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‘Bridgerton’ Making a Scene Video Series: Directing

‘Bridgerton’ Making a Scene Video Series: Costumes

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Television

Director, Short Form Content at Shondaland.com

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Long Form Article

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Bridgerton

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Hearst Editorial

(serene music) - The role of a Music Supervisor is to kind of oversee all musical aspects on film or production. And so yes, early on gets all the scripts quite often meet the show runner, directors or at least the lead director on a show and then go through all of the scripts kind of, I naturally just make notes as I go all the way through. So anything that's scripted, but also looking for moments that might not be scripted whereby you could feature music. You know, my role is to obviously hire the right players, the musicians we work very closely, particularly on Bridgerton season one and two with the National Symphony Orchestra, they have incredible talented musicians. So I'm there and also preparing all of the sheet music. So working very closely with the props and art department, as well as graphics, having all the audio for playback, working with sound, ensuring they have everything they need. There's a lot of kind of the behind the scenes stuff that happens in my world before the actual day. And then on the day, I'm there in case there's any questions or if anything should go wrong, which it doesn't. With Bridgerton it was a very unique project, particularly with stuff like the balls, because I was handling all of the on camera music. We were kind of challenged to kind of figure out and navigate how we were gonna make that work. So the dancers having some one track in their ear and then the musicians having something else, but that timing wise works together and that might be as simple as just a click track for the musicians to have in their ear while they're miming to the music, to keep them in time with the dancers which is a more commercial track. So yeah, as I say at the beginning, we were like, how are gonna do this? I don't know how to do this. But we found that we got there. (serene music) Classical musicians can't mime to, you know a commercial track that's a pop track, it just won't work. So actually the approach was to have new sheet music created by a writer, composer, musician, who I've worked very closely with and she has kind of taken each of the tracks and each of the edits and then created so the pop tracks and modern tracks and created sheet music from that. So I send her a breakdown of like, there's eight musicians, there's a harpist there's, you know, three string players and there's a cellist, et cetera and she's gone away and actually created completely new original sheet music, very simplified for them to be moving in time with the dancers and with everything else that's happening around. So it's an unusual way of doing it, but it's also the only way we could kind of figure out how to do it in order for it to work and give that freedom in post. (gentle music) - I'm the Production Sound Mixer. Then there's Johnny White, he's the main Boom Operator and then there's Lizzie King, who's the second assistant sound and there's Phil Stand, the trainee. You know, for production sound, you know, we want to record the dialogue. It's not really much else we are interested in, but also we need to facilitate Sarah Bridge's music coming in. Now the church scene was quite complex because we filmed it in October and it gets dark quite early. So they have to have all these lights outside, which do make a noise. You have to think about the church is quite a big church. It's literally on Piccadilly so there was, you know, sirens, buses, you know stuff going past, you know, central London, its on one, so it's noisy. On a day like that, we're gonna have everyone in, you know the whole Bridgerton family is gonna be there. The Sharmas are there, Lady Danbury, the queen, you know the problems are is we can't put 30 radio mics out 'cause the frequency, we have very small frequency block we can use in the UK. For the wedding especially we just put the microphones on everyone and then depending on which bit of the scene we were doing, we juggled around the transmitters. So we generally only had to have seven or eight transmitters out. We'll hide a mic behind a cravat or under the lapel and then we'll be like, oh, well actually they're speaking most of this scene to the right so can we swap the side of the lapel? So my team always going in, getting up close with them and it's nice now after however many weeks of doing Bridgerton two seasons to have a laugh and a joke with them when the time's right. (gentle music) (smooth music) Your brain is very clever in that, you know you can tell something sounds wrong. If you've got this close up perspective sound here, but the person is surrounded by three meters of air all around them and the voice sounds close up. You know, you don't expect to get that voice until there's like a sort of shot like this where it's a big wide, you know, your brain isn't gonna like the fact that you've got close up sound on a big wide. You know, to keep the boom on the edge of the frame, I can relay to Johnny and Lizzie, what the headroom is on each shot and you know, I can give them feedback. Oh, you know, they're punching in a bit, it's six inches on, you know, on Kate's head or it's, you know, 12 inches on Lady Danbury. And I can keep them informed as to what the shot is. - You'll never meet my eyes in the same manner you met my sisters on that. - I feel the scene works when I feel engaged with the characters on the screen and I'm not, you know, for me personally, I'm not wandering off into the technical aspects of it. I go on Twitter and I, you know I'll search Bridgerton bad sound, you know, and after season one, there was nothing. You know, that's it. As long as people aren't commenting on the sound, then we've done a good job. (smooth music)

Bridgerton Music Supervisor Sarah Bridge and Sound Mixer Tim Surrey explain how music and the sound department add another layer of depth to Anthony and Edwina's wedding scene.