‘The Bear’ Sound Mixers Emmy Interview

Over the course of its first three seasons, “The Bear” was known for overlapping dialogue, frenetic restaurant activity and well-timed needle drops of high-energy songs like Refused’s “New Noise,” the Ramones’ “Fight Tonight” and Taylor Swift’s “Love Story.”

But the FX show has also used music as a key element in softer moments, with Season 4’s “Scallop” episode featuring a particularly moody and understated sound design. Songs like St. Vincent’s “Slow Disco,” the Ronettes’ “(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up,” Love and Rockets’ “Haunted When the Minutes Drag,” Van Morrison’s “Slim Slow Slider/Start Breaking Down” and Dion’s “Only You Know” drift in and out of the restaurant action, creating a subtly atmospheric sonic bed.

“’The Bear’ is known for these crazy montages and sounds slamming around and people screaming,” said re-recording mixer Steve “Major” Giammaria, one of five sound nominees for the “Scallop” episode. “Those are a lot easier, you know?” he added, laughing. “We hide a lot of sins in that chaos. If it’s just a music track, or Carmy and Marcus (Jeremy Allen White and Lionel Boyce) sharing feelings in an alleyway, (production mixer) Scott (D. Smith)’s gotta do his job just right because I can’t hide anything in there.”

Giammaria and Smith share their nomination in the Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (Half-Hour) and Animation category with ADR mixer Patrick Christensen and Foley mixers Ryan Collison and Connor Nagy. While the nomination is a first for Nagy, it’s Giammaria’s seventh, all for “The Bear” (sound mixing in 2023, ’24, ’25 and ’26 and [other category] in ’23, ’24 and ’25), the fourth for Smith (sound mixing in all four seasons) and the third for Christensen (’24, ’25 and ’26). Collison also has three nominations for the last three seasons of “The Bear,” along with one for “Cartel Land” in 2016 and one for “Widow’s Bay” this year, meaning he’s competing against himself.

“What I like about this episode is it encapsulates all of Season 4 both thematically and sonically,” said Giammaria of this year’s nomination. “It’s quieter. It’s about the monotony and repetition of running a restaurant day-to-day, and there are a lot of quiet conversations.”

But the songs, especially the extended use of the Van Morrison and Dion numbers, are omnipresent enough to set a rhythm and mood; they’re a heartbeat, not mere punctuation. “When they give us these long music cues, it’s always like, ‘OK, I see what you’re doing, but I’ve got a lot of people whispering and sharing feelings that also have to be heard,’” said Giammaria. “The trick is trying to sculpt the music around all the dialogue, making sure that the song doesn’t lose momentum but you also hear all the words.”

As he’s recording that dialogue on the set, though, Smith isn’t sure if and how it will be set against music. “We have no clue what they’re going to do in post, and no idea how it’s going to be cut,” Smith said. “Our focus almost all the time is just to try to get the cleanest dialogue we can, and give Major and the sound editors some kind of road map to go by when things get really complicated.”

He grinned. “And we have the usual issues with background noise and overlapping dialogue, which is just a given on this show.”

The episode builds to a scene in which Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) arranges for a fake snowstorm in the alley outside the restaurant to please a family that is celebrating their daughter’s recovery from cancer, with the Dion song adding to the tearjerking aura.

“It was pretty music-forward in the fake snow,” Giammaria said. “But leading up to that, there was a kitchen montage that was a little less chaotic than usual in terms of cooking noises. There was still a lot of noise happening, percussive sounds, but it was a little more precise and measured—metronomical, almost. Between the music and the voices and the people moving through this space a little more confidently now, it created a different cadence. And then we were able to culminate outside with a nice, snowy, music-forward moment.”

A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazines. Read more from the issue here.