Arcane Re-Recording Mixer Penny Harold & Mixer Andy Lange On Building The Series Finale Through Sound

SPOILERS for Arcane season 2.Arcane season 2 brought the captivating Netflix animated series to an end in big, dramatic fashion while setting the stage for more upcoming shows based on Riot Games’ League of Legends. The series brought the story of star-crossed sisters Vi and Jinx to audiences in a mature and visually stunning fashion (the latter thanks to animation studio Fortiche), also realizing a number of other League of Legends champions like Viktor, Caitlyn, Ekko, and Heimerdinger. The season 2 finale executed one of the series’ most dramatic moments overall, as Vi watches her sister Jinx plunge to her supposed death.

That scene, as with all others from the series, succeeds in part thanks to re-recording mixer Penny Harold and sound mixer Andy Lange, both of whom have been Emmy-nominated for work on shows including Only Murders in the Building. From early season battles to Jinx’s death (is Jinx alive?), Harold and Lange have turned what could be an overwhelming cacophony of music, dialogue, and sound into a focused and emotional story. As a re-recording mixer, Harold worked primarily with dialogue and music on the show, while Lange specialized in sound effects.

ScreenRant spoke with Penny Harold and Andy Lange about their work on Arcane, especially the finale episode. The two weighed in on how they helped to craft the Arcane season 2 ending and how they worked with sound designers as well as songwriter, co-composer, and executive music producer Alex Seaver on the show. Plus, Harold and Lange reflect on how their experience on Arcane will affect them going forward.

Penny Harold & Andy Lange On Bringing The Mature, Bombastic World Of Arcane To Audiences

The Pair Worked Closely With The Show’s Music & Sound Teams

ScreenRant: When I started watching Arcane, I was struck by how gritty and mature it was. What were the key elements in making sure it sounded as weighty as it looks?

Penny Harold: Full immersion was, from day one—we were on season one as well—what we were aiming for. I think a big part of that was Foley, making it feel real, and always making us feel like we live in this world with these characters. Andy is the effects and Foley mixer—I do dialogue and music.

Andy Lange: Riot really wanted to do something above and beyond and special with this show. What you normally see for a traditional animated series—they wanted to blow that out of the water. With that comes a certain level of quality—with animation, but also with sound design, Foley, and music. [It’s] typically the kind of quality you might only find on a movie.

They really put the time and budget into that and made sure you’re hearing every little detail of what you’re seeing on screen. Everything has a sound. Everything has its moment. “There’s a little hole here. Let’s put something in. What can we put in to really immerse us in that environment?” Penny mentioned the Foley. Our Foley crew, One Step Up, are some of the best folks in the business. It really makes things on screen come to life when you hear every little movement of every character. It’s really special.

How do you two collaborate, generally? Does one of you do a pass on something first?

Penny Harold: We’re working simultaneously, but we’re working kind of offline from each other. I could be working in one scene and Andy’s working in a totally different scene. For a lot of shows that’s a little easier than it is with Arcane, because it’s a loud show. If there’s a big sound design sequence—all the Black Rose stuff in season two—I would have to take a break while he was working on that.

Andy Lange: We each do a separate premix of a few scenes, but she’ll hold off on mixing the music. I’ll hold off on mixing the Foley, and then we’ll handle those in that pass once we’re synced up. But getting the music and the sound effects working together is the biggest challenge with this show because everything is going to 11 and you need to figure out how these things that each take up the same frequencies can work together.

Penny Harold: Every mix pretty much went like, “Can we get the music louder here? Well, now we need the sound effects louder. Well, now I want the music louder. Well, now we need the sound effects louder.” Then, it’s like, “Oh, wait, the dialogue. We need to hear the dialogue too.”

Penny, what kinds of things do you do to make sure viewers are hearing the dialogue when things are crazy in the show?

Penny Harold: It’s something we learned to tackle very surgically. It was a challenge in season one, but season two, in every way, was bigger in scope and scale than season one, even if that just means there are more big needle-drop-type songs, which are some of our most challenging scenes to mix. First, to talk about the music and the sound effects, maybe there’s a moment to dip the music to let this big explosive thing happen, and then [Andy’s] got to pull back really fast because the music’s got to come back. We look at it like the music is the main player, especially with the big songs.

[For] the dialogue, it’s a lot of very surgical steps to make sure things poke out. Also, in season two, we quickly realized that maybe we needed to embrace different types of compression. We experimented with a bunch of different compressors that I normally wouldn’t use in post [production] sound. They’re a little more common with music production, but we found that once we could get the dialogue to feel a little more full and a little more in our face, [we had] a lot of freedom to push those other elements that we’re always fighting to hear a little further, so it could almost hug the dialogue a little more.

Was there a specific compressor you went with?

Penny Harold: We ended up landing on the CLA-76. We played around with a bunch of different ones, but it just did what we needed it to do.

Andy, on your side of things, how do the sound effects factor into that? Are the songs placed first, and then the effects?

Andy Lange: Our amazing sound designers and sound supervisors, Brad Beaumont and Eliot Connors, are internal Riot employees, so they’re working hand-in-hand with Alex Seaver and Alex Temple—the music department—on this stuff way before it even comes to us. They know the songs they’re working on and the sound design, and they’re able to work together very early on, which is rare in the TV world. Normally the sound supervisors and editors are on our side of things, and it’s a little more separated, so this was really unique.

When it comes to me, there’s still a lot to do, obviously, when we put everything together. They want to hear everything all the time, but the music is king. It’s just finding the moments to weave them around each other. There’s a moment in episode nine, early on in the battle, when Jinx comes in on her airship. Right there we have this huge song that starts, but she’s immediately blasting bombs onto the buildings and stuff, [and] they want to hear the lyrics. It’s [about] hitting the impacts, but then getting out of the way of the music so they can really feel the lyrics. Then [it’s] waiting for a moment where there aren’t as many lyrics, or it’s the second verse, and the sound effects can maybe pop up a little bit more.

Harold & Lange Break Down Key Arcane Season 2 Finale Scenes

The Pair Detail The Making Of The Anti-Gravity Moment & Jinx’s Death

I noticed moments—especially in episode nine—where sounds were being filtered and affected in really interesting ways. Is that generally sound design, or are you throwing things on there to creatively enhance what’s going on?

Penny Harold: Yes [Laughs].

Andy Lange: It’s probably a little bit of both.

Penny Harold: Are you talking about the anti-gravity scene?

Yeah.

Andy Lange: That was a really challenging, really special moment, for sure. They wanted to do something unique there because a lot of times in a space scene in some other show or movie, it’s like, “Let’s just muffle everything.” They wanted it to be a little more unique. It does still have that muffled quality, but Eliot used a lot of controlled distortion in the sound effects, so it created this really cool biting effect. There was still some EQ-ing that I was doing on the mix side, and some delay plugins. We were using Slapper. And then on Penny’s side, the dialogue had some really cool stuff going on too.

Penny Harold: That was probably, I think, the hardest scene to mix in the finale. It wasn’t the most challenging—the whole opening battle was very dynamic and interesting and fun to find—but [with] the anti-gravity scene, it was hard to find the right sounds. I think we went through half a dozen iterations of what the voices are supposed to sound like. Brad Beaumont designed a lot of that.

When it got to me, I put a cool tube filtering, Altiverb design effect on it, and we finally found the right sound for the dialogue. But it went through a lot of things. It started out with that idea of the controlled distortion that Eliot used with the sound design, but it turned and evolved into something much different.

I [loved the scene in the] finale when Jinx sacrifices herself, because it starts out [and] you’re hearing all the sound effects. Then, when she falls, everything cuts out, it’s dead silent for a few seconds, and then a song comes in. I imagine that’s not all in the script. Who decides on moments like that, and how does that come together?

Penny Harold: We played around with that a lot. There was always an idea to have silence and have it cut out.

Andy Lange: It was just a matter of how soon that happened. Finding the right timing for that fade out was the challenging part there.

Penny Harold: I’ve watched the finale at home since it’s aired and I’ve had time away from the show, and I still got goosebumps watching that part because it’s so effective. It is really beautiful having Vi’s face expressing all we need to know as a viewer and having silence. I think it’s such a great example of how much silence can work for you in sound.

Another thing we added after the fact [is], once the song comes in, we begin to hear these distant screams from Vi, really washed out. That was a cool thing. That was one of the things that you decide to add on the mix stage. I think it’s such a good example of how, once it gets to us, you’re still telling stories. You’re still trying to find ways to engage the viewer—

Andy Lange: [And] create a moment. “What can we do in this moment to make it special and make it affect people?” That’s always the fun thing about the mix stage.

Penny, when it comes to moments like Hailee Steinfeld screaming like that as Vi, how much are you conscious of the fact that maybe it’s coming from a vulnerable place in somebody and [thinking of] how to mix that in the most respectful way? Is that in your head at all?

Penny Harold: Yeah, definitely. With stuff like that, you’ve got the benefit—at least in this scenario—of them physically being distanced, I guess. But sometimes those really raw vulnerable places can be the most effective when they’re a little bit held back from us. There was a version where we had her yelling over the shot of her face, and we quickly got rid of that because it was too on the nose. We didn’t need it there. But anytime there’s anything really raw and really emotional and really vulnerable, I’m always trying to be very careful with it because you want respect the performance and the actor and where it came from.

The Arcane Season 2 Finale Took Three Weeks To Mix

That’s An Unusually Long Time In TV Production

Animation goes through a lot of iterations. Are there any scenes in the second season that were drastically different the first time that you saw them compared to what’s out now?

Andy Lange: Episode nine was unique in that we got three weeks to mix it, which is very rare in TV. That’s a long time, but we needed every minute of it. But between the first and second week, there was some time off. The first week was kind of a temp mix, and then there were some picture changes. They did do some conforms, so some scenes were shortened or lengthened. I’m not sure if there was a drastic change, but it was not final picture when we were doing our first pass. We just had to hurry and get something in there as a first pass. Then, we came back and had to do some conforms, and they also added more visual effects, so we were like, “Oh, wait, did they add that? We need a sound for that.” That was an extra challenge with that final episode for sure.

What’s the typical amount of time you have to mix an episode of TV?

Penny Harold: It just depends on the show, but let’s say if it’s a half hour comedy, maybe it’s two to three days, [and] for an hour-long drama, four to five days—three to five days, maybe. We’ve never done animation before this, this is kind of our first foray into it, but animation famously gets very little time. But this was never a show that was going to be like other shows.

Andy Lange: The other episodes were one week [mixes]. Five days, and then we would get an extra day to come back for final tweaks. In between, we would take the mixes home and do our homework and listen on other systems to see how the mix was translating. That was really unique. That doesn’t happen, usually, because usually we’re just in there for three days and then we’re done. They purposely built time in the schedule [for us] to be able to go back and sit with it for a bit and see, “Oh, I think we need to do this. I think we need to add this here.” That was unique.

Penny Harold: We mixed this in home theater Atmos 9.1.6, but the question to us was always, “But how does it sound on the two-track?” It’s smart because they know their fan base. They know that maybe they have a younger fan base, and they’re going to be at home maybe watching this in headphones or on an iPad or a laptop. That’s why we would take episodes home and listen every way we could.

Harold & Lange Share The Lessons They Learned From Arcane

“How Can We Always Explore How To Elevate Something?”

There are other League of Legends shows happening. After your experience on both seasons of this, are there any key things that you learned or experienced that you hope those shows embrace?

Penny Harold: I think anything Riot is so unique because they’re not a company that typically made linear entertainment. What we’ve learned about working with them is that they set the bar pretty high for themselves, so, to be honest, I don’t think they need to hear from me what I hope they do differently. They’re going to make it as big and cool as possible.

I would say I’ve taken the lessons I’ve learned on this show with me to other types of universes and other projects, like, “It’s good enough, yes. How can we make it better? How can we break our habits and use different plugins we don’t normally use? How can we always explore how to elevate something?” [That’s] been the biggest lesson for me.

Andy Lange: [The lesson is] definitely breaking habits. We have a certain process for things in the post-production world, but maybe certain things don’t have to be done a certain way. It’s [about coming] into work and being open to following the creativity and the inspiration. See where it leads.

About Arcane

Set in the League of Legends universe, Arcane focuses on sisters Violet and Powder (later Jinx) as they end up on opposite sides of a growing conflict between the wealthy utopia of Piltover and its dark undercity whose citizens wish to break away from their oppressors. Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell, and Kevin Alejandro star in this animated adventure.

Check out our other Arcane season 2 interview with songwriter, composer, and executive music producer Alex Seaver.

Arcane is streaming in full on Netflix.

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Set in the League of Legends universe, Arcane focuses on sisters Violet and Powder (later Jinx) as they end up on opposite sides of a growing conflict between the wealthy utopia of Piltover and its dark undercity whose citizens wish to break away from their oppressors. Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell, and Kevin Alejandro star in this animated adventure. 

Release Date

November 6, 2021

Finale Year

November 30, 2023

Seasons

2

Writers

Christian Linke
, Alex Yee

Directors

Pascal Charrue
, Arnaud Delord

Showrunner

Christian Linke
, Alex Yee

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