When we watch films and television, our attention, understandably, focuses on the visuals. The colors and the performances, or – if we’re more cinematically literate – maybe the cinematography, or the editing. Sound is never the first thing that comes to mind, even though it might be one of the most important tools at a filmmaker’s disposal when it comes to shaping how we feel.
The second season of “Beef,” the anthology show created by Lee Sung Jin, relies on sound to create an environment wracked with tension, rage, and anxiety. The show follows an escalating feud between two couples – wealthy Joshua (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), and the much poorer Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton) – that kicks off when Ashley and Austin decide to blackmail Joshua and Lindsay with footage of a heated argument.
Supervising sound editor Christopher Gomez and re-recording mixers Penny Harold and Andrew Garrett Lange are part of the team that brought the soundscape of “Beef” to life. All three worked on the show’s first season, which follows the aftermath of a road rage incident. But this season called for a slightly more light touch.
“Season one was very raw and very much about the tit for tat – the overt beef that was happening,” said Harold, who handles the mixing of dialogue and music. “Season two is obviously still about a beef, but much more polished. We had to take much more subtle cues to try and help build the tension.”
Coming into season two, the team who had worked on the first season of “Beef” had a pre-established shorthand with Lee (whom they call Sonny). According to Gomez, that shorthand and Lee’s collaborative approach to showrunning allowed for innovation on the part of the sound team.
“Just take a swing at it. Try something and see if it works,” Gomez remembered Lee saying. “He wants us to think outside the box and constantly push ourselves to what we can do sonically that will help elevate the show to another level.”
That thinking outside the box mentality comes to a head in episode four, which finds Ashley having impromptu emergency surgery after a long, excruciating wait at the hospital. Dealing with both the impending surgery and the burden of secrets she’s keeping from Austin, Ashley is haunted by the soundscape of what truly is a hospital from hell, filled with dripping bodily fluids and the increasingly rapid beep of a heart monitor in an otherwise silent room. But the real swing comes in the form of a wormhole when Ashley finally goes under.
The idea for the wormhole came from Lange, who modulated the sound of the heart monitor to pull Ashley and the audience into blackness.
“I thought it’d be fun to feature that heart monitor – pull everything else way down and just kind of let that heart monitor be the thing that takes us down,” Lange said. “I even kind of repitched it to match the key of the music and let it fade into reverb, and then just kind of sustain the rumble through the black.”
This particular sequence is a sonic cornucopia, filled with a mix of score (composed by Finneas O’Connell), dialogue, and sound effects. It’s a perfect example of how intricately sound teams must thread these elements together, creating a sense of unease.
“A sequence like that – starting on the vending machine with the red Gatorade all the way through the wormhole – we probably spent at least a day on it in total, trying to hit all these little beats and make sure we hear everything very precisely and purposefully,” Harold said.
For the “Beef” sound team, creating tension sonically comes down to more than just throwing an eerie drone in the mix or bombarding the audience with loud noises. The work is more about finding little moments where sound can heighten what’s already there – a weedwacker that rides the fine line between loud and overbearing, or the sounds of an argument slowly getting louder as the camera rounds a corner.
It’s also about supporting the performances on screen. The fight between Joshua and Lindsay that kicks off the whole blackmail scheme was the first big test.
“Oscar and Carey were so phenomenal. Their performances shine through. How do we work with what they’ve given us?” Gomez said. “You pepper in these sounds. You feel like you’re getting closer. Now all of a sudden, you as a viewer go from taking a step back and watching everything to now, all of a sudden, you’re in it. Now you’re part of the fight.”
Creating the soundscape of that original fight meant playing close attention to the way the camera moves. At one point, a dolly shot within the house switches to handheld. That switch is accompanied by an explosion of sound, matching the rawness of the new visual with what we hear.
As a mixer, Lange said he’s always zeroing in to what’s happening on the screen. That might sound obvious, but it takes a tremendous amount of attention to detail.
“It’s really easy to zone in on your computer monitor and just look at your Pro Tools screen and edit window,” Lange said. “But at the end of the day, we’re bringing what’s on the screen to life. So we’re constantly trying to watch and see for any little thing that might inspire us to accent with a sound.”
And inspiration can come from the most unlikely of places. In a later episode, a tense dinner is interrupted by Austin’s stomach growling. Gomez and Lange spent what felt like eons trying out different tummy rumble sound effects, looking for one that would be audible enough to be uncomfortable, but not overwhelming – the life of a soundman. After trying out different versions and not finding the right balance, Gomez used his own personal experience.
“I was sitting home on the weekend one day, and my stomach was just going crazy,” he said. “I just grabbed my phone, shoved my phone into my stomach and recorded those sounds.”
Each person on the sound team has their own favorite moments from the show, whether it be the wormhole or the tummy rumble. For Harold, though, the needledrops take the cake. She found it a fun challenge to take O’Connell’s score and, with help from music editor Luke Dennis, blend it with different songs that might not necessarily have the same tempo or sensibility.
One of Harold’s favorite needledrops in the show is “Heads Will Roll,” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
“Finneas’ score is very warm and rounded, and then ‘Heads Will Roll’ is raw, and kind of mid-rangey,” Harold said.” Using EQ and volume, and different little tricks, ducking things here and there to blend those two pieces into each other – I’m really happy with how that came out.”
Season two of “Beef” is now streaming on Netflix.
