The Underground Railroad TV Show
/The Underground Railroad, directed by Barry Jenkins is based on the book written by Colson Whitehead. I was hired to find and record various sound effects for the Amazon TV show.
Congrats to the entire team, to Supervising Sound Editor Onnalee Blank and Sound Department.
This blog is divided into two parts.
Part One is about recording a Steam Train & Part Two is about recording Natural Ambience sounds.
PART ONE - STEAM TRAIN RECORDING SESSION
Most people don’t know but a film set IS NOT a quiet place to capture clean sound effects. I was tasked to find, rent, and to record an operational steam train. Through research I came across a train museum in Parrish, a small town in Florida. They told me that a functional steam train was available for me to rent for a full day on their 6 mile track. I still can’t believe that I got to record one. Yes, a steam train was in my massive bucket list to record!
Many recording gear were used to capture all of the sounds of this steam train. Onboard (literally) were DPA 4061 lavaliers positioned close to where the engineers/operators worked. I chose them because they would not be in the way in the tight spaces. Rode M1 was zipped tied close to the smoke stack. I thought for sure I would loose that mic but it survived and is still being used today. Next to the compressor was a Sennheiser e935 which did a great job at capturing lows, meds, and high frequencies.
Whenever I was pointing with a mic, it was a Pearl MS8CL ms stereo mic. This small mic was essential to capture various Foley and train sounds. At one moment I used a boom pole and positioned the ms stereo mic right at the wheel moving on the track. The sounds captured were incredible! I had to look back and forth as a few times I was hit by foliage, LOL!
Towards the end (inside a connected car) was the Soundfield SPS200 ambisonic mic. It was used to capture the movements of the train without the steam engine sounds. The mic was repositioned to record inside some of the connected cars.
At a clearer area, I stepped out to capture External sounds of the train. The Pearl and Sennheiser 8040 in XY mics were both connected to my Sound Devices 788T-SSD recorder. It has been a great experience to gesture at the train operator to approach and blow his whistle. Please enjoy the show and the sounds.
One final crazy idea I had was to place two handheld recorders in between the tracks. The engineers liked my bold idea and approved to proceed with the stunt. The sound of being run over was great, LOL!
PART TWO - NATURAL AMBIENCE
Supervising Sound Editor wanted really clean sounding ambience background sounds focused in the southern parts of United States. Being in Florida I spend a week in the Florida wilderness away from noisy people and unwanted machine sounds. Through mosquito infested no man’s land I trekked for miles each day to capture insects, birds, foliage movements, etc ambience sounds. I had to dodge around large alligators, lunging poisonous snakes, etc creatures.
The gear I used were a Soundfield SPS200 ambisonic 360 and a Pearl MS8CL microphones. Both were protected by Rycote Cyclone windshield kits. The stand I used was a Manfrotto 5001b light stand.
Because of many flying stinging insects, I was often covered by a protective mosquito net. The hat prevented me from using traditional headphones so I used the Shure SE846 pro earphones. They’re essential because the weather so extremely hot where traditional headphones would create more heat on my head. Standing in between thick foliage means there wasn’t any wind to cool me down. But, this is what we do to capture great sounds.
My friend Captain Mike Reark gave me details maps of where to venture to and also let me borrow his mountain bike to go further than by foot. Some of the prime areas do no allow motor vehicles. Thank you Mike!
