Widow’s Bay music editor Nate Underkuffler, part of the Emmy-nominated sound team, reveals what you’re hearing at the end of “What to Expect on Your Trip.”
After working on films like Tarot and IT: Chapter Two, music editor Nate Underkuffler was perfect for Widow’s Bay.
“Widow’s Bay is always right on the knife’s edge of trying to give you both [horror and comedy], which was a great challenge,” said Underkuffler. “The good news is that the showrunner, Katie [Dippold], has more experience in comedy than horror. So, it actually worked out really nicely because I felt confident pushing the horror and Dave [Fleming], our composer, did as well. But we knew that Katie was very aware of and protective of all of the humor and the jokes. So, it was a good sort of checks-and-balances system.”
Underkuffler described giving space to the comedy and letting the jokes happen without bulldozing them with “the scary stuff.”
“At the same time, you’ve got to have genuine tension. A joke itself is tension and release, right? There’s the expectation of what’s going to come next, and then it surprises you in this way.”
How Nerf Guns Helped the Widow’s Bay Sound Team
Even in the process of mixing the sound itself, there was a blend of horror, comedy,…and nerf guns.
“The dub stage we worked on at Universal has the dialogue editor and the sound effects designer on one side and then our sound supervisor and myself on the other side of the room. And we all faced each other with the filmmakers and the mixers in the middle. So it’s very strategically designed because we’re all sharing for sonic space in some ways, deciding what gets featured where to what extent and how it all fits together. If the sound team got one of their sound effects featured in a moment as opposed to music, they would shoot a Nerf in my direction or vice versa. It was all in good humor.”
Music and sound effects play an important role in the sound team’s nominated episode, “What to Expect on Your Trip,” where Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) hallucinates after eating special mushrooms. 311’s “Amber” plays diegetically (heard through the characters) in what Underkuffler called a “classic Maine convenience store,” before it then becomes adopted into the soundtrack.
“We mixed it in a way that suddenly it’s not playing through the tiny speakers of the gas station,” said Underkuffler. “It actually becomes all verbed out and bizarre to help sell the moment. And that goes really well with the sound design. And then, of course, that same song plays at the end credits; there’s a little callback.”
But what is that scary sound at the end of the episode?
“It’s the sound of the Island. It’s the sound of the supernatural cursed, evil thing that has taken this Island over. Katie wanted it to be the voice of that. And another example of Nerf gun fighting, actually a really great example of it.”
When creating that sound, the music department brought their vocals and editorial had their own vocal offering, but in the end, their sound designer Matt Yocum won the Nerf gun war.
“Matt had the advantage of watching the rest of us try and fail ahead of time, so we got a better sense of what was working and what wasn’t and what Katie was really responding to. And then Matt just hit it out of the park. That demonic voice he created is pretty epic and then transitions right into the 311 song for the end credits. Smashing to black is such a dramatic moment, especially when it’s the end of the episode and especially after you’ve just had this emotional ride. To be able to smash into a 311 song is really fun. It’s a perfect example of what this show is all about.”
All episodes of Widow’s Bay are streaming on Apple TV.
