NEW YORK CITY — In the WE tv reality show Love After Lockup, couples risk everything to meet their felon fiancés at release and face all the shocking firsts that come after lockup. Is their love strong enough to get them down the aisle, or was all just a con?
Mixer/sound designer Justin Kaupp of audio post house Pomann Sound (
https://pomannsound.com) has mixed close to 200 episodes of the show, which is now in its fourth season, including the spin-offs
Life After Lockup and
Love During Lockup, and a bunch of one-off specials.
“Since we've been working together for so long, I’ve developed a really good relationship with the producers of the show,” Kaupp explains. “Oftentimes, it's a very collaborative project, where they let me make creative decisions.”
The engineer relies heavily on Izotope RX software to repair noisy and glitchy audio, as production shoots are often chaotic and impromptu. Location audio will sometimes include mic drop-outs, and can come from any number of sources, including cameras, GoPros and iPhones. The show also revolves around couples in different parts of the country, so the teams capturing location audio vary too. On top of that, shoots can take place months or even years apart, using different mics and recorders.
“Another fun aspect of the show is that we often have to disguise audio from police, corrections officers, etc., because it revolves around inmates/ex-cons,” Kaupp explains. “I like to use Sound Toys’ Little Alterboy to distort and disguise voices. I like it better than just standard pitch shifting, because you can alter the (shape) of a voice.”
Love After Lockup is one of WE tv’s most-watched shows and has a large fan base and online following.