Devendra Cleary, CAS: Capturing the Sounds of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

Since he was five years old, Devendra Cleary wanted to be in Star Wars. He remembers watching the original trilogy on VHS like it was yesterday–glued to the TV, popcorn in hand with his childhood friend Eric. Years later, his career as production sound mixer and the greenlighting of several Star Wars US productions led him to land on a project codenamed Grammar Rodeo, or as we all know it, Skeleton Crew. “I don’t even know how to put it into words, it’s just such a big deal. I love Star Wars so much that this was absolutely a dream come true. They hired me in February of 2022, but we didn’t start filming until June. I had a lot of time to prepare, getting nervous and excited while reading the scripts,” he added, “My job is about recording the best possible dialogue. That’s all any supervising sound editor cares about. With Star Wars and any other show that’s visual effects or just action heavy, there’s a lot of extra stuff that goes on top of it.”

Devendra Cleary explained the technical process for recording sound in Skeleton Crew, where custom workstations were pre-built specifically for the show based on the scripts: “One was really quick and portable where I could deploy four speakers. They’re all battery powered because all the directors and ADs like to carry handheld wireless mics. I also built a special rig that takes a microphone and plugs into a voice processor which comes to me so I can control the level and then shoots back out through speakers. I saw there was a lot of droid dialogue. Sometimes they had a pre-recorded playback from the puppeteering team, but sometimes they didn’t have anything prepared–it would have just been somebody reading next to the camera.” This allowed Cleary to experiment on the undersecretary Fara school visit scene shot for the season premiere by modifying the second-second assistant director’s voice for the teacher droid’s read–impressing director and showrunner Jon Watts.

The production sound mixer confessed the most challenging scene he worked on Skeleton Crew was from the same day on set, even though that particular part didn’t end up in the final cut of the first episode. In that scene, Neel is impatiently waiting for his friend Wim who is late for the test. Director Jon Watts had some specific requests to effectively communicate with the creature performer for Neel and the rest of the crew: “He wanted to be able to talk to Kacie [Borrowman], the actress playing Neel, to give her specific timing instructions, but he didn’t want that mic to go out to the general public of the set. He also wanted a second mic that would not go into her ear but go to the other actor that was in the scene that I think ended up getting cut out. Then we had a third microphone that he could use to talk to everybody, and another one for the first assistant director to give instructions. It was a routing maze that I had to do on my sound system … It was really tricky, but we pulled it off.”

Although a lot of the Star Wars sounds are added in post-production, Devendra Cleary was able to provide some temporary effects to motivate the cast while filming the series. This technique has been used by few mixers–particularly Julian Howarth’s use of explosion and water sounds for Avatar and Stéphane Bucher’s work on Gladiator II–and Skeleton Crew was the perfect candidate for it. “It’s a huge part of our job to do whatever is needed on set to accommodate anything sound related, and that includes communications and motivating things for the actors. The sound effects emerged in a very organic way on this show, and I was really glad it did. It made me nervous too, but looking back, that was so much fun. I’ve never been on another project where it turns into an everyday thing.” Cleary also confessed that although the main target for these sound effects were the young cast, Jude Law was the biggest proponent for this technique: “He wanted more … if he was shooting a blaster, he wanted to hear the ‘PEW’!”

One of the first times Cleary used sound effects on set was while they were filming the characters’ first time in the Onyx Cinder–which had minimal dialogue but plenty of special effects as the ship gets explored and eventually reactivated by KB. That moment where everything lit up, Cleary’s big idea came to life: “It wasn’t pre-planned, it was just all on the fly. Even though they’re going to add sound effects in post, it needs something right now to tie it together, so I downloaded an engine powering up sound, then a couple of engine motors starting up, and mixed them all together. I never did any of this professionally, but I know my way around Pro Tools, and I think I have a little bit of the artistic side in me. We just kept doing multiple takes and different camera setups, and the timing of my sound was staying consistent because I was just playing back a timeline in Pro Tools for every setup. It was locked in, and they were starting to use it as a guide themselves.” This addition to the production flow was risky, but in the end the immersiveness outweighed the downside of dialog contamination. This trial had such a positive outcome that Cleary was given access to Star Wars sound effects by Lucasfilm–adding a level of authenticity for cast and crew.

As technology advances in filmmaking, new challenges arise, especially for capturing sound. The StageCraft volumes have allowed productions to create and recreate locations without the need of traveling, but in the end, the stage lacks the natural sound absorbers you would find in a real place. For Star Wars, all locations are fictional, so the volume allows the storytelling to visually expand and help the actors to dial into their performances–requiring less imagination than a blue or green screen would. Devendra Cleary explained that when it comes to shooting in such an environment, filling up the stage with practical sets helps minimize the echoey nature of the volume. Luckily, ILM developed sound baffles called ZR microscreens: “I don’t know how they do it … it’s crazy technology. Somehow, they absorb sound and eat up the echo. It’s still not perfect, but it definitely helps,” he said.

Devendra Cleary is not the only person responsible for capturing the sounds of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. His sound crew, although relatively small, is responsible for several crucial tasks–from operating and maintaining the audio recording equipment during a production to making sure the cast is properly set up with microphones. Along with Cleary himself as production sound mixer are: Chris ‘Catfish’ Walmer, the boom operator; Alexis Schafer, utility sound technician; Jeff Zimmerman, music playback operator; and Naola Greaves, a trainee from the Union’s opportunity training program. Together, they helped make this new Star Wars story a reality. Make sure to keep watching Skeleton Crew on Disney+ and follow Devendra Cleary on Instagram.

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