This week on the Geektown Behind The Scenes podcast, we’re stepping into the sound world of Apple TV+’s critically acclaimed comedy ‘The Studio‘, with supervising sound editor and sound designer George Haddad.
The series, created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg along with Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez, has become one of Apple’s breakout hits. Starring Rogen as Matt Remick, the hapless new boss of the fictional Continental Studios, The Studio skewers the absurdity of Hollywood through overlapping dialogue, chaotic one-shot sequences, and a star-studded ensemble cast. Following rave reviews, Apple renewed the series for a second season, and Lionsgate recently announced it had made Emmy history with a record 23 nominations, the most ever for a freshman comedy.
For George Haddad and his team, that unique format made it one of the toughest jobs of his career. “For a 30-minute show. This was the most dialogue, editing, and procedures that we had to take. And it was even more than other series that I’ve done that were 50 and 60 minutes because the continuous shot style of what the series was, as well as you’re always seeing 5, 6, 7 characters on camera running around chaos,” he explained. “That was the comedy. I think at some point we had almost 20 tracks of dialogue, ’cause we basically had to.”
Comedy, he said, needed a different philosophy than drama. “Comedy to me… Its timing and quantity are the two main aspects for sound. We have to time it around the dialogue, ’cause that’s the punchline. That’s what the viewers are there to hear and see. And we can’t play too much sound because we can’t distract them.”
That approach paid off in some of the series’ standout episodes, such as the Golden Globes instalment. “I just thought that episode, the way they filmed and shot, it looked exactly like what I’ve watched on TV for many years. We had just such a pleasure recreating the sounds of what we hear when we watch the Golden Globes. There’s something about that show that it’s not quite perfect. You always hear movement when the host is speaking from everybody at their tables and stuff like that. And we took a lot of time to recreate just subtle things that we put into that episode. And it came out great. We were really proud of it.”
Elsewhere, the sound design itself added to the jokes, particularly when Seth Rogen’s character caused mayhem. “He created so much chaos on the set because of him trying to get his idea to Sarah Polly, the director, that every time he screwed up a shot, we would have the background set people that we recorded with loop group voices just, sort of letting them know how frustrated and angry they were, that he screwed up the shot so many times. So we would have them just grind their teeth, saying their lines, yelling at each other ‘We gotta do it again!” So we helped tell the story of Matt screwed up the whole scene again.”
George even went guerrilla with his recording methods to capture authentic ambience. “A lot of the sounds are recorded on the Warner Brothers lot, ’cause I went in there without any permit or anything like that. I just basically stood like a bystander. And just, was holding my microphone and golf carts were passing by, which was perfect because you see a lot of that in the series. I didn’t ask anybody to record anything for me. I didn’t walk into any offices, letting them know I was recording. Because these days our recorders are all handheld. We could hide them. We could, so a lot of that actually came out really surprisingly well because we got to use it every time they shot on the Warner Brothers lot. I was eventually told to leave because I was holding my microphones, pointing at cars and everybody, and it made a few of the executives a little uncomfortable.”
Haddad’s career stretches across multiple genres. He spent five seasons on Fox’s Gotham, which demanded an entirely different toolkit. “The Gotham series was just a ton of work. It was nonstop action. They basically filmed a movie in 44 minutes. Danny Cannon, the supervising director and co-showrunner he’s like a kid in a candy store for a show like that. He does not stop! He does not hold back on anything. They told so much story, but not necessarily always scripted. They would write scenes for sounds only and music. So when we came across those types of episodes or sections of episodes, the amount of work, whether it was weapons or in the bat cave as progressing through the five seasons that we did. The amount of work was tremendous.”
‘The Studio‘ Season 1 is streaming now on Apple TV+, with a 2nd Season already confirmed. If you want to keep track of this or any other shows, you can add them via our Never Miss system, and you’ll be notified when it gets a UK premiere date. Visit Never Miss.
You can listen to the full interview with George Haddad below, and it is available on all major podcast apps. And don’t forget, alongside our Behind The Scenes specials, you can also catch our weekly Geektown Radio episodes, covering the latest TV news, premiere dates, reviews, and more.
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