Top Guns: Inside The RAF Sound

The Sound of Top Guns: Inside the RAF was designed to put the viewer inside the cockpit to experience every twist and turn of each mission.

As a factual piece of television, Top Guns: Inside the RAF has to sound real; whatever real sounds like. The cockpit of an RAF typhoon is a place where most people have never sat, and due to its nature, it's a place which is incredibly noisy. So, real may not be what the viewer wants to hear.

Our dubbing mixer, James Routh, treated Top Guns: Inside the RAF as an opportunity to create a sound palette which the viewer might expect to hear, when intercepting a Russian fighter jet, or attacking Houthi missile sites in Yemen; jet engine fluctuations, air passing over the wings on tight turns, the rustle of the pilot's flight suit and rattle of their breathing apparatus.

You only hear these details if you're close to the action

It's a noisy business and a tricky show to mix. Intelligibility of dialogue was always at the at the forefront of James' mind whilst adding that extra jet engine, and balancing music.

Military Documentary Mixing

However, it's not all loud on Top Guns: Inside the RAF, there are also subtleties within the series. The poignant stories of Matt Kidd's posting away from his young family and the tragic loss of Sqn Ldr Mark Long were told using sound in a much more nuanced way. If you listen closely during Episode three, a homage to Mark can be heard flying overhead.

James said "It's incredibly fun mixing a documentary about fighter jets in 5.1, but it's the tiny details of sound which really matter. It's the sounds no one notices, or at least don't realise they notice, that I think are the most important. You only hear these details if you're close to the action".

Top Guns: Inside the RAF Series 1 & 2 is available to watch at Channel 4.

Dubbing Mixer
James Routh

Colourist
Lee Robinson

For further information about audio post production or recording voice over in Leeds at True North Post, please contact us on 07939248463