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Ted Lasso's Dark Forest

This episode was written and produced by Nikolas Harter.

Ted Lasso is about more than just an incompetent soccer coach—it’s about overcoming challenges by working together. And that’s exactly what the show’s sound team had to do when the pandemic hit just two episodes in. From creating crowds of thousands using just a few voices, to recording actors in their own closets, they managed to turn lockdown into an opportunity for innovation. Featuring Ted Lasso’s Supervising Sound Editor Brent Findley and Dialog Editor Bernard Weiser


MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Original music by Wesley Slover
Juggernaut (Sessions) feat. Ben Rector - Instrumental by John Mark McMillan
All I Want Is You - Instrumental by Johnny Stimson
Bedrock by Longlake
You - Instrumental by Wesley Jensen & The Penny Arcade


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View Transcript ▶︎

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.

[music in: Juggernaut (Sessions) feat. Ben Rector - Instrumental]

When I discovered Ted Lasso, it came at the perfect time. It was in the summer of 2020, when it felt like all we were hearing was bad news… But here was this character that was so unshakably positive.

[Show Clip] - Ted: Hey, how y’all doing? I’m Ted Lasso your new coach.

In case you missed it, Ted Lasso is a comedy show about an American football coach. Out of seemingly nowhere, he gets hired to move to England to coach a professional soccer team.

[Show Clip] - Ted: No, I have never coached the sport that you folks call football. Heck, you could fill two internets with what I don’t know about football.

Ted gets ridiculed by his players, by the press, and by the team’s fans. [sfx: crowd chanting “You don’t know what you’re doing!”] But through it all, he almost never loses his quirky, cheerful attitude.

[Show Clip] - Ted: Hey Jaime, what would you rather be? A lion or a panda?

Jaime: Coach, I’m me. Why would I want to be anything else?

Ted: I’m not sure you realize how psychologically healthy that actually is.

[music out]

But it wasn’t just Ted's positive outlook that grabbed me. The show is also full of creative and engaging sound design.

[Show Clip with eerie building design - “Coach, you okay?”]

Announcer: Warning… This episode contains spoilers from the first season, references to soccer… or football as it should be called… and an American in England making a fool of himself. Listener discretion is advised.

Brent: My name is Brent Findley and I'm a Supervising Sound Editor.

Bernard: My name is Bernard Weiser. I'm officially the Dialogue Editor, but I'll fill in and help Brent sometimes when needed.

Brent, Bernard, and their team are responsible for everything you hear on Ted Lasso.

[music in: Wesley Slover - Running a Quick Errand]

Like most shows and movies, when Ted Lasso is filming, the dialog is pretty much the only thing that's recorded on set. Everything else is totally silent. [sfx: roaring crowd creeps in] That cheering crowd you see jumping up and down at the games…

[sfx: crowd cheers crescendo]

…they're not actually chanting anything. [sfx: crowd cheers cut off suddenly] They're just miming.

Bernard: Obviously you hear their feet and they're jumping and their movements and you hear nothing else.

[sfx: crowd rustling and jumping around]

The reason for this is simple: control. For instance, there’s a scene where Ted talks to his assistant coach at a local pub. If all of the background actors were really talking and clinking glasses on set, that scene would end up sounding like this:

[sfx: loud bar background beneath the clip]

[Show Clip with added background pub noise] - Coach Beard: Maybe the Premiership’s too much for him.

Ted: No, he just needs to get a little more comfy here, that’s all.

That’s pretty hard to make out. So instead, all the background actors perform silently on set. That means the main dialog can be recorded cleanly, and then Brent and Bernard can add in just the right amount of background noise.

Here’s how that scene actually sounded on the show:

[Show Clip Repeats, this time without the added noise] - Coach Beard: Maybe the Premiership’s too much for him.

Ted: No, he just needs to get a little more comfy here, that’s all.

Coach Beard: Well he turns 20 on Saturday.

Ted: There we go. Birthday!

[music out]

The production crew does everything they can to make sure the dialog recorded on set is clean. But, there are times where that isn’t possible, and the dialog ends up sounding kinda messy.

[example of messy dialogue]

So all of that messy dialogue needs to be cleaned up. As dialogue editor, that job falls to Bernard.

[music in: Wesley Slover - Contemplative Spirit]

Bernard: So you have the maintenance side of it, is trying to smooth out your tracks. There's no bumps, there's no odd backup beeps from a huge truck [sfx, truck beeps sweep in and fade away, freeway bed fades in] that's in the background or they're shooting next to a freeway yet you're supposed to be out in a countryside. [sfx, quick cut to the countryside] So all these things we can fix.

[countryside soundscape ducks and fades]

Bernard can also improve an actor's performance by pulling audio from different takes. Here’s one example where Ted is checking in with Rebecca, the team’s owner. The original take sounded like this:

[Show Clip] Ted: Hey. How ya doing? Just wanna make sure you’re doing ok.

Jason Sudeikis, who plays Ted, wanted the performance to sound more empathetic. Also, the team wanted to avoid doubling up on the word “doin’”. So they spliced multiple recordings together. Again, here’s the original take:

[Show Clip] Ted: Hey. How ya doing? Just wanna to make sure you’re doing ok.

And here’s how it was edited for the episode:

[Show Clip] Ted: Hey. How are you? Just wanna make sure you’re doing ok.

Bernard: There's a way we kind of break apart all the dialogue, then piece it back together again, in a nice, clean sense.

[music out]

Once the dialogue is assembled, Bernard can focus on small vocal details.

Bernard: In a critical scene, every little utterance coming out of the mouth, even the little lip smacks could be very important because it's a sensitive scene and you want to have it almost hyper real to what they're saying.

[Show Clip] - Rebecca - I don’t want to be alone.

Bernard: At other times, you want to smooth it out and not have all those distractions.

[Show Clip] - Ted: I feel like we fell out of the lucky tree, hit every branch on the way down, ended up in a pool full of cash and Sourpatch Kids.

Bernard: So those subtleties are very much done through dialogue editing.

But In all of this process, story is key.

Brent: Where that lands, how that's mixed, is all subjective to, how is it helping tell the story?

For Brent and Bernard, this concept is almost like a mantra.

Bernard: Everything always goes back to story.

Brent: Story is king.

Bernard: Pay more attention to a certain area based on storyline.

Brent: Serving the story is our primary goal.

But the dialog is just one piece of the puzzle. Whether it’s glasses clinking in a pub [sfx], footsteps [sfx], a cookie being crunched [sfx], or the roar of a stadium [sfx]*, almost every sound you hear in the show is added in post production. Even the noise of Ted getting hit in the face with a soccer ball.

[Show Clip} - Ted: Hey, nice catch! We might have ourselves a goalie… [soccer ball hits his face] Oh boy, oh boy that was right on the button.

[music in: Wesley Slover - Royalnet]

In order to nail down where sound design can add to the story, first the team sits down and watches a rough cut. This is called a spotting session.

Brent: So our workflow for any particular episode starts with the spotting session. We're mixing the show basically in a movie theater.

At this point, the only sound they hear is a rough mix of the dialogue that was recorded on set.

Brent: Jason's there with us. We're all sitting next to each other. Just dialing in what this show needs to sound like.

These spotting sessions include other members of the sound team, like the composer and music editor. They all sit together in the theater and meticulously go through each scene. They make minute decisions like…

Brent: Does that door close? You know, the person that walks out the door, the camera pans back to the inside of the room. Do we want to hear the door close? [sfx]

These sessions can last hours.

Brent: In-person everybody taking notes… scene by scene, stop, roll…

[Show Clip] - Ted: You wanna hop on this thing and get the heck outta Dodge? Come on.

Brent: Stop, roll, [continue clip] back up, [rewind] double check things [play]… What's the story in this scene?… What's going through Rebecca's head. What's going through Ted's head? So we talk about how that has to impact the sounds around him.

[music out]

They're also paying close attention to the dialogue.

Brent: Maybe there's an important line that the actor delivers softly.

[Show Clip] - Rebecca - But now I’m alone. I’m alone, Ted. Just like he said I would be if I left.”

Brent: We discuss, let's do everything we can to save that performance. But I'm also going to flag it for maybe getting an ADR, or I'm gonna go look through alts.

ADR is short for “Automated Dialogue Replacement.” It’s when the actors come into a studio after filming to re-record some of their lines. Here's an example from the show. We’ll start with the original dialogue recorded on set. You’ll notice there’s some background noise that makes it a little hard to understand.

[clip: scene without ADR] Rebecca - He wants us to get together every morning to get to know me and hear what I've got to say. The nerve! I mean, the man's just relentless and nice. Everywhere he's been, his players seem to love him. It's the one thing that could just muck this up.

And here's that same line after ADR. Notice how much cleaner it sounds.

[clip: scene after ADR] Rebecca - He wants us to get together every morning to get to know me and hear what I've got to say. The nerve! I mean, the man's just relentless and nice. Everywhere he's been, his players seem to love him. It's the one thing that could just muck this up.

The team also listens out for any improvisations or accidents that they might want to keep. These are the moments that can really bring the show to life.

Bernard: I think in season one, there's that one time where Ted hits his head on the doorstop. He gives a hop and he hits his head.

[Show Clip of Ted smacking his head] Ted - I’m fine!

That smack you just heard…

[clip: smack]

…was totally unplanned.

Bernard: I mean, he didn't hurt himself, so that was good, but stuff like that happens. Spontaneous things can happen and it all becomes part of the episode.

Again, it all comes back to that mantra…

Bernard: Everything always goes back to story.

Coach Ted's first press conference is a great example of this.

[Show Clip] - Reporter: You’re an American who’s never set foot in England, who’s athletic success has only come at the amateur level, and has now been charged with the leadership of a Premier League football club despite clearly possessing very little knowledge of the game.

In the spotting session, they watched this scene with just the dialogue. On the screen, they could see a crowd of journalists miming outrage and silently yelling at Ted.

[Ted responding to journalists, dialogue only]

[Show Clip] - Reporter: Can you even name any footballers?

Ted: Well yeah, you’ve got Rinaldo and the fella that bends it like himself.

They made a note to add in voices for all those angry journalists. Here’s how that sounded:

[Ted responding to journalists, this time with a crowd of angry journalists]

[Show Clip] - Reporter: Can you even name any footballers?

Ted: Well yeah, you’ve got Rinaldo and the fella that bends it like himself.

But the spotting session goes even deeper than that. Ted's never coached soccer before, so he can't even answer their most basic questions. You can see him visibly start to panic. The question was, how could they express that panic with sound… Here’s how that scene ultimately came together.

[Show Clip]

It’s chaotic, but perfect for the scene. By the end, Ted is so flustered that he ends up spitting out water all over the front row.

[Show Clip continues and we hear Ted spit the water]

Brent: The goal is to take people on that trip without saying, “Look what we did with sound to get you here.” You know, we want it to be an emotional feel without so much awareness of how it happened.

[music in: Wesley Slover - Hold the Moment]

After the spotting session, they split into their separate departments to build the episode.

[Show Clip] Roy: On three. One, two, three…

Team: Richmond!

There's a department for each category of sound design… First, there's hard effects.

Brent: Which are all the literal one-time concrete events that happen. Door closes... [sfx] car starts... [sfx] explosions... [sfx] helicopters. [sfx]

Then, background sounds.

Brent: The stadium sounds for all the games [sfx] in the locker room [sfx] the sound of London outside Ted's apartment, [sfx] just building the world.

There's also foley.

Brent: The components that the characters interact with, it's their footsteps. [sfx] It's their cloth. [sfx] They're taking off their coat. [sfx] They're sitting down on a couch, [sfx] they're fluffing a pillow, [sfx] keys out of their pocket. [sfx]

And there's one final element called loop groups.

Brent: Loop group… They’re very, very prominent in our show.

Loop groups are voice actors who fill in for the people miming in the background of each shot. After the scene is filmed, the loop group goes into the studio and records all that background chatter. Then, the chatter is mixed back into the scene.

Brent: They're not going to do a stadium full of people, but they're going to do the bar [sfx: bar chatter], any of the restaurants or [sfx: cafe chatter] cafes.

There are no scripts involved here. All of this chatter is improvised.

Brent: You know, like you talk about “What'd you have for lunch. Did you see that movie?” So the content, if it were turned up, would be legitimate conversations people would have.

[music out]

One of the loop group’s first jobs was the “chase” for Ted’s speeches. "Chase" is the term for crowd reactions that follow something that the main character says.

Brent: It could be Ted giving the team a pep talk.

[Show Clip] - Ted: Look we are not playing for a tie.

Brent: We would chase that because we want people to murmur, kind of respond, emote a little bit as Ted hits his points in his story.

Ain’t nobody here gonna kiss their sister. [confused chatter]

Brent: Or tells a joke and everybody chuckles.

[Show Clip] - Ted: O’Brien tore his butt.

O’Brien: It’s my upper hamstring, Coach.

Ted: You tore your butt, son. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, okay? It happens. [everyone chuckles] People tear their butts all the time in athletics. You’re not alone man. [everyone chuckles]

Brent: We're filling in those team members with loop group people.

There’s a reason this gets recorded after the fact. That’s so the creators can direct your attention to what you really need to hear. For instance, there’s a scene where Rebecca is walking from her office to confess something to Ted.

[Show Clip - prominent, moody score playing]

Brent: So like we originally had Rebecca walking down those stairs and these deep booms on every one of her footsteps, [sfx, heavy booming footsteps layered over show clip] it's representing the weight on her shoulders, you know, of what has to happen? But the score is so freaking amazing.

[Show Clip comes forward again, featuring the score]

Brent: We backed off of that.

Rebecca walks by the locker room and you can hear all of the players chatting.

Brent: Here comes the boss and everybody shuts down as she walks by. And then the team goes back up again. [sfx, locker room chatter, quickly fades out and comes back up] But as soon as she walks in Ted's office and shuts the door, the team goes away.

[Show Clip with door shut] Rebecca: Ted, I lied to you.

Brent: The team is right there. They're always right there. Would we in real life hear the team all hooting and hollering and doing their thing out in the locker room? Yes, we would. But that's not the story. The story is Rebecca confessing to Ted. And if that means get sound out of the way, that's the right thing to do.

[music in: Wesley Slover - Blue Victories]

But it wasn’t just Brent and Bernard that obsessed over small details. Jason Sudekis led by example.

Brent: There is a pinball game in the bar. It’s a Wizard of Oz pinball game.

[Show Clip] - Ted: Well, well. Look who knows her way around a pinball machine.

Rebecca - I love pinball.

Brent: That's Jason's personal pinball game. And he asked to make it sound authentic. So Jason reached out to the game maker and we had conversations with that person and the sound designer who made the sounds for the game. And we licensed all the sound effects and got their original toolkit of…what everything sounds like.

[music fade into sfx: pinball machine sounds]

Brent: This was a huge amount of effort and it took weeks to make this happen… at least two lawyers were involved. And it's not a feature of the show. We don't spend time in the videogame. It's not even that big a deal, but… to the degree of authenticity that Jason wanted…There's no shortcut on anything.

Within just a couple of episodes, the sound department was running like a well-oiled machine. But then… 2020 happened.

[music in Wesley Slover - Farsight]

Brent: I think only the first couple of episodes of season one, did we get to do our normal process before we had the COVID lockdown.

Bernard: And of course then it all changed with the way the process goes from a normal process to something we had to figure out, because that was the beginning of the pandemic. // And at first there was no rule book. This was all brand new.

The world had turned upside down. But Brent and Bernard had to make sure that chaos didn’t affect the sound of the show.

Brent: What we didn't want to do is put an asterisk at the end of every episode and say, you know, "Sorry about the sound, but COVID." Our final results have to hold up down the road when people aren't even thinking about COVID anymore.

Brent: So the question for all departments was, can we do this remotely?

That's coming up after the break.

[music out]

[music in: Wesley Slover - Farsight]

In early 2020, Brent and Bernard were hard at work shaping the sound of Ted Lasso. But then everything changed.

Dallas: The COVID thing happened in season one after the first two episodes. Am I getting that right?

Brent: Correct.

Dallas: What was that transition like?

Brent: Well, I mean, overall, it was very painful to start. I just can't beat the process of being on the rerecording stage, which is the size of a feature film theater. I mean that is just a dream environment to be able to work in.

No more state-of-the-art theaters for spotting sessions. No more high-tech ADR facilities. No more studios packed with just the right tools. But the hardest part was not being together in the same room.

Brent: The benefit of being together in the same room is this interpersonal communication, kind of these nonverbal cues. You can tell by the look on somebody's face where we need to go with something that even on Zoom, we don't even get to see all that stuff. So, how do we replace this type of collaboration?

[music out]

Bernard: I think the first reaction was that everything's going to get shut down until they figure it out. Instead it was just bear down your head and figure out right away how we can just shift gears and continue on.

[Show Clip] - Ted: Now these next few months might be tricky, but that’s just ‘cause we’re going through our dark forest. Fairy tales do not start, nor do they end, in the dark forest. That son of a gun always shows up smack-dab in the middle of a story. But it will all work out. Now, it may not work out how you think it will or how you hope it does, but believe me, it will all work out exactly as it’s supposed to.

When Covid hit, most of the filming for the first season was already complete. So the video edit could be finished in quarantine without too much difficulty… But the sound team had to scramble.

[music in: Wesley Slover - Flight]

Usually, recording a loop group is a collaborative process.

Brent: We'll go to a recording stage ADR stage and get six or eight people all in the room together… cause it's a give and take, they have to be interacting with each other.

How do we record six to eight people on loop group separately? How do they play off of each other? How do they interact?

Thankfully, most voice actors who work in loop groups already have their own recording equipment. But they still had to figure out the best way to get everyone connected. That meant really learning the ins-and-outs of platforms like Zoom.

Bernard: These were trial and error, which ones work, which ones don't, what are the workarounds? Uh, enhancing their home studio, internet speed. Now you need the fastest internet speed.

So it's getting your home set up proper so you don't have any glitches. Nothing worse than a producer who's looking at his watch while you're having some technical error.

[music out]

Recording over Zoom worked well for smaller groups, like the crowds inside the local pub.

[Jamie Tart chant fades into cheering crowd]

But to create the sound of a stadium full of screaming fans, it was a little more complicated. That’s because in Ted Lasso, the fans play a huge role. When the team’s playing well, they sound happy.

[Show Clip - announcer describes up and down play, crowd reacts accordingly]

But when they’re not… it can get pretty ugly.

[Show Clip - crowd displeased] Announcer - Richmond looked disjointed, uninspired, and, you have to say, joyless.

So it's crucial to get these sounds right. But that became a monumental task during lockdown.

[sfx, small crowd cheering fades in]

Normally you can make a few hundred people [sfx small crowd cheer] sound like two thousand [sfx crowd cheers louder] or even twenty thousand [sfx crowd cheers even louder, fills out]

But with lockdown…[sfx: sound cuts out]...that was out of the question…

[music in: Johnny Stimson - All I Want Is You - Instrumental]

Bernard: You can't go out and get a couple of hundred people at the tail end of some sporting event to be your, your big group session and get them to chant a little bit. (sfx, large sports crowd chanting)

We've got like six or seven people in a studio. [sfx, a handful of people cheering]

Once again, the team was forced to improvise. They started with generic crowd sounds.

Brent: We have licensed library sound effects from stadium recordings from, you know, 60,000, 30,000, 20,000, 5,000, or maybe even just 300.

Then, they added in specific voices for anyone in the crowd that you can see in a close up.

Brent: Cause maybe we get a tight shot of just one section of the stands. And so we'll use a smaller library recording for the sense of that. [tight walla crowd]

Brent: And then if anybody is moving their mouth, shouting out “Richmond!” “Come on!”

Any of those kinds of shouts, loop group will put something in everybody's mouth.

[music out into crowd chanting “Come on Richmond!”]

But when the entire crowd is chanting together, that's a whole other challenge. And it required some sound-editing magic.

Brent: We'll take loop group, do multiple layers of loop group, and then there's some software that we can use that will take the characteristics of one sound and impose that on a totally different sound.

For example, they'll take the loop group chanting, "You don't know what you're doing."

[loop group chanting "You don't know what you're doing"]

And use software to apply the rhythm and cadence of the chant to a library recording of a stadium-crowd.

[walla crowd indistinctly chanting the "You don't know what you're doing"]

Then they combine the two, so that a few Zoom recordings becomes a stadium full of angry soccer fans.

[walla crowd and loop group chanting "You don't know what you're doing" combined.]

But Zoom wasn't the only tool that helped them work remotely.

Brent: We have a line in the first season where Sam is shouting, you know, “Jamie I'm open!”

[Show Clip - Sam repeatedly yelling to Jaime, “I’m open!]

The original dialogue was unusable because it was too distorted.

Brent: So I had the actor go out in his backyard with his iPhone and yell outside.

[sfx: iPhone ADR recording of Sam, played by Toheeb Jimoh, yelling at Jamie]

Brent: And that worldized it. So using that in the mix in that environment of the score is blasting, people are shouting on the pitch… the iPhone recording of that sat in just fine.

[Show Clip repeats - Sam repeatedly yelling to Jaime, “I’m open!] Jaime: What are you doing? That was going in.

Ted: Well, we’ll never know. Jamie, how many times I gotta tell you to make the extra pass? I mean, come on. Sam was more open than the jar of peanut butter on my kitchen counter.

And that's not the only scene they used an iPhone for.

Brent: There were plenty of times where an iPhone recording was all we needed because of the nature of the line.

For example, there was a locker room scene between two of the team’s players, Roy and Dani.

Brent: Roy is in the ice bath having done an own goal score. He just had a miserable game. And the ever-the-optimist Dani comes in–

[Show Clip - scene begins] Dani: Hola Roy!

Dani hops on the treadmill in the background and starts belting out a song in Spanish.

[Show Clip continues with Dani singing]

But that’s not what they originally recorded.

Brent: The song he actually sang on the set, they decided they weren't going to use that.

So they had the actor record a few new songs at home, using his iPhone.

Brent: (47:06) So we played around with a couple of different ideas and landed on him singing the theme song to the show itself, in Spanish.

Dallas: No way.

Brent: So if you listen, he ends up with "Si," and it goes right into the main titles.

[Show Clip - scene ends with Dani singing “Si!” and morphs into the title song and sequence]

Dallas: Whoa.

Brent: So that's a little Easter egg.

Dallas: That's great.

[music in: Wesley Slover - Art is for Everyone]

iPhones worked… sometimes. But Bernard still sent microphones to most of the main actors so they could record at home. Although sometimes setting up the mics was a bit of a challenge.

Bernard: We do a Zoom with them and we always try to tell them “No, kitchen bathrooms, bad places,” you know, “Echo is like huge.” Closets, but if it's too small of a closet, that's not good either. But we would take a look at the room and guide them through what would be best. Throwing blankets on any glass, throwing blankets on windows, things like that.

Fortunately, the actors had a lot of free time.

Brent: The actors had no place else to be, because everything was locked down. So, you know, the number of times they're like, "Jeez, this is taking longer than I thought." Like, “Well, do you have, do we need to call this?” like, "Oh no, I don't have anything to do. It's just taking longer than I thought."

Dallas: I just love that clash of, famous scene, or you remember this scene, someone on camera their lips moving, but they're in a closet, you know, saying that.

[music out]

Here’s a scene of Rebecca singing at a karaoke bar.

[Show Clip - Rebecca singing “Let It Go”]

Brent: What you're hearing in there is Hannah Waddingham singing live during the production. She's just freaking amazing. But it was also like four in the morning. And so there was a note or two, she didn't like, so she rerecorded the entire song in her closet. And we just excised the parts that she wasn't happy with.

It's pretty much impossible to tell where the on-set recording ends and the closet recording begins.

[Show Clip continues]

Getting such great results with remote recording is an amazing achievement. But what’s even more impressive is that they managed to do it without interrupting their schedule.

Brent: The mantra was: Journey of discovery. So nothing went wrong. It went, “Oh, this is happening now, let's figure out how to fix that. Let's overcome this now.” Everyone had a very positive attitude, very Ted Lasso.

[Show Clip] Ted: I think that’s what it’s all about. Embracing change. Being brave. Doing whatever you have to, so that everyone in your life can move forward with theirs.

Thanks to all their hard work, the episodes made during lockdown sound just as good as the earlier ones.

[music in: Longlake - Bedrock]

Bernard: Instead of laying down and saying “Oh, we have a pandemic, this is going to be tough so it's going to be what it is and just allow it to be that way,” we all had the attitude is that “Okay, this is the challenge, but the product still has to come out as best it can be.” And, uh, we just looked at it as a challenge to overcome.

[Show Clip] Ted: Hey, but taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, probably doing it wrong.

In 2021, Ted Lasso won seven Emmy awards, including one for Outstanding Sound Mixing.

Brent: It's Jason's baby in the end, but he's also very collaborative and really appreciates the points of view and the creative elements that other people bring to the table. You know, an actor by himself is just a solo gig.

[Show Clip] Ted: Out there, you’re just one of eleven. And if you just figure out some way to turn that “me” into “us”, sky’s the limit for you.

So he understands that it's, it's what other people bring that will make all the other elements even better.

Bernard: Really the overall thing that makes everything work, all these challenges work was the collaboration of the crew.

In the end, Ted Lasso's positive attitude inspired the filmmakers to keep going through 2020. The character's optimism and strength were infectious. His message is that life isn't about winning at all costs. It's about the trust and connections that you find along the way.

[Show Clip] Ted: Now I want you to be grateful that you’re going through this sad moment with all these other folks. Because I promise you, there is something worse out there than being sad, and that is being alone and being sad. Ain’t nobody in this room alone.

Brent: There's an emotional rollercoaster in a multitude of directions in every episode. I mean, how can we be celebrating a win and a heartbreak simultaneously? It's emotionally rewarding and fulfilling and puts gas in my tank. And I would hope that, if it rubs off on somebody, it's in a way that people are just nicer to each other.

Bernard: For us, that makes what we do and all the hard work worthwhile. And connecting to people of course is the joy. It's why we do this.

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[music in: Wesley Jensen & The Penny Arcade - You - Instrumental]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Follow Defacto Sound on Instagram for more sonic treats.

Nik: This episode was written and produced by Nikolas Harter.

Colin: It was story edited by Colin DeVarney…

Andrew: Andrew Anderson…

Casey: …and Casey Emmerling.

Colin: It was sound designed and mixed by Colin DeVarney.

Thanks again to our guests, Brent Findley and Bernard Weiser. I highly recommend Ted Lasso. It’s an amazing show and a ton of work went into making it sound brilliant.

Thanks for listening.

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