADR executive who barely breathes and works hard as they moan, and I supplement the reverb. As the scene becomes visually enhanced, we do the same thing in sound. Some of them also come from production. Whenever he sees Caroline’s body being bound by flashbacks, we emphasize the pressure of the hemp rope. Foley crew rope stretched out the rope to make a sound. We added the bed squeaking when they hugged or were passionately fucked and the furniture was thrown there.
Cinema: In a crazy moment, a possible suspect in an old case, Brian (Marco Rodríguez) hits Rusty’s door, frightens his family, and Rusty beats him.
temperature: It’s very intense and chaotic. Rusty was frightened because he just received a call from Raymond asking what might be the link between him and Caroline’s murder. The camera is in the view of Rusty around the house, and he sees his daughter Jaden [Chase Infiniti] Very scared. The sound follows the camera as we collapsed at the door, laying this chaos around the room. Atmos is very immersive, allowing us to be more directed and intentional on the tablet. When he started punching, the fist got bigger before we entered Rusty’s Headspace, which was almost like he lost himself and didn’t know what he was doing. So when he slams Brian, we suck the reality away. You will feel the fist in your chest, but we can no longer hear any punching sounds.
Movie: In the Pilot, after Barbara forces Rusty to introduce this to the kids, we have some heartbreaking scenes. Then he sat alone at the bottom of the stairs, listening to her comfort, and Jaden faced why he cheated on his mother.
temperature: I pulled a few sound elements away very slowly, making you feel like the air is being sucked away. Production captures a lot of movements, but anything that doesn’t cover, I add those movements like when manually filling someone’s arms or between each other. In these sad moments, less, let you feel intimate with these characters and experience their feelings.
Movie: In these eight episodes, we are never sure if Rusty can do this. What sound skills are his culprit?
Benjamin: They did the previous lap, popped and parallel edited, such as Rusty was sitting in his car thinking, and there was audio in the next scene. Play schedules on edits to mess up your time and place.
temperature: On the flashback of murder night [defense attorney] Mia [Gabby Beans] BBQ He prepares for his testimony, and it’s the first time we see him knocking on Caroline’s door From his POV. We’ve seen it many times, but each time, our playback sounds a little different. Trevor came up with the idea that he included the sound in the scene while he was alone in the bar before he went to her house. He has a different view of his memory. Is it rusted to make up for his memory or is it difficult to remember? We also have different versions of him entering her house. In one of them, he slammed violently on the door – he was angry because she wanted to end the relationship. In another flashback through POV, he rang the doorbell, which was almost romantic, like he was there to achieve peace. I knocked the door in different directions and added a dream reverb, so it felt like we were with him in the past.
Benjamin: You don’t know what’s going on. Did Caroline take pictures of him? Did he push her? Did he knock on the door or the bell?
temperature: There are two narratives told through sound: violent entrance with romantic doorbell rings to make the audience feel strange: Which story is true?
