The sound engineers on Knightfall explain how they bring history to life (WiC Exclusive)

Knightfall is a historical drama about the Knights Templar airing new episodes every Monday on History. So far, the second season has been an action-packed blast (and Mark Hamill joining the cast this season hasn’t hurt).

A big part of the Knightfall experience is the authentic 13th century soundscape, from the clangs and grunts of heavily armored men in pitched sword battles to horses thundering across muddy fields.

This week, we were lucky enough to interview two members of the Knightfall post-production team’s sound department at King Soundworks in Van Nuys, California: Dan Gamache, the show’s re-recording mixer and supervising SFX editor, and Darren King, dialogue supervisor and ADR supervisor. Gamache and King started working on Knightfall at the beginning of the second season, so we’ll focus on the new episodes. Let’s go behind the scenes!

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I caught up with season 2 in preparation for the interview, and noticed a marked difference in the show compared to season 1. Season 2 is much darker and more atmospheric. King and Gamache confirmed that showrunner Aaron Helbing took the show in a new direction for the second go-round, one more step with the day-to-day life of a medieval Crusader. “It’s grittier than season 1,” King explained. “These guys (in reality) sometimes urinated in their clothes… it was a very uncomfortable life. [Laughs.] It’s intentionally grungier. [We’re doing] a whole different approach to season 2.”

How long does the team have to complete the post-production sound on an episode? “Dan and I split the show in half,” King said. “We’re given 7-8 days for SFX per episode, which includes 2-3 days for Foley and three days to mix.” In the show’s battle-rich environment, they need to cover a lot of “effort” and “grunts.” The show is more music-heavy this year, and a day or two extra may be needed to incorporate the score.

On a set with so much noise (armor, horses, swords clanging, battle cries), one might expect that a lot of sound effects and dialogue have to be replaced in post, but Gamache said that isn’t the case. “The production sound was excellent. The production Supervisor did a great job of collecting the production sound. The production tracks were so clean.”

King was surprised, as well. “[The original sound quality] was much higher than expected, in a good way.” Gamache and King estimate that, overall, they were able to use 85% of the sound shot on location, which is high.

Of course, there are times when production sound just isn’t usable. In the “human ladder” scene (“The Devil Inside,” S2/Episode 2), shot in a downpour, the rainmaking machines were too loud and all dialogue and SFX had to be replaced in post. Passing airplanes can create problems, as well as the ambient sound of vehicle traffic near the shooting locations in the Czech Republic and Croatia.

So far, there’s been a lot of rain in season 2, and that can present storytelling challenges. In the fantastic opening scene of the season 2 premiere, “God’s Executioners,” the main character Landry (Tom Cullen) is in the midst of a brutal sword battle in a forest during a downpour; it turns out to be a dream, but Gamache and King wanted it to feel real.

“95 percent (of that sequence) had to be redone in studio,” King said. “Dialogue-wise, effects and efforts. It (production sound) was heavy with rain-machine sounds and from our perspective you don’t want to be limited by a constant level of rain sounds. We’re trying to get a nice blend so it’s interesting for the viewer.”

“It is about getting the all the elements separated so we can weave them together,” Gamache said. “It’s about establishing the rain, pulling back on that and then that stuff becomes background and it’s all about the effects, sounds and the music. It’s a dance between the three elements of sound: dialogue, music and sound effects.”

There was an early discussion about the way the sequence would be presented, King added. “[Do] we tip the viewers to the fact that it is a dream or not?” These are storytelling decisions, and sound has a lot more to do with the narrative than viewers might first realize. The all-important goal for Gamache and King is to help tell the story.

“It’s historically accurate,” King states. “This is not a fantasy, but based on a version of history. Our main job is to help Aaron (Helbing), the showrunner, to tell the story.”

Gamache agrees. “Its our job to add things when the story needs it, or take a sound away when we need to emphasize a moment.”

"Our job, like everybody on the show, is to tell the story. We’re doing it with a fader instead of a pen or editing a picture."

This quote effectively sums up how these guys see their role. Sound is also a great tool for amplifying characterization. “From an SFX perspective I always question ‘How strong is this person?” Gamache explained. “If they’re using a sword or putting down a mug off-screen), I have the luxury of telling the story without seeing the picture. Normal supporting characters play at one level, but with Landry we make it beefier, to a heightened effect.”

You can find another great example of sound enhancing the narrative occurs in “The Devil Inside” (S2/ Episode 2), when Landry and his nemesis, the former Templar Gawain, are separated by a falling beam while fighting in a burning church. The sprawling battle scene’s focus suddenly telescopes in on their locked eyes and breathing.

“That was a moment when you see lots of guys fighting, then the fire beam falls and you go to just their (Landry and Gawain’s) breath,” Gamache said. “It’s all about them and their relationship. A nice moment to break up all the other sounds and make it all about those two.”

We asked the duo if they had a system for working on a complicated battle sequence once the edited video version of the scene was presented to them. King described their method:

"We stick with one element through a scene and go in passes. Sword hits, stabs; here’s a pike, a spear, a crossbow, body falls. Foreground, then medium ground pass, then background, different levels of passes. It’s all about passes."

“You don’t want to break the illusion,” Gamache added. “On the set we try to use most sounds. For the plastic (weapon) hits, we have Dan’s sounds cover it; we try to minimize those sounds, so Dan can go in there and make it sound real.”

Finally, we discussed one of my favorite moments from the second season so far: a slow-mo gallop of a horse across a muddy track, shot mostly in closeup of its hooves plunging in and out of the muck.

“It’s a storytelling device,” King said. “To enhance the story. I’m given a lot of freedom on the show to do what I thought was right. It’s a hyper-focus moment so I was hyper-specific with it.” He infused the moment with immense weight and impact, and I certainly remember it.

Sometimes, great ideas don’t translate to the screen, such as Gawain’s potentially creaky leg brace. “We talked about Gawain’s knee brace making a sound,” Gamache said. “But the opportunity never came up.” Some little touches really work and others don’t, as King acknowledged: “[It’s the kind of thing] when you play it inside the scene, it really doesn’t play in the story.”

The showrunners and the sound department have made a lot of great choices for season 2. You can catch the latest installments of Knightfall on History. The full first season is available for viewing on Netflix.

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