Production sound mixer Chris Giles talk to TVBEurope about the challenges of working on Marvels latest TV series, and how he can walk into a space and hear the microphone he needs to use
By Jenny Priestley
Published: June 23, 2022
Production sound mixer Chris Giles talk to TVBEurope about the challenges of working on Marvel's latest TV series, and how he can walk into a space and hear' the microphone he needs to use
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
Having already worked on WandaVision, Marvel's first TV series for Disney Plus, production sound mixer Chris Giles is back in the MCU with Ms Marvel.
Giles started his career working in music, but after being asked to help rescue a small film project he discovered the opportunities available working in sound. Something just clicked in my mind. Of course you need a sound person on set, but I never really thought about it, he tells TVBEurope. All I ever thought about was scoring films or doing jingles for commercials.
His journey eventually led him to WandaVision, which he admits turned out to have a bigger impact than first thought. That show's success put me on people's radar, and then I was asked if I would be interested in looking at this project, he explains. As soon as it says Marvel on it, you have to repress your excitement a little bit. It's a project that kind of speaks to what I really want to put out there, so of course I said yes.
It's really important to me that the intention behind the show is representing people that don't get to see themselves on screen. I think that's one of the beauties of what we do is getting to put something up there on the screen and have it seen by somebody who says hey, this kind of looks like me or my brother or my sister', they can relate more and start envisioning themselves. So that part of the project was really important.
The role of the production sound mixer is to be in charge of all the show's audio during the production phase of the project that includes making sure the actors' voices are recorded as cleanly as possible, liaising with the script supervisor, director and producer, and recording ambient sounds that will help the post production audio team tell the story on screen.
On Ms Marvel we travelled a fair amount and went to a lot of different locations. There are certain organic sounds that you just can't reproduce in a studio so we had to capture those while we were on location, explains Giles.
Asked to give an example, he cites ambulances. Ambulances in different parts of the world sound completely different from each other, he states. It may not be as important as say, the colour combination on the screen, but there's a subconscious layer there that helps build that environment.
Sometimes I might capture the sound of a foreign police car that drives through the scene but maybe somebody was talking at that moment or whatever. The post production team now know exactly what they have to go capture and what they have to reproduce. Our effort is to get basically make that workload extremely light.
Technology To capture sound on set, Giles uses recorders from Aaton Digital in France. I have their flagship recorders, he explains. I think they're fantastic, they sound amazing. They take a beating and sometimes they work better than I do.
I also use Shure Audio and also Zaxcom, which is a more boutique manufacturer based in the United States. I'm one of those very annoying sound people that I don't have one or two mics. I have a drawer full of microphones and I get really geeky with it. There's always a dialogue between me and my boom operators about which microphones will sound best. But it's funny because as I do it more and more, I can actually kind of hear the space and hear the microphone in my brain. I can't quite explain that very well, but it seems to work out, he laughs.
Chris Giles (image courtesy Chuck Zlotnick) That drawer of microphones includes technology from Sennheiser, Neumann, and DPA. Giles has adapted DPA's mics that were originally intended for symphonic capture, to be used on TV and film sets. Because they capture at that pristine level, I can use the Shure Audio transmitters and it's full bitrate and everything just said sounds phenomenal.
Everybody likes to focus on the boom microphones or the cardioid or hypercardioid microphones, but I would say that the largest advancement that we've had is literally the DPA miniature microphones, he adds. We hide them everywhere. Sometimes it's not possible to put a lavalier on an actor for some reason, and you can't use a boom mic for the shot. So we have literally hidden dozens of microphones all over set because I know they're going to walk over to a coffee cup and say a line. The DPA mics have really helped us with that.
In fact, there are some scenes in Ms Marvel where Giles has captured up to 24 channels of audio. In episode two, Kamala attends her mosque's Eid celebration, which meant a lot of people were on set and in front of the camera. Maybe someone only has one line, or maybe it's a person that's standing near something and they're kind of a planted microphone because they're near where the action takes place and I can't put the microphones somewhere safe. Sometimes it's better to be on the person that's standing next to the action, silly little things like that.
Challenges As well as the challenge of capturing multiple channels of audio, Giles and the whole Ms Marvel team had to also deal with Covid. Usually these jobs are so busy that I'm focused on my specific task and maybe dealing directly with the producers or something to that effect. Sometimes we might not have enough people on set, or something u
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Production sound mixer Chris Giles talk to TVBEurope about the challenges of working on Marvels latest TV series, and how he can walk into a space and hear the microphone he needs to use
