Apple TV+'s Disclaimer is a psychological thriller that's presented in seven episodes that it refers to as “chapters.” Written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, the show stars Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, and is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Renée Knight.
As a journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchett) built her reputation by revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others. When she receives a novel from an unknown author, she is horrified to realize she is now the main character in a story that exposes her darkest secrets. As she races to uncover the writer’s identity, she is forced to confront her past before it destroys her life and her relationships with her husband Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen) and their son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Indira Varma serves as the narrator.
The Disclaimer sound team included supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Skip Lievsay, supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Craig Henighan and re-recording mixer Chris Chae. The team essentially hit the ground running due to scheduling and requests for temp mixes. Once the sound department received versions of episodes, sound editorial jumped right in to start putting together the tracks for upcoming temp mixes. Both Lievsay and Henighan brought experience from working with the filmmaker in the past, and knew the show would be treated more like a film than television project.
Disclaimer does a fair share of bouncing around from different locations and time periods, and the sound team faced the challenge of distinguishing not only locations, but also treating the moments that retell the accounts of Catherine’s past.
"We dealt with locations primarily based in London, but had an abundance of scenes set throughout Italy," notes Chris Chae. "We were fortunate that Skip and Craig had built a great team that had Steve Browell (sound effects editor), a UK native involved in creating and collecting sounds natural to our UK locations. And Lidia Tamplenizza (DX/ADR supervisor), who was very familiar with Italy. She was a huge help in having someone that knew the language, and handling the dialogue/ADR and in loop-group record. Once the tracks were built [we] had an abundance of material to sort through and create the sonic worlds to Disclaimer."
Cuarón values the sound post process and offered very specific details on the placement of sound, helping to keep the perspectives and geography true. The mixers were given blueprints of each location and that served as a bible for making sure the sounds were all coming from where they need to be in relation to what was taking place on-screen.
They point to an old refrigerator at Stephen’s home that was rather beat up generated some unusual noises. Craig Henighan and Steve Browell are credited with putting that effect together through various renditions and layers of a messed-up, broken fridge.
For the mix, the team worked in Avid's ProTools, using its on-board panning to change perspectives and locations, along with various reverbs, such as Altiverb, Stratus, Symphony, SoundToys and Slapper, to achieve accurate sonic portrayals.
The mix was challenging in that, while they tried to stay true to positioning any on-screen action, they also had to take into account picture cuts that could change perspectives and come off as jarring.
"There was a surgical manner in which we mixed so that when the picture made a big jump...we had to assure a fine balance of feeling the change in picture, but still keeping a smooth, non-jarring change," note the mixers. "A lot of time was spent not just on scene-to-scene transitions, but cut-to-cut."
The team spent a lot of time experimenting on how they would mix elements throughout the entire project and up until the final mix. Some of the challenges included figuring out how to go from the present-day story to the retellings/flashbacks, and differentiating the book's accounts versus Catherine's retelling of events. The panning of the female voiceovers - one being the narration/commentary of present events and the other being Catherine retelling her accounts - were both re-panned throughout the process and up until the very end. All of this experimentation was performed so that the viewer would get a feel for the tragedy of an incomplete/fictional truth from the book and the personal account of Catherine's horror she's that tried so hard to keep a secret.