PRODUCTION THE HANDMAID’S TALE
FINDING A RHYTHM Once Daley wrapped the train sequence, it landed on the desks of supervising sound editor David McCallum and sound designer Brennan Mercer. “We don’t overlap that much [with production],” begins McCallum. “While we didn’t work together, much of what Nicola had to do was reinforced by our sound work. With only one-and-a-half train cars, they had to make it seem like a much bigger and fuller space with a limited set.” A train carriage is full of obvious sounds – the chugging and lurching as the train moves, the car doors opening and closing – as well as easily overlooked noises such as people speaking softly in the background. “You get this sense that, as the episode progresses, the train is making stops and picking up more people, and as the cars begin to fill up, personal space is being invaded and the tension is rising,” explains Mercer. “We used sound cues of babies and children crying, then the mechanical sounds and rhythmic clacking and squealing of brakes. We made sure that all jived with the music, received in advance.” For Mercer, sound design is a window into subjectivity. “One of my big philosophies is that sound design for the sake of it is fun, but to make it feel grounded in reality, it should be attached to something that could actually occur. A big challenge was transitioning the audience through June’s headspace with the use of sound,” he admits. While on her journey, June falls asleep, wakes up and realises her child is missing. “We wanted to transition between being tired, lulling to sleep, meeting her daughter in a dream and then coming out into anxiety,” Mercer recounts. “We use the clacking of the train, in rhythm with the score, to lull June to sleep. Once we come into this dream, we’re in this pastoral field, and we use cicadas and other kinds of crickets. As
‘I can see off the wall there’. Pixomondo ended up building a tall LED wall in a horseshoe around the carriage.” Working on a volume meant that Daley could benefit from image-based lighting. The episode “starts off with idyllic sunlight coming in and flares – and it’s all very beautiful. You get all those reflections shining in the metal or on the face,” Daley shares. “As the scenes go on, things take a turn – Serena gets mobbed, and June gets her away from the mob – that unfolds at night. When June pulls the emergency brake, I wanted to flash all the lights and create chaos.” To support this string of lighting cues, “we did a lot of testing,” Daley recalls. “We found moiré through the Plexiglass in the train set when on a steep angle. We decided if that happened on the set, we’d be able to see it straight away and then simply pop the window out.” During the mob scene, Train to Busan served as the main inspiration. “Lizzie always described it as a zombie film, which I thought was brilliant,” describes Daley. “We didn’t have zombies, but we wanted the mob to be zombie-like.” The flashing lights and frame tilts heighten this feeling of terror even further. “You think they’re just on a nice little train ride, and then it all goes horribly wrong.” The final challenge was to ‘work out how to do this crane shot’, according to Daley. “Once the wall is built, you can’t just move it. We had to move the set in the end; we had to shoot everything except the opening shot and then slide the set back to get the crane in.” Despite some small hiccups, shooting on a volume was a no-brainer – and ultimately a decision that came down to the budget. “We had babies, a toddler, extras and some stunts. We would never have gotten that on a real train,” Daley claims. “It would have been too difficult to get everyone in and out.”
PART OF THE TEAM Nicola Daley (right) joined the show in Season 5, and soon picked up the visual style
WE DIDN’T HAVE ZOMBIES, but we wanted the mob to be zombie-like ”
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