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Sound mixer Michael Williamson on making it through epic Shogun shoot in one piece: “We were amazed at the size & scale”

Set in Japan in the year 1600, record breaking Emmy-winning show, Shogun sees Lord Yoshii Toranaga fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him when a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village. Wielding the right tools to capture pristine sound was essential for this epic action-packed series, explains Michael Williamson, C.A.S, who reveals how he made it through Shogun in one piece.

With 14 Emmy wins in 2024, Shogun broke the record of 13 that was previously set by the 2008 limited series John Adams. Shogun won in Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Picture Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Period Costumes, Best Main Title Design, Best Production Design, Best Prosthetic Makeup, Best Stunt Performance, Best Casting for a Drama, Best Special Visual Effects, Best Period/Fantasy Makeup, Best Period/Fantasy Hairstyling and Best Guest Actor in a Drama for Néstor Carbonell.

Williamson is no stranger to the most mixing popular TV shows over the last three decades, beginning with the iconic paranormal mystery series The X-Files in 1993, and more recently has been a go-to staple for contemporary horror maven Mike Flanagan on Midnight Mass and The Midnight Club, as well as mixing The 100, Man in the High Castle and Yellowjackets, just to name a few. Now, his talents turn to historical fiction on FX and Hulu’s reimagining of Shogun, in which marooned sailor John Blackthorne finds himself in the centre of a power struggle in post-medieval Japan.

With dialogue and action constantly overlapping, Williamson turns to his time-tested Lectrosonics wireless rig, consisting of original Venue and Venue2 modular receiver systems, SMQV and HMa transmitters, and ALP650 antennas. For communications, he sets up IFB-T4 transmitters and provides R1b receivers for all.

Mulder and Scully had the first pair of 185s I bought!

While Shogun is his latest accomplishment, Lectrosonics has seen him through every key hurdle in his career, starting his journey with the brand on The X Files:

“Mulder and Scully had the first pair of 185s I bought!” he laughs. Seriously, about two years into The X-Files, I changed up my whole rig. The actors were happier because everything was now a lot smaller. I was happier because I was getting better range and audio quality. Crews didn’t use a lot of radio mics back then — it was largely wired booms through much of the 1990s. 

"The X-Files was a tipping point because the production didn’t want to raise the sound levels very much. They wanted to keep everything low-key and quiet to go with the mood of what you see. I wouldn’t say radio mics were in their infancy in the ’90s,” he considers, “maybe their adolescence. By then, they had got good enough to give us the first real shot at what we wanted to do. Vancouver is a less controlled environment than L.A., and we’re running around real alleys and hopping real fences. Until I got my Lectrosonics, it was always, ‘How is this even going to work?’ But I kept on pushing my Lectrosonics and it kept on performing. It still does today.”

Despite working on a lot of big productions in Vancouver, the enormity of his most recent project was a little intimidating: “We were amazed at the size and scale of Shogun,” nods Williamson. 

“Much of Shogun was shot anamorphically, which means boom operators can’t get in where you want them unless they’re swinging 25-foot poles — which we actually did. That puts more onto the radio mics [wireless] to do the job. I was glad to have the ability to mix a boom and a wireless together and try to make it sound like one microphone.”

If all this sounds like shooting an action movie, it’s even more demanding. “There’s a lot of action in Shogun to be sure, but in most action films, dialogue is shot up close so you see the good-looking actors, and then you have the big, scopey fight scenes and chases,” explains Williamson.

“In Shogun, you could start with people waist-deep in water tugging something out, then they walk onto the beach, the shot gets closer in, and there’s dialogue the whole time. You have lots of actors walking back and forth with swords and shields and all the accoutrements of 1600s Japan, and there’s dialogue. 

"Capturing all that involves a lot of RF complexity, not to mention working next to a giant body of water, which can suck away a lot of your RF amplitude. I don’t think I would have depended on anything but Lectrosonics for making it through Shogun in one piece!”

We were amazed at the size and scale of Shogun.

On Shogun the team usually had three mixers, including Williams, working at the same time.

“Coordination became very quick, and we rarely ran into issues where we had to re-tune anything,” he says. “The gear performing well was part of that, but it was just as much about good rapport in the sound department. Honestly, one of our bigger problems was with communication headphones from camera. They use this rather dirty drive-through technology that can wipe out IFBs if you get too close to them.”

One reason for Williamson’s confidence is Lectrosonics’ tenacity at finding, retaining, and isolating clean carrier frequencies — something he relied on well before Shogun. “On the first season of [the 2018 Netflix series] Lost In Space, not only did I have to wire the entire cast, but each actor needed their own IFB so they could talk to the director while they had their space helmets on. Grips and electric crew had to have IFBs to hear their various cues. It all got tricky because you’re working around camera and their wireless video. 

"I thought we’d be running into some serious issues simply because of all the RF in the air. Again, I found the isolation of the Lectrosonics gear to be just great. I never got a single complaint from any of the actors about their comms. Over the years, I’ve been in lots of studios where there are multiple crews shooting at once, everyone is on wireless, and I’ve never had a problem with crosstalk — either getting stepped on or stepping on somebody else.”

I don’t think I would have depended on anything but Lectrosonics for making it through Shogun in one piece!

Given Shogun’s maritime and seaside settings, Williamson also praises his Lectrosonics equipment’s ability to face the elements. “The resiliency of these things to winter and wet weather is amazing,” he says. “When we were shooting The Grey [a survival movie about oil workers stranded in Alaska], we were about 10,000 feet up on a mountain. It was 20 degrees below zero. There was never a failure. We had failures with practically everything but our radio mics.”

When demands for extreme range arise, both the tenacious reception of the Venue systems and the high output power of the SMQV come into play. “On The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, we had a walk-and-talk where camera was using a 1000mm lens because the actors were almost a kilometre away,” recalls Williamson. 

“You could barely see them, and I told production, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get the sound on this.’ It turns out we had them right from the start all the way to the end of the shot. I was amazed at how Lectrosonics held up with no dropouts, noise, or interference.”

By way of advice to junior mixers who aspire to Williamson’s level of accomplishment, he highlights the importance of reliable gear. “When a production keeps adding more and more elements and things get complicated, I power through by keeping things simple,” he explains. “That’s where it gets fun for me. A lot of factors figure into that, but one is that you must be able to trust your equipment. That’s how you protect yourself. That’s how you move yourself forward,” he smiles.

Shogun images via FX Networks