The sound of ‘Magnificent Madness’ is postproduced with DaVinci Resolve (Blackmagic Design)

Sound designer and mixer Randy Bobo postproduced the sound for the documentary series Magnificent Madness using the Fairlight tools available in DaVinci Resolve Studio (Design Blackmagic).

The four-episode documentary series, produced by Duncan Entertainment, tells the story of Tazio Nuvolari, an acclaimed Italian racing driver whose career ended in the 1930s. Given the large amount of archive material, and as Bobo details, this project was no easy task: “I started by cleaning up the dialogue and adding all the sounds needed to bring the story to life. In this case, there was a lot of archival footage that was MOS, or that had no synchronous audio track, so I had to recreate sound for entire scenes. For example, 1930’s vintage reader cars, WW I and WW II battle scenes, people working in factories and more.”

Bobo decided to tackle this ambitious project from Independent Studios by relying on Resolução DaVinci, Blackmagic Design’s post production software: “I was seamlessly able to import our existing sound effects library into DaVinci Resolve Studio and easily search for what I needed,” he continued. “I used DaVinci Resolve Studio’s foley sampler to produce various foley effects by assigning sounds to a keyboard and creating them in real time. Elastic wave retiming also came in handy when timing certain sound effects to picture as it allowed me to stretch a clip’s length in the timeline without changing pitch for easy retiming”.

To tackle sound post-production and streamline the editing process, Bobo decided to use the Fairlight Desktop Console. As he says, “having twelve faders at the ready was fantastic, along with pan automation. It provided all the features I needed in a compact console.”

Mac Mini with M1

Bobo benefited from DaVinci Resolve’s new support for the new M1-based Macs. The engineer couldn’t be more pleased with the performance: “I can’t believe how well it worked. I didn’t treat it with kid gloves either but rather used lots of plugins to reduce noise and reverb on the dialogue tracks, as some were recorded in very reverberant spaces.”

Magnificent Madness will be released throughout 2022 in the United States. Bobo reflects on what it was like to work on the project and the performance of the tools used for his work: “First, I love Formula One, European cars and history, so this project was a pleasure and a treat to work on. The producers also gave me incredible freedom, so I was able to flex my creative muscles and have fun. Second, when you have a fully fledged system like DaVinci Resolve Studio and the accompanying Fairlight hardware console supporting your workflow, the possibilities only increase. Fairlight’s capabilities show that the application truly understands audio post.”