How 'The Bear' Sound Team Brought the Stress of a Kitchen to Life

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No Film School: How did you get started in sound?

Steve "Major" Giammaria: After attending SUNY Fredonia for Sound Recording, I was able to get an opportunity, through a friend, to be an assistant at Sound Lounge in NYC. This was my first introduction to Audio Post, and I never looked back. I’ve stayed at Sound Lounge going on 17 years, and they supported my career from the start by developing talent from within at a great artist-owned post house.

Evan Benjamin: I went to Berklee College of Music and played in bands for years. But I loved when we were in studios and recording songs. I found the gear and the process fascinating. So I moved back to New York and started working in studios, and got involved in audio post. At some point, the place I worked at had a fledgling film department. The work seemed a lot more interesting than what I was working on at the time, so I started off as an assistant to a mixer and gradually moved up to editing and mixing over the next 10 years. I moved to Sound Lounge in 2018 via an invitation from Major and the other owners, and I’ve been here ever since.

Scott D. Smith: I had an interest in electronics and music from an early age. I began my career working in a TV repair shop part-time, which was run by two very bright guys who were really more engineers than service technicians. They patiently taught me the basics of circuit theory and troubleshooting. From there, I landed a job as a recording engineer part-time with a small location music recording studio in Detroit, which did all sorts of live recordings. In a couple of years, I parlayed that into a job with a small company that was building a 16-track remote recording truck, which gave me the first opportunity at doing live multitrack work. The gentleman who ran the company also did film sound, which interested me as well, and I eventually segued into film sound as a career, including running a small studio operation and working as a re-recording mixer. Things grew from there, beginning with documentaries, industrial films, commercials, and, eventually, the opportunity to do feature work.

NFS: How you were hired for The Bear?

Major: I had worked with [Executive Producer] Josh Senior on a few projects (Ramy, How To) and tangentially [Showrunner] Chris Storer on Ramy. I enjoyed working with both of them, and we've been able to do great work together. They approached us once the show got picked up to series.

Evan: I was asked by Major to come on for Ramy, and I think all the editors and Senior Post thought that was a successful experience. It was obvious we all worked effectively together with each other and with the showrunners. So from there we all just moved to The Bear.

Scott: I was contacted by the Unit Manager, Carrie Holt de Lama, who was familiar with my work on other shows in Chicago.

NFS: How did you capture the stressful environment of The Bear through sound?

Major: Chris had a very clear vision of the structure of the sound and the feeling of the kitchen. He was very specific about how overwhelming it should sound. We went through a few iterations of what the default kitchen sound should be, but once we hit total chaos, it was all about pushing it further and further. Often there’s a song playing as score, multiple people yelling, and production sound that includes pots and pans and working stoves tied to the dialogue as well as added foley and sound FX. The trick then becomes what to focus on at each moment. You have to make sure the dialogue is heard, but also that intensity is maintained. We focused a lot on the overall arch of a scene in terms of tension and release, then carved out smaller beats for the push-pull of stress and cacophony.

Evan: I think my role for a show like this, with its high intensity, is to make sure I have everything as clean as possible and that whatever sounds we’re going to use from production are separated out so they’re easy to manipulate around the dialogue. I think of it as clearing a path for all that design so the dialogue stays audible. We want it to be dense sounding, but only in the places we decide should be dense. The quiet scenes are necessary so that the stressful scenes stand out and are actually stressful. Without contrast, nothing really makes an impact on the viewer.

Scott: The production sound crew functions as the “hunters and gatherers” of the sound team. Our role is to get as much good raw material as we can during shooting, which will later be parsed through by the dialogue editors. For a show such as The Bear, there are a lot of unpredictable scenes to deal with, many shots with no rehearsals. This requires us to do a lot of second-guessing to try and anticipate what *might* happen when the cameras roll. So the stress the viewer sees on screen is real! This was very much by design on the part of the director, who intentionally did not want the actors to get too comfortable with a scene.

NFS: How is intricate sound design essential to making long takes, especially long take episodes like Season 1, Episode 7, work perfectly?

Major: “Review” was a great opportunity for some very unique sound design. The camera weaves throughout the kitchen as characters move about as the day goes more and more off the rails. The overall arc of this show is just a giant crescendo (with a few dips for more impactful moments). The three elements at play are really the ticket printer, the score, and the dialogue. Everything else plays around those as they weave in and out. Also since it was one long take we were able to do some more extreme and continuous dialogue panning to track characters around the kitchen and front of the house. Since there are no picture edits, the pace cannot actually be changed, but sound allows us to push and pull the feelings and momentum of the scene, maybe without the viewer even noticing what we’re doing to them.