Shrinking

by Anna Wilborn CAS

Gearing up for another season on a series is a trip, right? You’re super excited to see your old film family again, and curious to see what the writers have dreamt up. Much of the stress from the unknown is gone, and it’s business as usual, plus or minus some sound toys you bought or sold in the off season. You bask in your last few days of luxuriously lazy mornings sipping coffee while you water the plants in your underwear. The calm before the crazy. Because you know once you start, even your weekends will be slammed with everything you can’t take care of during the week. Real life is put on hold. The plants will miss your silhouette. The show takes over, and you and your team hit the ground at dead sprint. That first morning you’re lucky if you even have a second to breathe before the 1st AD yells, “ROLLING!” At this time last week? You were dead to the world, drooling on your pillow.

Season 3 of Shrinking had a rough take-off. The show takes place in and around Pasadena, CA. A few weeks prior to our start date, it’s neighboring town of Altadena almost completely burned to the ground. An entire community devastated. Cast and crew members lost homes or were displaced by both the Eaton Fire and the Pacific Palisades Fire. It took with it a few of our locations. There was nothing left of Gabby’s exterior home. It was owned by a fellow film worker, a puppeteer from the Star Wars world. The pickleball courts and the bucolic park in which they were tucked, all gone. Basecamp locations were inaccessible or repurposed for fire remediation crews. Jimmy and Liz’s exterior house location was spared, but only by a few blocks, and the smoke damage was extensive. We wouldn’t be shooting in our usual spots any time soon. Our start date was pushed while producers and the location department scrambled to reorganize and reschedule.

We started a month later, hearts still heavy with loss. We would push all our Pasadena exteriors to the end of the schedule and shoot on stage and at the Warner Bros. backlot in the meantime. Shrinking wasn’t giving up on Pasadena and Altadena, and the towns wanted us back too, just as soon as they reasonably could. The season would bring us new storylines. Spoilers if you haven’t seen it! Brian and Charlie adopted a baby. Paul and Julie get married. Gabby and Derrick 2 get engaged. Alice goes off to college. Jimmy’s dips a toe in the dating world. Liz and Derek find out they’re going to be young grandparents. All very normal things us humans do, but add a large helping of Bill Lawerence and Brett Goldstein, and you have a damn good show. It’s all about the words. Every single one has purpose and was anguished over in the writers’ room, so those words had better sound perfect. It’s simple enough, in theory.

Shrinking is a typical single-camera show with three to four cameras. Our DP is a lovely Australian man named John Brawley, famous for his cool hats and ridiculously cute baby daughter Willa, at whom Harrison Ford loves to make funny faces. Truthfully, Harrison makes funny faces all the time, much to the delight of our full-grown adult crew. There is simply nobody like him. I remember back when I first started a few episodes into Season 2, I leaned over to Kip Kroger, our producer whom I’ve known since he was a PA, and I was a utility back on Scrubs. As we watched Harrison work the room, I whispered, “Do you ever get used to this?” He laughed, “Nope. Never.” One of my most favorite Harrison stories was when he snuck in behind our Utility, Yvette Marxer, and sat on her boom stand, not one foot behind her while she was busy prepping wires for the next scene. Harrison sat there like a statue, waiting for her to turn around. Harrison’s assistant, Jason, and I clocked each other silently, not giving up the joke. It went on so long that Harrison finally blew a puff of air at the back of Yvette’s hair. She swatted at it, continuing to work. He blew again. She whipped around to see a deadpan Harrison Ford six inches from her face. She let out a gasping yelp. That tiny payoff was what Harrison patiently waited for. That guy…

When we were in between setups during the hilarious Les Mis “Confrontation” scene, Harrison plopped down on a curb between me and Kevin and told us dad jokes for twenty minutes. Seven-year-old me lost her mind. We did that scene in an open-top vintage Ford Bronco, perched on a process trailer, driving around Eagle Rock. Jason Segel and Michael Urie had been rehearsing a bit on set, and both knew the song so well, there would be no playback or earwigs, just two musical theater kids singing their hearts out a cappella with a very confused Harrison in the backseat. Bill Lawrence will tell you he still isn’t sure if Harrison’s ad-lib line, “Did you guys make that up??” was a genuine question or not. When we weren’t rolling, Harrison was waving at stunned early-morning dog walkers and bicyclists like the grand marshal of his own little parade. We used hardwired Sennheiser 50’s for plants in the front seat, and a hardwired Schoeps MK41 on a GVC for Harrison in the backseat since there is so little room. That plus some perfect wiring from Yvette, and we had some incredible sound that really singled everyone out.

We have a large core cast and our writers love to get them all together in big group scenes. Thanksgivings, weddings, graduations, all that real-life stuff. In episode 307, we had a scene with eight cast members singing around a piano while Jason played and sang the song, “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri. Once again, Jason rejected any notion of doing it to playback, so live it would be. I couldn’t even convince him to use a click track. “I’ve got it.” He winked. He didn’t want anything to get in the way of a spontaneous performance from himself and his fellow cast members. I made sure the Steinway baby grand that resides in our Jimmy living room set would receive a fresh tuneup for the occasion. A total of thirteen mics covered the scene as I wanted to give post as many options as possible to help isolate the angles. I used a Shure BLM-03C mic for the underside of the piano soundboard, which I hardlined back to my Sound Devices Scorpio. I also hardlined a DPA 4018 for a small, but robust plant mic hidden behind the music stand for Jason’s singing and dialog. The lid was closed, and we blocked the open gap behind the keyboard with layered duvetyn to help isolate some of the piano from Jason. Every actor was wired with a DPA 6060 and a Lectrosonics DBSM. I brought in an additional Boom Operator, Misty Conn, to help Kevin Santy and Yvette cover the scene. The grips lifted the muslin ceiling piece to expose the small green bed above the piano, so our Boom Operators could work from overhead as there was zero room on the floor with the eight actors and three cameras. We essentially had four zones to cover; Jason at the piano, Cobie Smulders standing to his right, Luke Tennie, Michael Urie, and Christa Miller perched on the back of a couch to Jason’s left, and Jessica Williams, Rachel Stubington, and Lukita Maxwell standing at the end of the piano. Having the bulk of the dialog, Jason and Cobie were singled out with a Schoeps CMIT for sharper directionality, and the two groups were covered with wider patterned Sennheiser 50’s. For singing and inevitable ad-libs, we were cleared to paint the booms out in the wider shots which really helped with sonic consistency throughout the setups. I invited Earl Martin, our Post Sound Supervisor, to hang out for the day. It was his first time ever on a film set since no one had ever asked him before. He was stunned at the short amount of time we had to set up, plus the lack of rehearsals (we don’t do ’em) noting, “It was impressive to see the whole crew working so closely together to capture the performance in that scene. The sound team had to work extra hard to find angles to capture the music without interfering with the shots. In the end, it all came out great. They made my job much easier.” True to his word, Jason crushed the tempo, and the scene cut together beautifully. When we’d completed the coverage, Christina Perri came out and we shot a version with her at the piano alongside Jason for publicity. It was SO much fun. Challenging, chaotic, and fast. My favorite environment. On our very last day of shooting Season 3, the Emmy nominations were announced and we received seven in total, including one for Best Sound Mixing. I knew we were onto something when my mom’s octogenarian-filled book club said Shrinking is the only show they watch without subtitles. It was one of those days that makes you feel alright about the dead plants waiting for you back at home. (Editor’s note: Anna, Earl, and the team just received their second Emmy nomination for Best Sound Mixing.)

Season 3 Crew:

Mixer: Anna Wilborn CAS
Boom Operator: Kevin Santy
Utility/2nd Boom: Yvette Marxer
Video Assist: Greg Hartstein, Bob Branam