Taking on most of the UK ADR production of ‘Masters of the Air’

As a TPN certified vendor, Forever Audio have recorded world class dialogue recording for some of the biggest shows and Oscar-winning films over the years.  

One of our biggest projects to date has been recording the UK’s ADR for ‘Masters of the Air’, a nine-part war drama from executive producers Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman.

The series is the last in their World War II trilogy after Band of Brothers and The Pacific. It follows a group of American World War Two airmen in the 100th Bombardment Group.

Working with over 50 British Actors to re-record dialogue recorded on set is a hefty task in itself, but doing this whilst the infamous SAG-AFRA Actors strikes happened added another layer of complexity to the task.

Gabriel Dutru, ADR Manager & Audio Producer at Forever Audio explains “One of the main challenges on the production side of ADR is working with actors’ schedules; in their eyes they have finished their job and some are likely to be working on their next project. Working with such a large number of actors involved a huge amount of project management and flexibility with out of hours recording sessions, which was amplified when the strikes happened.”

Forever Audio hosts 10 audio post studios in their Tottenham Court Road facility, four of which are fully equipped ADR stages. Their largest, a spacious Dolby certified cinema suite is perfect for open-room and crowd ADR sessions, fitting up to 8 crowd artists at the same time.

Sam Dillon, Global Head of Production at Forever Audio said “Over the course of a year, our team of ADR Mixers and Producers worked collaboratively with the show’s Producers, Execs and Dialogue Editors in LA. The scale of the production was phenomenal and saw us managing hundreds of ADR sessions. We are all huge fans of BoB and The Pacific, and so are enormously proud to have been part of such an epic production.”

Alistair Bolt, Senior Sound Engineer at Forever Audio said “With much of the action taking place on board planes, behind masks and to the backdrop of constant warfare not only was there a lot of ADR needed, but getting the pitch, intensity and movement of the newly recorded lines took a lot of work and collaboration to get the recordings just right. We were also able to bed in the new lines quickly and effectively into the mix through the pragmatic choice of microphones and processing in order to judge whether what we were getting would fit in seamlessly which was invaluable for achieving the realism seen in the show”.

Masters of the Air is available to watch exclusively on Apple TV + now.