Making ‘Hello Tomorrow!’s Remarkable Retro-Futuristic Sound – with Mary Ellen Porto & Daniel Brennan

Apple TV+ retro-futuristic dramedy Hello Tomorrow! delivers on all the technology civilization was promised in the 'future' – moon habitats, jet packs, automated everything from handscrubbers to dog-walkers, hover cars, video phones, automat-style martini makers that fit in the back of your limousine…Here, supervising sound editor Mary Ellen Porto and sound designer/re-recording mixer Daniel Brennan talk about creating custom sound for all that wonderful retro-futuristic tech, mixing a 15-minute long rocket landing sequence in Dolby Atmos, designing robot vocals that sound like analog tape-loops, and so much more!

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Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Apple TV+

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Sci-fi sounds are subjective since you’re creating a sound for something that’s doesn’t exist in reality. Understanding the showrunner’s tastes is essential for getting it right. Is it ‘around the corner tech’ like in Black Mirror? Is beepy and boppy like Star Wars? Is it pulse-y and whooshy like Star Trek? Is ultra-sleek soft servo sounds like Ex Machina? Sometimes understanding what the showrunner’s don’t like can help you find the path to what they do like.

That’s the approach that Emmy-winning supervising sound editor Mary Ellen Porto and sound designer/re-recording mixer Daniel Brennan took with showrunners Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen on Apple TV+ series Hello Tomorrow!, which is set in an alternate ’50s past where space-age technology is a staple of everyday life. Think jet packs and hover cars, regular flights to the moon, video phones, bot servants, unmanned delivery trucks, and all those things The Jetsons promised us.

Here, Porto and Brennan talk about creating those wonderful retro-futuristic sounds for everyday devices and gadgets in the show, how buttons and switches from old video equipment contributed to the sound of the command center console from which rockets are launched and landed, how they created a feeling of analog tape-style voice reproduction for the bots, how they created the sound of the hover engine so it was scalable for big cars to small bots and playable so the hover would match the acceleration and deceleration of an object as it moved in and out of frame, how they made ambiences that incorporated all these tech sounds, how they utilized the Dolby Home Atmos surround field to mix dialogue and music into a 15-minute long rocket landing sequence, and so much more!

Hello Tomorrow! — Official Trailer | Apple TV+

When you started on the show, did the showrunners (Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen) have any references for how they wanted this show to sound (or for how they DIDN’T want it to sound)? What was their direction for sound on the show?

Sound designer/re-recording mixer Dan Brennan

Dan Brennan (DB): I think ‘didn’t’ is a good place to start with them. When we first started, we were exploring what it would sound like, Amit and Lucas had an idea in their head and we were just trying to get there. They were pretty adamant that it’s not traditional sci-fi. It wasn’t Star Wars; it’s not Star Trek. It’s not shiny; it’s not new. Everything was very analog, very real in the world.

Sound Supervisor Mary Ellen Porto

Mary Ellen Porto (MP): They wanted the sound of old machinery and for things to feel old. Even though all this stuff could get to the moon and back, it still had to feel old and like it’s from the ’50s, basically. A lot of buttons and switches we used were really old. And even the bots themselves, though they could float so beautifully, he didn’t want them to have an R2D2 quality or anything. It had to just be these metal things moving along. So, it was actually really fun in that regard.
 

As I was watching the show, I thought that it sounded like a ‘calm tech’ version of The Jetsons. The sounds weren’t obtrusive; they were present in the sonic space but also mellow…

DB: The Jetsons, yes. One of the early design pieces I worked with them on was for the floating/hovering tech that drives the bots, cars, and other gadgets like the dog-walker and baby carriage. That was a big thing because there’s a little bit of narrative happening behind the scenes. They don’t really say why that tech exists within the world, but it exists.

And so for the sound design, we wanted it to be consistent to a degree, so that whatever tech is in the cars, making them hover, is also somewhat represented in the robots.

…whatever tech is in the cars, making them hover, is also somewhat represented in the robots.

I couldn’t help but draw a little bit of a Jetsons parallel to the cars. I definitely had a little bit of that in my head. The Jetsons cartoon had this really bubbly and round sound to it. I felt like there was something to that and knew that I wanted our hover sound to be a little bit higher in pitch and not a growly engine sound.

Since the bots are around all the time, it had to be a sound that could sit in the world, but also didn’t get annoying. It couldn’t distract from the narrative of the show. Also, you’d imagine that whoever created the bots in this world would have come up with some way to make them sound more pleasing since they were going to be hanging around, serving you drinks and opening the door for you.
 

The first episode is an introduction into this 1950’s ‘space-age’ world, like the hover cars and robot waitresses you mentioned. Can you talk about how you created the sound for these, and how you scaled the tech for the cars to fit the bots?

DB: That was a big piece that I went back and forth with Amit and Lucas on; it depended on where they were going to land in terms of design and editorial, but I wanted some core ideas that I could hand to Mary Ellen and Alison Gregory, sound effects editor. They were going to cut sounds for the other episodes and I knew I couldn’t just give them some static sound effects because the cars are always doing different things. The bots are always moving, coming in and out of scenes. I wanted them to be more dynamic, yet I wanted this consistent vocabulary, too.

I couldn’t just give them some static sound effects because the cars are always doing different things. The bots are always moving, coming in and out of scenes.

I went through a few different processes and landed on a synthesis plugin that Boom Library makes, called Turbine. That actually models turbine engines (mainly jets). That had the right kind of float sound – it had a great hum and whirl to it. I think I used the plugin not really how it’s meant to be used, but if I really tweaked the settings to extreme settings it worked really well. I did a couple of layers. So every engine has two or three layers of hum and whirl from the Turbine plugin in there.

The bots are all built on that same concept with some similar engine design. So it’s all modeled. Then through automation, we were driving the engines in real time through every scene. So every time the car came on screen, we would map an acceleration pass. Or, a bot was floating in, so the engine would rev up, and rev down. But that gave us enough control so that no matter what the scene was or how long it was, we weren’t stuck looping the same sounds. It was a little bit more dynamic. We could shift it a little bit to fit the bigger, bulkier bots you see a lot, or scale it down to fit the smaller bots, like the dog-walking bot.

I…landed on a synthesis plugin that Boom Library makes, called Turbine. That actually models turbine engines (mainly jets).

There’s also the ‘File Pal’ that comes in later, which has a few more sonic pieces but his core float sound is the same consistent color as the other bots and cars.

The cars are built in a similar way, just on a bigger scale. So the world has a consistent tone to the engines. They just scale up and down, depending visually on what’s going on.

It’s ultimately a mix of what we were able to pull out of the Turbine plugin, with a lot of processing on top of that. There are a lot of layers on top of each element as well. I did the initial engine designs and the float mechanic, but then Mary Ellen and Alison created unique layers for each bot.

MP: Dan created a great base for Alison and me to work with, but we wanted the bots to sound older, so I recorded a ton of metal movements. I have this old screwdriver that cranks, and I would crank that against a lamp to get metal movement sounds.

I wanted the bot’s body to have a very subtle, trashcan feel almost, on top of the engine sound.

I wanted the bot’s body to have a very subtle, trashcan feel almost, on top of the engine sound. So I landed on something close to that and then literally used a trashcan IR on it to create it as part of Dan’s engine.

Josh Tobin did the voices for the bots, and they were just brilliant. There was so much good stuff to use and we would sit there in the mix debating how sentient the bots should be.

There are also so many different bots, like the Bingo bot in the nursing home. The foley artists and I recorded a bunch of ping pong balls and then I used popcorn popper sounds to get that going. There was the Crooner bot at the gala that had an old record player playing inside. So the bots all had this great consistency, but also each bot had a lot of personality. That was really fun to create.
 

What did you use for the vocal processing on the robots? How did you achieve that sense of mechanical sound reproduction in a way that kept dialogue clarity?

DB: That definitely required a little trial and error upfront to figure out. At first, the question was just narratively how do these bots work? And what do they feel like? As Mary Ellen said, Josh did such a great job on his performance. He gave us tons of material. We have some hysterical outtakes that we wish we could have put in. His performance was so good.

They’re more human, so maybe it’s a cassette player-type device inside.

And then we had to figure out how it should sound: it can’t be too robotic, but it can’t be Siri. It can’t be a digital AI because that’s not the world we’re in. So we thought that maybe these are prerecorded voices. They’re more human, so maybe it’s a cassette player-type device inside. It’s that kind of analog technology level, so we played with that. There’s a little bit of noise that we added in so it felt more like tape. I wanted it to feel a little bit more robotic though, to have a little bit of future to it. So I did some processing through Celemony’s Melodyne and resynthesized parts of it. It’s coming out of this small speaker, so there’s some speaker EQ. Then it was run through Audio Ease’s Altiverb, through a convolution reverb for a tin can, which gives us this metallic kind of resonance as if the speaker is inside this metal body.

Then during the mix, I had a combo of both a heavily processed version and also a clean signal on top, this way, depending on the line and where it was sitting, I could dial it in a little bit if it needed to be more present, if it was pushing plot or pushing story. Oftentimes, the bots were just in the background too, saying things like, “Can I help you with your car today?” or “Oh, let me get a drink for you.” So we’d play that a little bit more processed, so you feel the texture more so than worrying about the intelligibility.

In Ep. 6 “The Numbers Behind the Numbers,” there’s a scene in which Jack intentionally gets his tie stuck in the automatic hand scrubber. How did you make that auto hand-scrubber sound?

DB: I’m glad you asked about that! Mary Ellen and I were just remembering some of our favorite moments, and that was definitely one of them. Mary Ellen did a ton of sound for that.

I wound up using the sound of dental suctioning. Then I gave it to Dan and he made the sound fit the machinery.

MP: That one was funny. Alison and I were able to figure out the mechanics of it pretty quickly – the sound of it turning on – and then I cut all the water to flow from that.

But the one thing I was really missing was the sound for when it pulled Jack in. I had all the cranking sounds, but I still felt like I was missing the sound for something sucking him in. I wound up using the sound of dental suctioning. Then I gave it to Dan and he made the sound fit the machinery. It worked really well because it had the water element, and it also had this sucking element that was pulling his tie right in. It was actually really fun to design that.

For all these things that Amit and Lucas created, they gave us leeway to come up with the sound.

For all these things that Amit and Lucas created, they gave us leeway to come up with the sound. They were great because they knew what they wanted, but it was so much fun because they let us just present whatever we wanted in a way – always understanding what they were going for, of course. So it was so fun to come up with stuff because there were no strict guidelines, like this is a car engine and it’s a V6 so you can’t put in a V4 or a V8. It was really fun to have that freedom.

DB: That’s such a rare thing for us, to get a show where we get to design so much material that doesn’t have a real-world counterpart. We didn’t have to wonder, ‘Is that the correct sound?’ It was just a direction of, ‘Here is what we wanted it to feel like.’

For instance, in that scene with the automatic hand washer, that hand washer towards the end sounds terrifying. It starts off kind of normal, but then as it pulls Jack in, there’s this awesome grinding gear stuff and then it feels really intense.

Did you do any other custom recording for the show, in addition to the hand-cranked screwdriver?

MP: I did a lot of custom recording for small things. For instance, for some of the bot arm movements, I used a Makita drill (but any mechanical drill works), and I would run that at different speeds and different torque. So I used a combination of those recordings.

One sound library I do love is from Boom. Their library Mechanicals is all clicks and mechanical parts, which was really cool to have.

I have all this old video equipment and switchers…we used a lot of those in Walt’s office just to get that old clunky sound.

For Walt’s office, where he launches the rockets, I have all this old video equipment and switchers. Every time we get rid of old electronics, I record all the different switches on it. So a lot of them are from the ’70s and ’80s, and we used a lot of those in Walt’s office just to get that old clunky sound.

For the File Pal bot, when he gets stomped to ‘death’ at the end, Lucas wanted to have the sound of the bot’s innards being crushed. He randomly said that it’s like an umbrella being crushed. So we went off and recorded ourselves stomping an umbrella senseless, and it worked really well.

DB: One of my favorite custom builds is the vocabulary, the beeps, for the File Pal. He’s his own little robot. He kind of lives outside of the sonic world of the other bots. They wanted him to have his own vocabulary because he was much more of Costopoulos’s pet so he needs a bit more emotion.

One of my favorite custom builds is the vocabulary, the beeps, for the File Pal.

He doesn’t speak; he communicates with Costopoulos through these confirmation beeps. But, it couldn’t feel like R2D2. It’s really hard to go for a bot design that doesn’t feel like you’re referencing the amazing work done in Star Wars and all these other great sci-fi projects because it’s such a known vocabulary.

I actually ended up using a stylophone; it’s a miniature analog electronic keyboard that’s originally from the ’60s.

I actually ended up using a stylophone; it’s a miniature analog electronic keyboard that’s originally from the ’60s. I built a patch on that, which has this kind of broken, analog sound. It’s very imprecise, but it’s got a really neat tone to it. So, I built some patches out of that to create a few options for his little vocabulary, for his confirmation and question beeps.

I went through a few different variations with the guys, trying to figure out what the File Bot sounds like. He needed to be cute enough that you cared about him, but he couldn’t be BB-8. He needed to be his own character in this world.

You had mentioned Walt’s office, his ‘command center’ where he launches the rocketships. I loved all those analog sounds, all the buttons and switches…

MP: Alison did a really great job with backgrounds there, and throughout the show. For Walt’s office, there is always humming and other sounds from the different machines, and for Costopoulos’s office she created amazing machinery for his interrogation of Joey. Then for the office background itself, she integrated a lot of the things that Dan had designed such as the video phones ringing on top of a DMV-type background she created.

Alison took that stuff and built it into the backgrounds. So now those sounds weren’t just highlighted when you saw those things; they were existing in the world…

DB: Once we established sounds for the VidComms that have a specific ring and the hover cars that have their sound, Alison took that stuff and built it into the backgrounds. So now those sounds weren’t just highlighted when you saw those things; they were existing in the world and so it felt like part of the world.

Even when we’re at the motel, there’s some distant traffic but it’s not car-bys, it’s hover car-bys. We were keeping that world alive. And when we’re in Costopoulos’s office, there are VidComms ringing in the background. There are other familiar sounds, like some old dot-matrix printers but there are also some custom pieces of our Hello Tomorrow! world that gets dropped in because that’s just how that world sounds.

In terms of dialogue, what was the most challenging location or episode? Why?

DB: The production sound mixer, Scott Breindel, did an excellent job on the show. The production audio was really solid throughout, which was a gift going in.

I’d say the most challenging episode was Ep. 8, because that’s when the rocket lands. There’s a giant wind machine going…

MP: …and we did ADR with Jack wearing the helmet he has on in that scene. The prop costume department gave us that mask so that Billy Crudup could record a line of ADR for when he’s standing on the gantry.

DB: It matched it great. It worked really well.

Trying to get all the rocket sounds and the music and the dialogue to cut through was tough.

That scene was challenging because Jack and Buck are up there and they’re both yelling over the rocket that’s landing. That whole sequence was a complicated mix, because that rocket lands for 10 or 15 minutes across the episode, slowly coming in, and so we’re slowly building the rocket the whole time as it hits the climax of them up on the gantry, screaming at each other over this rocket landing on their heads. Trying to get all the rocket sounds and the music and the dialogue to cut through was tough. It’s a lot of pieces.

MP: But there’s very little ADR in the show. It’s mostly additional lines or enhancing the background voices. For Ep. 10, most of the principal actors came in and filled in the background voices. In all of those crowd scenes, you see them but don’t hear them, so we needed to record them.

But it was really well recorded overall and there was very little ADR for technical reasons.

Was this mixed in Dolby Home Atmos? And if so, how were you able to take advantage of that surround field?

DB: Yes, it was mixed in native Atmos. There are two elements that live well in Atmos in the show. First was Mark Mothersbaugh’s score. What he sent me worked great for spreading around the room. The instrumentation is so cool; he’s got all these cool synth parts in it and being able to spread that around the space was really great.

It really helps it feel a little bigger than a traditional TV show when we get to use that expansive sound.

The second aspect was the big rocket stuff, and Ep. 8 was probably the best example of that. I got to split the guys on the gantry, and put the rocket overhead (it’s so much fun to be able to use the overheads). I was able to give that a sense of space. Oftentimes, we’re just in the Vista Hotel and there’s a little bit of space to play with but the core of the action is just with the characters, who were amazing on the show, but the sound is anchored to the screen.

There’s not a lot for me to wrap and play with, so those moments where we get to do that, like the rockets landing or even the takeoff at the end, it’s cool to use the Atmos surround space. It really helps it feel a little bigger than a traditional TV show when we get to use that expansive sound.
 

How has working on Hello Tomorrow! been a unique experience for you, in terms of your sound work on the show?

MP: It was fun being able to be so creative and not have to cut sound for ‘known’ things. I really like weird machinery and coming up with sounds for it. I had worked on another show a couple of years ago where I had to come up with the sound for a ‘brain machine’ and stuff like that. I love it when I’m just allowed to be creative like that, when the showrunners say, ‘We created this so make the sound you want.’

I really like weird machinery and coming up with sounds for it.

The two showrunners were just incredibly fun to work with. You could tell even when the actors came in for ADR, everybody was just so happy to be there. They would do anything you asked. Across the board, there was a lot of real excitement for the show, and it came out in more than just the sound. Even with the costumes and the props, everything was so meticulous and it allowed for so much creativity. We don’t always get to do work like that.

DB: I second a lot of what Mary Ellen said. Working with Amit and Lucas was fantastic. They gave such good direction. And it’s a gift for us to get to be a bit more creative. You’re always working to help the story, but we got to put a little bit more of ourselves into it because there were sounds that didn’t exist.

It was such a fun show because every episode has something new. There was always some new device or gadget.

It was such a fun show because every episode has something new. There was always some new device or gadget. Like, one episode introduces the hologram table. I remember talking to Amit about it, and he said to think of it like 12 tiny projectors around this table. There’s another episode where Costopoulos’s car shows up and it’s this awesome, tiny, old Isetts design. It’s so cool. Then in the next show, the File Bot dies, so what’s this piece going to sound like? Or Jack makes a call on the VidComm for the first time and we’ve never actually heard the VidComm before; we haven’t heard it ring. We’ve never actually heard someone make an outgoing call. So what does that even sound like?

It was a fun challenge every day where we just got to flesh out the world more and more, just to push those pieces. It’s so much fun to be that creative, and the guys were so down. They would often give us direction, give us their idea, but we presented all sorts of stuff to them, and some of it would land. If not, we’d go in a different direction or we’d combine ideas together. It was a really fun, collaborative process.

In the end, it’s a really unique-sounding world. As a big sci-fi fan, it was really fun to make a sci-fi world that had its own color, its own vibe to it. I’m such a fan of the show too, of the writing, and the Art Department just killed it. The bots are so cool – they’re not CG, they’re practical puppets. Designing for that was more fun because everything was more tactile. It was more real. Everything looked so cool. All the costuming was amazing. It’s fun to get something that obviously had so much love going into it.

A big thanks to Mary Ellen Porto and Dan Brennan for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Hello Tomorrow! and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

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