There are so many characters and so many relationships. And times two, because you have the young and adult versions. So it’s this kind of exponential and crazy. Initially, working with the producers, we made distinctions between adult and teenage versions of characters. Now that we’re in season three, the breadth and depth of the trauma and horror are revealing.
This season was supposed to be a complete juxtaposition to the end of season two. We wanted to open up and were in a beautiful, idyllic witchy village; they’ve already gone through the worst of survival, and now the summer’s coming, and things are looking up. A summer solstice ceremony happens in the first episode, putting leaves on their costumes.
There’s this cave set on the stage, and it’s quite intricate. It’s cut with foam and then painted. The art department and their creative work is so impressive when you go into the cave you feel claustrophobic… It’s dark and scary. I shot some tests with my iPhone the week before with different colors and lighting effects, just so we could get an approximation of the look. I ran it by the team, and we were all on board. When I saw it all put together, I was impressed. The use of music in this series is incredible.
Generationally, there couldn’t be a better show for me to work on. I was precisely the age of the Yellowjackets when they crashed in my senior year of high school. All of the things that they love are things that I grew up with and loved. I was a product of the eighties and movies like The Goonies.
Kelsey Grammer comes from the golden age of sitcoms. He wants to stick to making sure the audience is enjoying the process. It is a live play. Let’s get it as best we can all week with rehearsals, and then we put it on in front of an audience and get to see the energy.
“I like to think of it as archeological sound design. We have a lot of great tools these days to be able to do that pull apart stuff, and look at it visually in various ways. We have a bank of some of the original TOS sounds and we’ll try and use them and update them and get them a bit more modern because they’re all recorded on tape.”
“A very key part of Lower Decks is the background ambient sounds.”
