S1E5: Got Milk

Summary

Pluribus: The Official Podcast – S1E5 “Got Milk”

Original Air Date: November 26, 2025
Host: Chris McCaleb (Editor, Host)
Featured Guests:

• Joey Liu (Editor)
• Dave Porter (Composer)
• Arielle Levine (Writer)
• Gordon Smith (Executive Producer, Director)
• Nicholas Tsai (Assistant Editor, Mixer)

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Episode Overview

This episode of the Pluribus official podcast dives deep into the making of Episode 105, “Got Milk.” Host Chris McCaleb is joined by key crew members to offer an inside look at creating one of the most visually and emotionally ambitious chapters of the Apple Original series. Topics range from directing large-scale exodus scenes, the challenge of minimal dialogue, music composition for both orchestra and montage, working with wolves (and wolf-dogs), to orchestrating comedic drone mishaps. The team’s freewheeling conversation is full of detailed behind-the-scenes stories, humor, technical breakdowns, and the creative decisions that shaped this standout episode.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Editing and Crew Dynamics

• Joey Liu stepped in as editor when Chris McCaleb was on pre-planned vacation.
• Nicholas Tsai’s first union show as assistant editor, praised for his transition and technical skills.

  "It was great to come back and assist Joey on this episode. And that was kind of my breaking into the show mid season. Lot of visual effects and such to deal with on this show and especially this episode." — Nicholas Tsai [02:17]

Script and Dialogue

• The episode’s script was deceptively brief (approx. 39 pages) with far less dialogue than usual, requiring precise descriptive writing to communicate intent and mood.

  "[T]he page count is low. This is a big episode." — Arielle Levine [02:56]

The Hospital Exodus Scene (A Cinematic Feat)

• Gordon Smith drew inspiration from the film I Am Cuba for the exodus shot, aiming for a “oner” (single, unbroken take) feel—for fluidity and scale.

  "I was like, God, if we could do something like this." — Gordon Smith [05:27]

• Choreographing hundreds of extras and coordinating a crane camera for synchronization required days of prep and a tight shooting window at dawn to capture light just right.

  "Paul was like, no, we really wanted to shoot. It's like between 7 and 8 or something like that in the morning, which meant a really early call." — Gordon Smith [06:36]

• The dramatic exodus shot involved composite VFX to depict a realistic, massive departure from Albuquerque.

  "We constructed it out of so many pieces, too. Out of, like, lots of different footage... and then replace them with cars that I think are just photorealistic." — Chris McCaleb [10:32]

Notable Cameos and Humor

• Patrick Fabian (Howard Hamlin from Better Call Saul) voiced a recurring, increasingly funny PA announcement.

  "That message gets funnier and funnier the more you hear it. It's funnier and funnier." — Gordon Smith [07:19]

• Rhea Seehorn’s professional reaction to hearing Patrick’s voice unexpectedly on set impressed everyone.

  "She was such a professional. She did not break at all." — Joey Liu [07:54]

Visual Effects and Technical Challenges

• The landmark rooftop shot was achieved via set builds and digital compositing to insert Rhea Seehorn into a sweeping cityscape at sunset.

  "There was so much work to be done in this episode. We had units going at various places... We had to kind of do it at sun is setting." — Gordon Smith [09:30]

• VFX partner Rodeo Visuals took two months to complete the exodus composite, stitching footage and digitally animating car taillights realistically.

  "Rodeo needed, like, two months to build that shot." — Nicholas Tsai [10:17]

Musical Architecture

Orchestral Score

• Dave Porter discussed the unusual timeline and workflow using live orchestras and choir, which meant composing before final VFX were complete—often scoring to unfinished scenes.

  "A little bit it's throwing a dart in the dark without you guys having. Explaining it to me." — Dave Porter [11:30]

• On finding the musical “tempo” for each edit:

  "For me, when I start to write, my first goal is to find that timing and find that tempo. And in truth, sometimes it comes to me very quickly, and other times it takes a while, but I start with only a metronome at just a click that's just clicking away." — Dave Porter [16:05]

Leitmotifs and Character Themes

• The episode includes subtle musical references (“leitmotifs”) to Carol and Helen’s relationship to gently evoke emotion.

  "When she's in the bed and looking over right across the bed and there's nobody there. Just that little, hopefully haunting hint to remind us that Carol is absolutely always thinking about Helen." — Dave Porter [19:20]

Needle Drops and Montage

• The teaser’s exodus montage features “Deo Gracias” (Johan Ockenham), suggested by Gordon Smith to convey both the scale and emotional detachment of the moment.

  "It was even more just temping it in, but it worked pretty well to do it." — Gordon Smith [20:57]

• The paver laying montage uses Khruangbin’s “A Calf Born in Winter,” with the temp track kept all the way to final cut.

  "As soon as we laid it down, I was like, oh, this is perfect. This is great. Yeah, it gets a tone and everything." — Joey Liu [24:13]

Iconic Visuals and Montages

• The “Well of Souls” shot—a visual homage to Indiana Jones, captured at sunset after careful planning—gave emotional resonance to Carol’s labor of grief.

  "That was the guiding point that I could take from the script and say, all right, well, I don't want this to feel rough and ugly. You want to emphasize that it's work, but that it's a labor of absolute love." — Gordon Smith [30:59]

• The grave-covering montage was designed to evoke Carol’s sorrow and love rather than her pain, visually accentuated by music and light.

Drones as Both Story and Comedy

• The drones, portrayed by real drone operators, became characters unto themselves, noted for their comedic “earnestness,” especially during the trash pickup fail—a real drone crash, not VFX.

  "We're probably the only show currently using drones in the business that actually included the drones in the footage." — Gordon Smith [32:41]

• The drone sequence was painstakingly shot over many takes; a more elaborate version was scrapped due to time, but the final comedic crash was effective.

Wolves, Wolf-Dogs, and On-Set Animal Training

• The wolves were in fact trained wolf-dogs (Rip, Kaya, Ricky, Koda, Cora), requiring careful handling for just the right “performance”; multiple takes composited for the best, most “dangerous” look.

  "They're going to do certain things. You're going to get a certain performance once maybe." — Gordon Smith [37:14]

• The wolf sequence featured Dave Porter’s intense, orchestral “wolf score,” which even challenged professional session players.

  "I heard a lot of them practicing the runs that are in this because they're trickier than normal." — Dave Porter [39:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Visual Style and Scale

“The choreography of the people, the camera, the feeling of it is so big and cinematic. And I just love that.”
— Chris McCaleb [03:14]

On Writing and Directing Without Dialogue

“You have to be very clear with what you’re telling the crew and, like, the point of the scene and all of that.”
— Gordon Smith [04:37]

Funniest Cameo Reaction

“Rhae didn’t know that that was coming and that it was going to be Patrick. She was such a professional. She did not break at all.”
— Joey Liu [07:54]

On Montage Philosophy

“You want to emphasize that it’s work, but that it’s a labor of absolute love.”
— Gordon Smith [30:59]

On Drones’ Accidental Comedy

“The drones have a character to them. I feel like in their performance, they're really going to try and get the garbage out.”
— Gordon Smith [33:21]

On Orchestral Music’s Subtlety

“Just want to feel it but not hear it. You’d want to make the audience feel something and not know why they’re feeling it.”
— Gordon Smith [20:02]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------|---------------| | Meet the roundtable, episode intro | 00:05 | | How Joey Liu became the episode’s editor | 01:20 | | VFX and the challenges of big, silent script | 02:32 | | The epic hospital exodus: inspiration, staging | 03:47–07:19 | | Howard Hamlin/Patrick Fabian cameo | 07:14–08:12 | | Compositing the rooftop & sunset VFX | 08:39–10:32 | | Music, orchestration, composing with VFX delay | 10:48–14:51 | | Process of matching score to edit/rhythm | 14:51–17:23 | | Leitmotifs and character music | 17:24–20:34 | | Needle drop: “Deo Gracias”/temp music process | 20:34–23:07 | | The paver montage & “A Calf Born in Winter” | 23:28–25:40 | | Building the paver montage, behind-the-scenes | 26:06–28:43 | | Visual terminology and “Well of Souls” shot | 27:17–28:43 | | Montage scripting and direction philosophy | 28:43–31:36 | | Drones: From comedy to technical execution | 32:06–35:20 | | Science humor: “Basically neutral” line | 35:58–36:10 | | Working with wolves/wolf-dogs on set | 36:24–38:53 | | Intense “wolf” music and orchestra challenges | 37:32–39:05 | | Wrapping up & end credits | 39:41–end |

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Conclusion: Episode’s Impact

This conversation highlights the collaborative craftsmanship behind Pluribus’s “Got Milk.” Listeners gain a clear sense of how technical excellence, creative risk, and humor all drive the production. From silent montages to epic animal wrangling, and a balance of visual grandeur and emotional intimacy, the episode is a masterclass in cinematic television—one fueled equally by in-the-trenches teamwork, musical innovation, and the “blessing of time.” A standout, both on screen and behind the scenes.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Pluribus, the official podcast, an intimate insider conversation about the making of the Apple TV series with the cast and creators behind the show. My name is Chris McCaleb. I'm one of the editors of Pluribus and the host of this podcast. Is this a recap show? No, it isn't. It's a freewheeling discussion around a table about the making of each episode. So if you haven't watched this week's episode yet, I recommend it because we'll be talking openly. Everything this podcast is about. Episode 105, entitled Got Milk, written by Arielle Levine and directed by Gordon Smith and edited by Joey Liu. In this episode, the others leave Carol alone in Albuquerque, where she's forced to contend with a new normal, including wolves. And then she makes a startling discovery. So much to get into. So without further ado, please welcome to the podcast editor Joey Liu. Hello. Composer Dave Porter.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Writer Arielle Levine.

[C]

Hello.

[A]

And executive producer and director of this episode, Gordon Smith.

[D]

What up?

[A]

And also with us today on the mix board, the ones and twos, the wheels of steel, Nicholas Tsai.

[E]

Hello.

[B]

All right.

[A]

So, Joey, how did you come to edit this episode?

[F]

Well, you went on vacation to Africa.

[A]

It is true that it was a vacation. I cleared a year in advance, knowing that we would be shooting, not knowing where we'd be in the schedule. And it fell, like, eerily exactly with when I was gone. So I was like, let's give the young lad a chance. No. Joey has solo edited several things, and he's been working as an assistant editor with me for many years, but also as an editor in his own right. And we should also call out. You took off your assistant editor hat, put on your editor hat, and then you handed off your assistant editor hat to Nicholas Tsai. So, Nicholas, you had worked with us on season five of Better Call Saul as a post pa. After that, you said, I'm gonna go off and pursue my days and get into the union. And sure enough, you did. Just as we were getting into this season and we were able to bring you on. It was just awesome to have you here for that.

[E]

Oh, thanks, Chris. Yes. This is my first union show as an assistant editor, so it was great to come back and assist Joey on this episode. And that was kind of my breaking into the show mid season. Lot of visual effects and such to deal with on this show and especially this episode.

[F]

We did a great job, man.

[D]

Thank you.

[E]

Thanks.

[A]

Yeah. And I. I don't buy it.

[D]

I still. I think you saw 75 scenes and a montage. And you went, joey, Joey, listen, I gotta go.

[A]

Well, I mean, talk about that. It's a big script with very little dialogue.

[C]

Yep.

[D]

Yeah, the short.

[C]

Short script.

[D]

Yeah. I mean, how many. Deceptively, was it? Like 39.

[C]

I think it was like 39 pages. Yeah. We had to write a disclaimer in there saying, look, the page count is low. This is a big episode.

[D]

Yeah. I mean, how long was the editor's cut, Joey?

[F]

Oh, gosh, it was an hour and three minutes.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Damn.

[D]

Yeah, a lot of material. Because there were a lot of scenes and a lot of stuff we had to do.

[A]

And one of the first things ending the teaser, Carol getting up on top. Well, I mean, there's two things. There's the exodus, which I want to talk about, and then there's her getting up on the rooftop and seeing the other exodus from town. I guess let's start with the exodus from the hospital. I told you, the second I saw it, I was like, that's one of the coolest shots. The way that you did that, the way you accomplished that, the way it all plays out. The choreography of the people, the camera, the feeling of it is so big and cinematic. And I just love that talk about that sequence and how long you worked.

[B]

On it and how many people were involved.

[D]

We worked on a lot. I mean, I think also the nice thing is that, know, Ariel and I have worked together for a long time, and the script was really great. But you didn't have to put as many disclaimers because we could talk about it like we were there, and it's just like, all right. And I remember talking to you when we were working on it, because at one point you're like, this script is real short. And I'm like, don't worry about it. I didn't know I was directing it at that point, but I'm like, don't worry about it. Because as long as you're clear about what we need to be seeing, then it's going to be okay and we'll get there. Even that scene, some of the blocking and just understanding. Cause we were shooting, we had to turn a community college campus into a hospital. And then we were, like, figuring out, you know, the geography. And the script wasn't exactly what it was. Like, Arya was there to produce the episode. And so it could be like, this is what we're envisioning. Can you put that on the page so that we're all on the same page? Because there were so many details. I don't know how you felt about it, Arya. But in a script like this that is so low on dialogue, you have to be very clear with what you're telling the crew and, like, the point of the scene and all of that to.

[C]

Oh, no. Yeah. I mean, it was a fun challenge to write, you know. Yeah. Just making sure everything is super descriptive. But also Vince Gilligan house style is to make all the scripts really fun to read. And so kind of balancing being as descriptive and adding as much detail as possible while also leaving some room for the director and for the actors and for interpretation. And it was so great working with you, Gordon, on set. I mean, we almost had a quorum from the writers room on set because Jen Carroll, who's also in the writers room, was also there producing the episode. So really we had like, three writers on set at a time.

[D]

But, yeah, we prepped that scene quite a bit. I'd been watching the Blu Ray of I Am Cuba, which has. Sure, it is, in fact, Communist propaganda, but it is gorgeous. It is one of the most beautiful.

[A]

Movies when it was shot.

[D]

Yeah. Mikhail Kolatsov is just a genius and he has these series of sort of. We would probably call them oners. They don't feel like oners. They just are shots that develop and change what they're doing and then develop some more and then change what they're doing. And you're kind of moving through them in a stately way. And I was like, God, if we could do something like this. And so I talked to Paul about it and he's like, yeah. And this is roughly where we are. So we sort of figured out how to kick it off and get into it. And Matt Cradle took a day.

[A]

He's our A camera operator.

[D]

Yeah, our A camera operator took a crane and sort of worked with Nito, our movement choreographer, to work with the actors to try and start dialing it in and be like, what do you think of this? And I'd. I'd be like, well, you know, we need to. This part of the shot is getting sluggish. What. What can we do to fill that? What can we add here? And how do you keep the visual interest as this shot is moving so that you're not just like, yeah, people walking.

[A]

They go.

[D]

There they go.

[A]

Look at them go, oh, yeah. It's so exciting how it unfolds. So literally, days of choreography, both with people and with camera.

[D]

Paul was like, no, we really wanted to shoot. It's like between 7 and 8 or something like that in the morning, which meant a really early call. Which meant we had to have dialed in the night before, otherwise we wouldn't be rolling at the right time. Even with prep, even with several hours of rehearsal, we wouldn't have gotten rolling in time. So.

[C]

Yeah. And it's crazy. Cause, I mean, there's so many people, you know, showing the scale of the world. They're depopulating Albuquerque.

[B]

That's.

[C]

It's a huge undertaking. And showing the scale in, you know, strategically, by showing everybody, you know, moving all in unison and all at once out of this hospital and then seeing everyone on the freeways like it.

[D]

They just need a little space.

[C]

They just need a little space. It's, you know, the most passive aggressive breakup ever.

[A]

With a great cameo from Better Call Saul's Patrick Fabian.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

Howard Hamlin himself.

[D]

Yes. And that message gets funnier and funnier the more you hear it. It's funnier and funnier.

[C]

Played so many times.

[D]

Yeah. It's so precisely. Just. We just need a little space. And it's right in the character of these weird people. But I could listen to it over and over and over.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I think Patrick Babian also was just the perfect person to deliver this message because he's such a likable, like, lovely person, had such a lovely voice.

[A]

And Rhae. The very first take of that. Rhae didn't know that that was coming and that it was going to be Patrick.

[F]

She was such a professional. She did not break at all.

[C]

Yeah, we fully expected her to break. We were all, like, standing around waiting, just, like, giggling in the corner like, it's coming. Here it comes.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So disappointing when a prank doesn't work.

[D]

It worked to the degree it can with somebody that is as good as Ray, which. She heard it.

[A]

She did her job.

[D]

She stayed in her business. We called cut, and she said, was that Patrick? Like, she just said she broke right the moment we cut and was like, excuse me. Nobody said that that was going to be Patrick.

[A]

Right. And that leads us up the stairwell and to the. To the rooftop. Two things there. One, talk about your approach, showing visually everybody's leaving, this mass exodus. And then I also want to talk about the music that goes along with all of that.

[D]

Yes. We're trying to figure out where you could see this, how you could do it. We were looking for vantage points to kind of take it all in at once. We found it. There's a hotel right by the big eye where I 25 and I 40 meet. And that is in a very complicated cloverleaf that everyone calls the Big Eye. There were lots of Vantage points that would kind of give you one direction. And it wasn't great. And so we were really trying to take it all at once. But of course, you can't put an actor in a certain place. Right. So there's this whole dance of compositing Ray on a stage.

[A]

You've built the rooftop.

[D]

We built the rooftop. And then we built a rooftop for that big, wide. That ends it on our backlot. But we did it, and we put it together. I will never, ever do another 270 degree pan. It's so hard to get. It's just so hard to keep smooth. It's so hard.

[A]

So it's not motion control.

[D]

Juddering. It's not motion controlled.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

There was so much work to be done in this episode. We had units going at various places. Because we had to get them at the exact right time of day. We need to see the lights, the tail lights. That tells the story that people are going away. Okay, so do we do this at night? That's a nightmare like that. Then you don't quite see what you're seeing. And that has a series of issues. We won't see Carol. We'll have to light things. We won't be able to get the compositing right. So we had to kind of do it at sun is setting. So you can believe that you can see the lights of the tail lights, Time. But also enough light that we can see Carol.

[A]

And then erase the cars and replace.

[D]

Them and time them so that they felt like they were not synthetic. They felt like that they were people that were acting. An incredible degree of synchronicity. But not a superhuman degree, right?

[E]

Yeah. But Rodeo needed, like, two months to build that shot and all. So we had to turn that over. And we had to essentially wait a month or two until we could see something. And it was so real. It was so impressive how well they looked.

[A]

They constructed it out of so many pieces, too. Out of, like, lots of different footage. You know, trying to find, you know, as much as they could. The sort of the empty freeway and then replace them with cars that I think are just photorealistic. I think it's. It's really incredible work.

[D]

And I love the music because during our spotting session, we're like, okay, we need some help. We need this to feel like it does something. Cause we're not looking at Carol for so much of it. And there was a huge conversation just about, like, there's all this space in this sequence. And I think one of the things I always love about Dave and Thomas, when we're talking about music, is that you guys will be like, you know what, let's play this dry. The top of this whole sequence, you're like, no, let's just hear what they're doing. And then when the music comes in, it's so much more impactful. I think you're very aware that the silence is part of the music in a sense, the silence that precedes it. So when it comes in. But I love that piece there, that we're looking at things, we're in Carol's head. And so it feels like music that's coming from within Carol's head.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that scene was. We spent a lot of time on that scene in every aspect. The music included even more than usual. I needed to rely on you guys writing, directing, to kind of suss out what it is we needed to accomplish with the music in that scene. For one thing. And this is. I've certainly dealt with this on many other projects I've worked on, but it's maybe a first in all of my years of doing the Vince Gilligan oriented shows is that I was looking at a picture that wasn't what it was going to be. I'm looking at a picture of just a regular day full of folks driving down the highway in Albuquerque. There's nothing happening that relates to the story necessarily. I had to be explained to me. And a different thing that we're dealing with this show than in previous shows is that because we're recording orchestra and choir for this stuff, it has to be done a lot earlier and has to be planned earlier than we would have done maybe on our other shows. Which means that the VFX can't possibly catch up with where I need to be. So a little bit it's throwing a dart in the dark without you guys having. Explaining it to me. So we had a lot of discussions about that, for sure.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

How does it change your approach to the music, knowing that you're going to be. That you're writing for a live orchestra? How does it differ for you?

[B]

I mean, I don't think in terms of my creative process, it changes a whole lot, but it does change a lot in terms of the timing. There's a lot more planning that has to be involved. There's a lot of. We're doing just like you guys shoot multiple episodes, sometimes simultaneously or pieces from things. I have to think in blocks. So we were recording three episode blocks of the score.

[D]

Of the score, yeah.

[A]

With the living orchestra.

[B]

Yes. The very alive all over the world, too, right? Orchestra? Yeah. A few different places we got to work with in part just because these orchestras are busy. And sometimes you have to kind of, again, schedule so far in advance and figure all this stuff out. So, yeah, it was a lot of new work in our world and on our post team that we didn't have before. And very thankful for Diane and everybody on the post side of things for just thinking ahead and monitoring all that stuff and being able to have the time that we needed. As Vince always says, the blessings of time is the greatest gift we can have. And we were fortunate to have that enough. But it still took a lot of planning.

[D]

Can I ask you a quick question following up on that? Something that I've been curious about, your process in general, which is just you watch the episode when it's mostly locked, generally usually pretty close to locked, and you don't see it before that. And so the timing is what it is. We talk about it when you're getting into a scene and you've got emotional things that you want to hit and then things that you want to get out of the way for. Right. How do you even figure out the time signature? Because sometimes you're going to want to compose a piece, right? And you're going to want to have it have the flexibility to be like, you know, the rhythm hits at a certain point, or a beat hits at a certain point. But also then within the same thing, you may want something to not have that beat hitting at a certain point because it's going to hit with a. A car door slamming or something. And then there'll be a confusion as to what's the downbeat and what's the. How do you start that process for yourself? Where do you break it into pieces and then sort of stitch it back together?

[B]

And this is one of the huge benefits of working on a show like this. The way we've always worked, where I don't get involved with writing until the picture is close to where it's going to be. Finally, it's not going to shift seismically, hopefully when I start working, which is a great gift. And again, the gift of time, which isn't always true on a lot of projects that we work on. And the truth is these scenes have an inherent rhythm to them, always that starts with you guys, starts with the writing, starts on the script. And then there's so many decisions that get made down the line that have tempo inherent in them. The performances, how you guys shoot it and block it, and definitely how it's Cut. You'll find. I mean, I'm sure you guys know very well that almost every picture editor I know is big into music, and they're not musicians themselves, and there's just an innate timing that goes into it. So for me, when I start to write, my first goal is to find that timing and find that tempo. And in truth, sometimes it comes to me very quickly, and other times it takes a while, but I start with only a metronome at just a click that's just clicking away.

[A]

That blew my mind the first time you told me that. It's almost like you're like a detective and you're figuring out what each editor's BPM is and then turning it into a literal metronome.

[B]

Yeah. And I've worked with this group long enough that I know your tendencies, too. And I know what numbers in my head, like, where to start.

[A]

Temporal.

[B]

I have a sense of how you guys work. But for me, the art of film scoring differs from the art of making music in general in that it should be and is most powerful when it is most tailored to everything else, the picture and the performances and all the rest of it. And so finding that tempo, and it's usually a combination of tempos, and it's often a combination of meters. Right. Because if I need to get to that moment and have it land on a significant beat, that might require a bar of five.

[D]

Right, right, right, right.

[B]

To get there at the right tempo. If I'm not wildly changing tempos, which is harder to do, obviously, and less natural. Yeah. Honestly, that's a huge part of, I think, film scoring that maybe a lot of people who don't do the craft aren't aware of, but it is one of the most important parts.

[D]

That's so cool. Yep.

[C]

I have another question. Do you ever. When you're. Before you, like, get into the specific episodes, do you write different themes for different characters? Like, do you have, like, your thing about Carol, the character you know, you're seeing a couple episodes and, like, going forward in the season is there. Johnny was telling me what this word. Leitmotif.

[B]

Yeah, we've talked about that. And actually, we've employed that a little more in this series than we have in previous stuff that we've all worked on together. But the truth is, for me, anyways, in the medium of television, especially when people are watching multiple episodes back to back, probably a lot of the time, the theme thing can get real overdone real quick.

[C]

Oh, sure.

[B]

And it can be a little maudlin almost in a way. So there are plenty of shows that I've worked on and that are out there that rely on those themes, and they can be a powerful thing, especially if you're working on a show where, for example, your main character is who he or she is and appears, and you want to know that he appears right. And you have that sense, and there's an expectation and an understanding about what that person is or does. But in these kinds of shows, you guys are creating characters that are shifting and evolving so much all the time that in order to have, like, a leitmotif for Carolina, we'd have to be constantly evolving that leitmotif, which one could do. But it's such musical gymnastics to do that it would be distracting. Ultimately, I tend to work more often in palettes so that certain characters may have more orchestration that is unique to them or combinations of orchestration that is more unique to them as a kind of signal that we're in their. For example, minusos in our series, has a lot of brass, a lot of solo French horn, very noble, regal. It just works really nicely for him. Carol, because we see so much of her, has a lot of stuff. But in this particular episode, we do call back to Helen theme. Yes, exactly. Our Carolyn. I call it our Carol and Helen theme because it's really more than just Helen. It's really about them. The backbone of what happens to her in the first episode is so important foundationally. And you guys stressed that to me, and it made total sense that we worked for a while to get some music that was hopefully memorable enough that we could do a little snippet of it, as we do here, when she's in the bed and looking over right across the bed and there's nobody there. Just that little, hopefully haunting hint to remind us that Carol is absolutely always thinking about Helen.

[D]

Yeah. We say this in spotting a lot where it's like, just want to feel it but not hear it. You know what I mean? It's that small line of where you're trying to do that. You'd want to make the audience feel something and not know why they're feeling it. And then you just breathe on it, and then it fills in the emotion without necessarily thinking like you were saying with other shows, where it's like, okay, there's a. There's a sting there. Oh, it's scary. Or, ooh, it's this. Your brain doesn't record that you've heard a song there or a piece of music that did something to them. You just think you Felt something which is great.

[A]

You know, score is one of the types of music. The other type of music is the music we get coming from Thomas and Olivia and the team at Super Music Vision. Also, sometimes our directors will suggest music, and that music will also help inform the edit. One of them being in the teaser, the Exodus. It was something that Gordon Yu had suggested.

[D]

Yes, I did. That was one where I was just like. It was even more just temping it in, but it worked pretty well to do it. So I think it's a Deo Grazia.

[A]

Paul Van Neville.

[B]

Paul Van Neville would be the conductor, right? Yeah. So the composer, Johan Ockenham.

[A]

And it's called Deo Deo Grazia.

[D]

And so the sound of 36 voices and the.

[A]

Yeah, I just know those things off the top of my head, they're not written down.

[D]

It's a canon from the later medieval period. And it's the tease. The. The thing that I liked about it that felt appropriate for sort of being in the other's head, in a sense, is the T's kind of are meant to emulate the wing beats of the angels, right? Because as they start to overlap, you get a little T and you can hear them hitting. You can hear the vocalists hitting them pretty hard in a certain way. So it felt like something that was shot as sort of soaring and lifting. And I don't know. It was a piece that I liked. And I was like, let's put something in here so that when we're delivering this as a piece to gauge so that Vince can watch it, that you could understand something. That would be the feeling. And I wasn't sure that it would stick. I was just like. It felt like you were hearing the plodding shuffling of feet otherwise. And it's like, that's not the feeling you want to have. And you'd focus on the kind of horror of that moment. And I wanted to save the kind of horror of the moment for when Carol sees it. So it was trying to kind of come up with something that would play counterpoint to.

[B]

Works so well in that. For two reasons. For me, obviously, the nature of a canon is that it's cyclical. It's cycling around and around. Right. Which works so well. And it works. I'll speak here for our music editor, Jason Newman and Thomas Golovich, who worked hard to craft the piece together a little bit in a way that helped it build as your shots build. Right. And so it kind of develops in size and scale, which helps emphasize all of those things that I Know you were trying to go for.

[D]

For sure. Because in the end, the great thing about a canon is that it's cyclical. The bad thing about a canon is it's. And so it gets flat at a certain point. And we didn't want it to get flat. We wanted it to keep moving. And you can only ride the volume so hard to, like, make it build. So, yeah, we had to do that. And then.

[B]

And of course, we're using vocals significantly in our licensed music and in our score because it's such an amazingly obvious but powerful way to humanize our others, to blur that world. Right.

[A]

If I may, another cue that we had was the. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. Krongbin.

[D]

Krong Bin. Yeah.

[A]

And that was for the. The montage of, you know, setting out the pavers, basically covering up to protect Helen's grave from these.

[D]

From the bloody wolves.

[A]

Do you want to talk about putting that montage together? Shooting it, editing it?

[D]

Why don't we. Joey, why don't you talk about. Because I didn't. I had nothing to do. I think Thomas provided options. And that one, I don't think anybody ever said anything other than, yeah, let's just do this.

[F]

Yeah. Croombin was the. That song is called A Calf Born in Winter. That particular piece was provided in the 103. Oh, yeah, the 103 sprouts montage.

[A]

The bin that keeps on giving.

[F]

The bin that keeps on giving.

[A]

There are, like, 20 cues in there, and we found places for a lot of them in other episodes.

[F]

Absolutely. As soon as we laid it down, I was like, oh, this is perfect. This is great. Yeah, it gets a tone and everything. So we always cut to stuff. At least for me, I always cut to the song and it seemed perfect and it didn't change.

[A]

No, that brings up something. And we've talked about it, certainly on Better Call Saul, but I don't know that we've mentioned it on this podcast, Pluribus, that unlike a lot of different shows or movies, we don't use temp score. Like, the music that Dave is creating is coming out of entirely his brain and his soul and conversations that he has with Vince and the entire team. And, yeah, we provide these sequences dry, usually. Yes. Dry is the term that we use when something doesn't have music. However, like you're saying, for these montages, it's essential to cut them to some kind of music and to present them with some kind of music, even if that music isn't what ends up being the piece that is used. And sometimes that happens for a variety of reasons. We can't get the rights or it's way too expensive, or Thomas will present options. And sometimes. Wow, he just came up with something that works even better. But this piece, this lived from the editor's cut all the way through.

[F]

All the way through. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[F]

And the thing with Thomas, he always provides a variety of cues.

[A]

Yeah. It's an embarrassment of riches.

[D]

You know, there's times, obviously, when Dave, you give us cues and we're like, oh, my God, this cue is so beautiful and it's so great. I don't think we want it here. And then we'll be like, can we use it someplace else? Can we figure out. It's so hard because you're like, oh, I love it. But now we need to figure out something else to do with it or something. You know, it's like, it's always a negotiation.

[A]

But what was it like putting that montage together? The getting of the pavers building that grave, and then Rhae Sehorn really had to carry all those super heavy pavers.

[B]

I was going to ask that. Yeah.

[D]

Yes, yes. Ariel, was Rhae Seehorn carrying a ton of super heavy pavers through that entire sequence?

[C]

No.

[A]

Everything in Hollywood is good.

[C]

She would have.

[D]

She would have.

[C]

She absolutely would have.

[D]

Some of way more than I thought she would. She insisted on some. That we had a series of sort of lighter stunt pavers. And we even had her stunt double standing by to try and do some so that Rey could take a break because it was July in Albuquerque doing this. So it was hot.

[C]

So hot.

[D]

Very hot through all of it.

[F]

And it was a time lapse and then.

[D]

Time.

[F]

Yeah, yeah. Well, for the caving part, yeah, I.

[D]

Think it worked out okay. But it's like I had a bunch of other shots that we were like, okay, well, we were running out of time. And so it was like, okay, we can get through a lot of this in a time lapse. And we were also. We were trying to wait for the end of day to get the sun in the right place to do the final shot of the sequence, as you.

[A]

Called it, the well of Souls shot.

[D]

Yes. Because Indiana Jones, there's a thing that happens on set where you start, especially if there's a specialty shot or something like that, or at least it has happened to me, where everyone starts referring to something just for ease of knowing what you're talking about. It's like, okay, we have to prep for the well of Shoals. Okay, they're going to be Working on I Am Cuba. And they're going to be working on this. And it would be like. It sounds like gibberish, except the people that are actually aware it's just shorthand. And you're like, I know exactly the shot. You're. So the well of Souls. There's the big shot in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is the sun going down as Indy is supervising digging out the well of Souls, where he thinks Ark of the Covenant, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I'm like, this would be a great ending. And I saw that the sun was setting in a decent spot for us to do it. And so I talked to Paul and he's like, okay, we need to do it at this time. We'll get it on a very long lens, but we need to get this far away from it. We had to fake it, drive the car way out into the hinterlands to set it right where the sun was gonna be.

[F]

It was a beautiful shot.

[C]

Yeah, it was such a beautiful shot. I was surprised at how it looked so buggy.

[A]

Yeah, so.

[C]

But I don't recall it feeling that buggy outside, but it's gorgeous. And I feel like it's additive to this shot, too.

[D]

I mean, it's. The trouble of the shot is that it's. Of course, we're 100, 200 yards away, I think. And so you have all the bugs. The lens sees all the bugs of those 200 yards in that one shot all at once.

[B]

But so for me. So someone who's mostly in the post world, when you're doing, like, a series of shots like that, how much of that is talked about in the writer's room and how much of it is kind of created on the fly? Like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if Rey lifted this stone and put it here? I mean, how specific do you guys get? Or does it vary greatly from.

[D]

I think it varies. It depends on the montage. I would say definitely earlier in my career, I underscripted some montages and was like, well, the director will figure this out. And when you do that, it's true, they can. But you have so little time as a director, you have so little time to visualize that suddenly you're just going to be able to try and get the minimum number of things that are suggested in that script. So if you can, and you make sure that this is the pacing, this is the mood, a little bit of something for the director to work on some shots that you can kind of base it around and then go from there and Hope.

[C]

Yeah. No, I think, yeah, there are definitely montages that I know we've done on, like, Better Call Saul, where it's like, the montages, you know, Jimmy gets fired from Davis in Maine. There's a lot going on, and you're really kind of going from character in one location to another. But with this, I think this was a little bit simpler because this was a montage of Carol working harder, not smarter, and, you know, putting pavers down over her wife's grave because just dirt wasn't enough. And I think it was scripted pretty simply, which was just, you know, she painstakingly, one brick after another, feeling the pain, feeling the hurt in her body and her soul covering the ground so that no one would ever disturb Helen again.

[F]

She goes through such a wave of emotions.

[A]

Yeah, it's a really beautiful scene, which.

[D]

I do think sometimes you need the process to be scripted, but I think you want people to read it and feel what you're supposed to feel. And if you just broke down the process, you're gonna feel process. And when you. I think the way you scripted it is the right way to go here, because it's like you want to tell the director, this is what I need you to feel. I don't care about what images are here. I just need you to feel this when we're done. And so that was, like, the guiding point that I could take from the script and say, all right, well, I don't want this to feel rough and ugly. You want to emphasize that it's work, but that it's a labor of absolute love.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

That she is pouring her heart all over that grave. And that's kind of why the music fits in so well. It's like, you don't want it. There is a version of it that's, like, about how awful it is and how her hands hurt and her pain. And it's like, I think you kind of wanted to feel what you just said, like, the sadness of this moment, that she just has to do this. And it's also like, God, the size of that thing. It's like she basically lays a dance floor in her backyard. It's way bigger. It is an extravagant amount of protection that she is like, this will never happen. There will be nothing will take this.

[A]

She's thorough. I like it.

[C]

She's so thorough.

[A]

I want to talk about something else you wrote into the script, and that is such a crucial part of this episode, which are the drones. Drones. And we've talked about drones elsewhere in the podcast. As far as Using them, you know, different affinities for, you know, seeing drones in real life. But the drones are part of the story. And the drone even does some of the best, like comedic acting.

[E]

The.

[A]

The timing. Can we. Can you talk about that? I mean, a. Yeah, the. The drone actually picking up stuff from Carol, but also the drone attempting to pick up the trash and then ailing spectacularly. Yeah, because the trash bag is too heavy.

[D]

It is too heavy.

[A]

Can you talk about doing that?

[D]

I mean, that's.

[A]

That's incredible. And just to be clear, that's real. That's a real drone being operated by a drone operator. Really Holding a real bag of garbage and actually destroying itself on that pole. That's not digital trickery at all.

[D]

We're probably the only show currently using drones in the business that actually included the drones in the footage.

[C]

Drone actors.

[D]

So who had drone actors?

[A]

One drone actor was harmed in the making.

[D]

One drone actor. That was a testament to our crew. Dragonfly. That's louder.

[A]

Shouted out on this podcast.

[D]

Yeah. Who did a great job. And we had a bunch of drones. They perform very much the role of surrogates for the joined people. And I feel like they have the level of, like, they're very smooth, but also very comedic and very earnest. The drones have a character to them. I feel like in their performance, they're really going to try and get the garbage out.

[A]

Well, something we talked about on the mix stage too, was because our sound team is just extraordinary, but they had given it so much heft. They had really like an incredible sounding drone. And I remember that we had them scale that back to more of the production sound to make it sound less sophisticated. It's somewhere between a consumer drone and a professional drone. It's not like a military drone.

[D]

Right, right, right.

[A]

It's not, you know, it's not a raptor.

[D]

It's not a high end. You could buy them. They're expensive.

[A]

Yeah, it does make that sound. The high worring. Yeah, the terrible sound. But it's just perfect for the.

[D]

But I. And I think this is, you know, think we had in the room. We had a. We had. The sequence was slightly more complicated and we. We shot it. But then it was like. Even on the day. I remember when we were looking at it, I felt like I don't know how all of this is going to fit together. You have these ideas that are. We want to make sure that things are moving and are funny and are doing what they want to do in the writer's room. And then you're trying to figure out how to do it on the day. And I think that was one where it would have taken us another full day of shooting, I think to get the gag that we had in mind done.

[A]

Of it almost hitting Carol.

[D]

Of it almost hitting Carol.

[B]

Yeah.

[F]

It was like 17 takes, and none of them were quite right.

[D]

It wasn't quite right, but hopefully you feel like we don't miss it.

[C]

No, it works out. It plays perfectly. The idea was just the others are. They're perfect. They, you know, they're the best, most talented drone operators in the world. And, you know, they want to pick up Carol's trash because they want to make her happy. And, you know, how. How do we crash a drone and have it be Carol's fault? It's totally, you know, and. And to add a little bit of humor in there. And I think, you know, initially it was, I think, supposed to, like, almost hit her and then hit a tree.

[D]

There were a ton of things, but.

[C]

We didn't know what Carol's house was going to look like yet. And I think that. I mean, the way it plays and the way it wraps around the light post is perfect. It's. Yeah, Yeah.

[D]

I think originally it was supposed to be a tree, but the trees weren't big enough.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Because we basically built that place from scratch. And when we saw the drones, it was like this drone would cut that tree in half. So we were trying to figure out, like, how to do it. I know we're running out of time. One thing I wanted to say. We've talked a lot about the non dialogue, but there's one line in this script that you put in, and I love it more and more every time we've heard it, which is when Carol's giving her speech and she tests the ph. I absolutely love this, because, of course, that's science. And she tests the pH and she says it's neutral. Well, and it's just such a small pun, but it's basically neutral.

[A]

It's like, yes, I love that she's triumphantly presenting nothing. Basically, she's learned very little, but she's clutching at straws. We've also. We've been given the signal we have to wrap up. But I do want to say we got to have a little bit of wolf talk. Wolf talk. That is how wolves talk. And that is the podcast. Everybody. No. Or are they wolves? What are they?

[C]

They're wolf dogs.

[A]

Wolf dogs.

[C]

Shout out to Rip, Kaya, Ricky, Koda, and Cora. I was on set, and I was like, we're going to want to know their names.

[D]

Thank you.

[C]

You're welcome.

[A]

Did you know their names?

[F]

I knew Ricky.

[A]

Ricky. Yeah. I remember you talking Ricky Stockton. I remember you talking about the.

[C]

Ricky's a stocking.

[D]

Ricky. Ricky.

[F]

Ricky.

[D]

A lot of that from people.

[C]

Excellent wolf acting.

[A]

Was that based on anything in particular? Story wise? It just seems like there's a real animus against wolves and I just wanted to know if it came from anywhere.

[D]

Animus? Oh no. The wolves are hungry and they smelled food and they smelled Carol's food first. So she brought them there and then, then they smelled Helen, who in a sense is food at this point and went to digging her up. So it's really all Carol's fault. I don't remember which wolf. Joey had to do quite a bit of compositing because while they are not wolves, they are wolf dogs. So they were not dog. Like in terms of training they're great. I love their actors. Our animal trainers were fantastic. But they're like, look, they're going to do certain things. You're going to get a certain performance once maybe.

[A]

And those wolves were accompanied by kind of an epic wolf score. Like a real danger cue that Dave did.

[B]

Yeah, we got to do some good fun action stuff there. Although you know, as all of the things that we do, I mean the action is just the initial layer of what's going on. Right. There's a lot more that we're learning there about Carol and about how she's been affected by everything and where her state of mind. So yeah, balancing those two things. But super fun. And obviously the big triumphant crash at the end. Yes, it looks so great and it was so fun to do but that.

[D]

Was definitely a spot in spotting where we went. Can you help us? We did the best we could to make it feel propulsive but it's something that felt a little flat until we got the score in and like Dave and you're like, yeah, I know, I'll.

[B]

Do what I can. Yeah. It's a complicated piece because we're trying to write a lot of fast, propulsive stuff. Interesting sort of tidbit is that usually the orchestras that I get to work with and I'm blessed to work with on this show are so good that they sight read everything when we play it. They've never seen this stuff before but they always at the beginning of a session you'll catch them looking through the pages for whatever might be the toughest.

[E]

Right.

[B]

And so when they were doing their tuning and their warming up at the beginning of the session for this one, I heard a lot of them practicing the runs that are in this because they're trickier than normal.

[D]

Yeah. But the wolfs take a village to make that play. And they were so sweet, actually, because the trainers are very clear both to not overstimulate the animals and to make sure that they're safe and all of that, and that the crew is safe from the animals. They're like, nobody talk to the wolves. I know you're going to want to go pet them because they're such good boys. Don't nobody go near the wolves. And then when we wrapped, it was like, okay, if you want to go say hi to the wolves. And everyone's like, doggy, Hi, buddy. Oh, hello, buddy. And they were just very sweet and, like, tongues lolling out and, you know, people were giving them treats and all of that, so.

[A]

And thus concludes Wolf Talk. I love this episode. And, you know, I love that you go out on this gasp as Carol looks at something and then throws to that awesome song, which is called Blues by Nina Becker and Marcelo Cayado. It's a great piece of music that I absolutely love, and I urge you to seek it out. Cause it's fantastic and you heard it in the episode. Thank you all for coming on the show. This is really fun.

[C]

Yeah. Thanks for having us.

[D]

Thank you.

[A]

All right, thank you so much to Dave Porter, Joey Liu, Arielle Levine and Gordon Smith. And thank you for listening to Pluribus, the official podcast, an Apple TV podcast produced by High Bridge Productions and Sony Pictures Television. Be sure to follow on Apple Podcasts to get the next episode in your feed, including those bonus episodes. And watch Pluribus on Apple TV where available. Our editor and mixer is Nicholas Tsai. Theme music by Dave Porter. Associate producers are Alana Hoffman, Justin Verbeeste and Nicholas Tsai. Executive producers are Jen Carroll and me. Your host, Chris McCaleb. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.