This post first appeared on Ren’s Patreon page.

Something you’ll never unhear: the spellbook in episode 301 is actually an instruction manual for a mitre saw. Sonically speaking, that is.

The colour grading and VFX for Season Three were completed a few weeks ago. Rob Westwood delivered the last tweak to the music this morning. All that remains is to complete the Herculean task of building and mixing the sound.

You’ll have seen pictures of boom microphones hovering closely over actors’ heads. On set, the sole concern of the sound department is recording the dialogue cleanly and clearly. All other sounds are extraneous and undesirable. Even footsteps are best added in post-production, so that they can be mixed at a suitable level – audible but not distracting – rather than being baked uncontrollably into the dialogue. This also allows for characterisation – heavy, booming footsteps for a Big Bad, perhaps – and easy changing of the surface – like a wooden set floor to stone.

In the post-production of any episode, Dale and Jesse’s first task (and no small one) is to clean up the dialogue and remove any other lingering noises from it. Then begins the long process of designing and track-laying everything else: wind whistling, birds cawing, fire crackling, doors opening, dresses rustling, belts clinking, swords clashing, food crunching, magic powers magic-powersing, and so on. We’ve never added up the hours that Dale and Jesse spend on it, but I have no doubt that the number would be utterly terrifying. And if they’ve done their job properly, you’ll never notice it.

Except perhaps the mitre saw spellbook. It was one of the last things recorded, during our regular Sunday review sessions. (Dale often leaves the most subtle sounds until last, because the music and louder effects might render them unnecessary and save him a little bit of work.) In the case of the spellbook, he borrowed his wife’s copy of The Making of the Harry Potter Films for the noise of it being placed on a lectern, but the pages turning didn’t sound right for an ancient tome. I hunted around Dale’s studio and found the mitre saw manual, which had been left out in the rain at some point and was decidedly crinkly. It was perfect.

With a month to go until the season’s cinema premiere, episodes 301 and 302 are now mastered and signed off, and episodes 303 and 304 are very close. Hopefully you’ve all got your tickets for the screening, but if not there is still time.

This coming week I’ll share a breakdown of a scene from episode 204, revealing the layers of sound that Dale and Jesse built up for the Heretics’ Market. Meanwhile, here’s a blast from the past: Kate’s update from the sound mixing studio a week before the premiere of Season One: https://youtu.be/q_654L3Bx5I?si=CKM6hXUHk0AwxpBR