Netflix's Black Mirror is a science-fiction themed anthology series that explores the dark side of human nature and its intersection with the extremes of modern life. Each episode serves as a stand-alone story. Tom Jenkins (pictured) was supervising sound editor on Season 7 and says he worked with Charlie Brooker and the show’s directors and producers to develop the sonic identity of each episode and the show as a whole.
"My role, along with Alex Sawyer our dialogue supervisor, and James Ridgeway, re-recording mixer, was to oversee the entire process of the creation of the series’ sound, from initial sound ideas and discussions with production and crew at script stage, to recording and designing bespoke sounds for each episode, all the way to delivery of the final mix," says Jenkins. "Sound is the last stage of the story telling process and it’s our responsibility to use sound to describe both the objective on-screen narrative and the subjective emotional narrative arc of each episode and its characters."
As an anthology series, Jenkins says Black Mirror is unique in that it requires different approach than a standard television drama. While they all exist within the same Black Mirror universe, each episode of the series is its own stand-alone entity.
"That is a unique challenge as each episode can vary wildly in range, duration and concepts, and often requires a completely different approach," he notes.
One episode that encapsulates this range was USS Callister: Into Infinity. Moreso than the other episodes, Into Infinity required a large amount of work on all fronts, from production to post.
"Everything we do in sound is in service of the picture and the story, and this episode was a gift, written by Charlie, edited by Tony Kerns and directed by Toby Haynes in such a way that lent itself to sonic story telling," he shares. "From the first read of the script, it was clear we were going to be designing a large amount of bespoke, unique sounds, but it really all came to life on the mix stage through the rhythmic and tonal interplay between editing, sound, music and VFX."
The jungle is an example he points to.
"It's a sequence in which Nanette and Cole visit a planet to rob credits from a player in what they think will be an easy score," says Jenkins. "This isn't the case, and they end up in a big gun battle in a jungle against a character called Pixie. The entire sequence is this dance between Daniel Pemberton’s driving score, intricate Foley and big beefy guns, all rhythmically and tonally intertwined with each other and around the dialogue throughout, culminating in our duo being transported up to the Callister and thrusting the ship into hyper warp. It's a massive sequence, turned up to 11, but everything has its own space in the mix. Nothing fights to be heard. It all sort of undulates and flows together."
Jenkins says the team was lucky to have Daniel Pemberton’s score to work with, as it was enormous, emotive and maximalist, featuring strings and huge analogue synths. While balancing the frequency range could have been a challenge, Jenkins says the score was composed in a way that was sympathetic to both sound and dialogue.
"From the jungle run, the space battle, all of the music gave space for the guns and the ships in the complicated FX sequences in a way that enabled us to really let these sequences sing. We all agreed very early on that the transporters must be tonally sympathetic to the music for those sequences, so all of the sound design work on the transporters was pitched to work with Daniel’s score, sometimes and fifth and seventh intervals almost offering a harmony to the main musical theme."
Another memorable scene from the episode is the sequence in which Nanette beams down to the center of infinity for her stand off with Bob.
"The sequence starts with a close-up shot of Nanette being transported from the Callister down to the heart of Infinity, with wonderfully detailed VFX, which lets us push the intricate details of the sound of the transporter and the rhythms of the polygons revealing Nanette," he shares. "Nanette is revealed on the street outside Bob’s old suburban home. The rhythm of the transporter dissipates and morphs into the rhythm of two sprinklers flanking the drive and these enormous, earth-shaking whooshes of the rings moving over head. It gave us this brilliant rhythmic and tonal interplay, all culminating in this beautiful musical garage-door open. All of this was pitched to be tonally and rhythmically sympathetic to Daniel Pemberton’s brilliant score."
Jenkins says the gear he's used over the years has changed, but he still tries to record as much bespoke material as possible, and also to find time to do as much of the initial conceptual sound creation phase of the project away from the computer.
"This is often before I've even seen any footage," he reveals. "I'll read the scripts and use various outboard samplers and modular synths to create a library of things to draw from and edit in a linear fashion later once the cuts start arriving. I'm a big fan of the Old Blood Noise Guitar pedals and the Make Noise Modular systems, so they get used a lot."
For the Callister episode, sound designer James Hayday and Jenkins used a lot of outboard synths and gear to fatten things up.
"James’ trusty SH 101 made it into a lot of the episode, helping beef up all of the guns," he recalls. "This was generally run through lots of distortion and saturation, and pitched and bent around to help really give life and a physicality to the guns."
The laser dopplers and ship passes were done in a two-stage process, with Hayday taking the initial pass and Jenkins then running them through further processing to get them feeling rich and massive.