BURBANK, CA, OCTOBER 30, 2018 - Jonathan Wales, mixing at Formosa NoHo, recently turned to NUGEN Audio's Halo Upmix to help him complete the audio mix for the Netflix series, The Haunting of Hill House.
Wales originally started his career producing music and transitioned to mixing movies in the mid-1990's when he realized he could combine his passion for creativity with his love of technology. Having worked on such films as Meet the Parents and Get Out, Wales now relies on NUGEN Audio's Halo Upmix to help him convey the emotions of haunted memories as Hill House's story flashes between the past and present.
"When mixing TV and film projects, workflow is very important, in addition to being organized and knowing our tools, so that the creative part of mixing doesn't become secondary," says Wales. "The best part about an in-the-box workflow, is being able to choose the best plug-ins for the project and not being limited by physical technology. Quality and sound are what really counts, and I found both with NUGEN's Halo Upmix."
The Haunting of Hill House was mixed in Dolby Atmos. For the show, Wales needed to convey the feeling of spaciousness in the house and create unnerving suspense throughout the mix as a family relives their scary past. Wales was looking for a solution that allowed immersive output with existing tools, so he took Audio Ease's Altiverb 5.1 and Avid ReVibe outputs and sent them through Halo Upmix.
"Mixing in Atmos is fun, but complicated," he says. "I loved working in the format, but obviously there can be a lot of things to keep track of. One of the episodes featured scenes that were 15 minutes long in one single shot. We wanted to be able to follow the perspectives of the actors through this giant journey of directing and acting. It was amazing to see it all come together and the differences in spaciousness between the house in the past and the funeral parlor in the present. I owe a lot of what we were able to achieve with ambiences and reverbs to Halo Upmix. There is a lot of control over what the Halo Upmix algorithm is doing at any point in time, so it really became an integral part of the workflow for mixing the show."
Wales specifically relied on Halo Upmix's ability to work in multichannel and immersive formats. Its ability to intelligently address the need to "spread" signals from a smaller format to a larger one, was key during his mixes. "Spreading is easy, but having it be pleasant and useful in an immersive format and still be compatible with a fold-down is the real trick," says Wales. "Halo Upmix maintains great backward compatibility when folding the mixes back down and allows us to control and change what it's doing in real-time."
The Haunting of Hill House is a 10-episode series that reimagines Shirley Jackson's horror novel of the same name. It premiered on Netflix on October 12th.
Information about Halo Upmix, along with NUGEN Audio's complete product family, is available at www.nugenaudio.com. For all other inquiries, please email info@nugenaudio.com.
About NUGEN Audio
NUGEN Audio is a manufacturer of innovative and intuitive professional audio tools that provide the broadcast and post-production industry's most advanced solutions for surround upmixing and end-to-end loudness management, metering, and correction from content acquisition through to playout. Reflecting the real-world production experience of the NUGEN Audio design team, the company's products make it easier to deliver high-quality, compliant audio while saving time, reducing costs, and preserving the creative process. NUGEN Audio's tools for audio analysis, loudness metering, mixing/mastering, and tracking are used by the world's top names in broadcast, post-production, and music production. For more information, visit www.nugenaudio.com.
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