Finessing Sound for Comedy Central's Musical Variety Show

For sound mixer Michael Fisher at Manhattan’s Creative Group, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert special A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All represented an opportunity, mainly, to make sure nothing got screwed up. The show boasted guest appearances and musical performances by such big-name musicians as John Legend, Willie Nelson, Elvis Costello, and Feist, and the songs had been lovingly recorded. The trick was to maintain the existing high quality of the recordings – and to make Colbert’s first big musical number sound just corny enough – while integrating them with dialogue and finishing on a super-tight schedule. (Fisher started mixing less than two weeks before the slated broadcast and DVD release dates.) F&V asked Fisher about working at the speed of sound, mixing for TV, and how humans hear music and dialogue.

F&V: Why was your deadline so tight for this project?

Michael Fisher: The DVD had to go to authoring and duplication before the show went to air because they wanted it to be available as soon as possible after the show played. The show aired November 23 and the DVD became available November 25, so we actually mixed the DVD prior to the mixing of the show. The astute viewer or listener will notice a couple of minor differences.

What kind of differences?

There were a couple of jokes that were cut out for time reasons – around 28 seconds, so there was very little difference. They played it for a couple more audiences after those cuts were made, and we mixed in some of those audiences for the television version.

And how long did you have to work on the project?

I mixed it in a big 25-hour marathon. I got an OMF handed to me by the editor, I had various tracks given to me by the music composer – a company called Compositions [web site]. And off we went! We put it all together over one very long night.

When was that long night?

November 12.

That seems like a really short turnaround for a DVD release.

That’s one of the reasons it was stereo-only. There are a few bonus features on it, but it was limited by those production demands.

Other than the time crunch, what was the most challenging aspect of the project?

I was really concerned about the quality of the music. The music sounded very good and the last thing I wanted to do was step on it in any way – and I didn’t want the network to step on it in any way through broadcast. So I was most concerned with keeping the music pristine and making the dialogue flow so that the music didn’t feel like an adjunct. One thing shoudn’t feel separated from the other – except in the cases where it’s supposed to as a joke. When he starts singing the first song in the show, it’s obviously supposed to feel like he goes to a different place. It should be bigger than life.

But John Legend, for instance, seems like he’s singing right there on set.

Exactly. Jon Stewart feels like he’s right there. The beginning, at least, of Willie Nelson sounds that way. I wanted the dialogue to feel organic to the songs, as well as to make sure the songs sounded as good as they possibly could.

What does that entail?

Especially right before and after the songs, the most important thing was making sure my dialogue EQ and compression wasn’t drastically different. If there was ambience on the song, I didn’t want it to suddenly cut in at the wrong spot. I might have to add something before the song to make it feel smooth. It’s more little things than big things. It’s about making the dialogue match the songs so it’s not louder or quieter.

Viewers might not be conscious of it, but they’ll pick up unconsciously on these cues.

People think dialogue is easy because it’s more forgiving than music, but I tell people the difference is that everybody in the world is an expert at listening to dialogue. It’s what our brains and ears are designed for. But most people don’t understand music and wouldn’t know the difference between a good music edit and a bad music edit, unless it’s abysmally bad. But a bad dialogue edit, or a bad dialogue transition, is actually very easy for the average person to notice. They might not know what it is that they don’t like, but they’ll notice it. People who don’t know anything about how film and television are made can watch a scene and come away with the sense that something is wrong – maybe the lip-sync was off, or there was a bad dialogue edit, or an overdub that doesn’t match up right in subtle sound characteristics. They won’t say, “Oh, yeah, that was a loop line” because they don’t know what that is. But they’ll think, “That was weird.”

What about the soundstage for the music itself? How much room do you have to finesse that?

I have as much flexibility as I need. This is a composing team that I’ve worked with quite a bit in the past, and they did such a nice job with the sound that I didn’t mess with them very much. I just wanted to make sure they were at a good level so television wasn’t going to squish them much. My feeling was just to get those songs across, and stay out of the way.

Do you have to be careful of the levels because of automatic compression?

Oh, yeah. You want the show to be as loud as it can be, but almost all of the networks apply some sort of limiting, and if you go above that point your show is going to sound squashed and sort of flattened, and you don’t what that to happen. It takes the life out of things.

And there’s other limiting that can happen on its way from the cable head-end to your living room.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that. A friend of mine who’s a very good music mixer was watching a show we worked on at his home, and it was mono. At other people’s homes it was not. It was just a matter of his cable provider forcing that channel to mono.

Do you ever get frustrated by what happens to the sound after you make the mix as good as it can possibly be?

No, it’s sort of our job. I always tell people that we’re purpose-based mixers. Our job is to make it sound good – the expression a lot of us use is “the way America hears it.” After you do your mix on your great big, beautiful speakers, you’ve still got to go through something more representative of the speakers hanging off the side of most modern televisions today – something three inches in diameter made of paper. But truthfully, with modern broadcasts, it’s easier than it used to be. What people hear in their living rooms is significantly better than when I first got into this business in 1993 or 1994.