In the Season 2 premiere of Freeform’s Motherland: Fort Salem, Tally Craven (Jessica Sutton) was presented a rare offer she couldn’t refuse: an opportunity to resume life as it was. What followed was the very delicate “unbiddying” process, which series creator Eliot Laurence calls “psychic surgery,” to give the young witch her youth back.
While Izadora’s (Emilie Leclerc) capable hands untangle Tally from her general, beautiful choral singing is heard from the women surrounding Alder (Lyne Renée) and her Biddies. It’s a scene renowned vocal coach Frédérik Robert worked extensively on. In addition to being on the set of the supernatural series in support of Mothertongue creators David J. Peterson & Jessie Sams and sound designer Paula Fairfield, Robert is on set in support of series composer Brandon Roberts as well.
In an exclusive interview with PopWire, Frédérik Robert, one of Canada’s top vocal coaches, breaks down that unbiddying scene, talks working with the supernatural series’ newest witch, and teases the exciting things to come for the rest of the season.
“What happens is our composer Brandon Roberts, out of California, essentially created the song itself,” Robert tells us of the psychic surgery scene. “Everybody in that particular scene is lip syncing. There’s a cacophony of noises, meaning there’s some various pitches. Some people are singing low notes, there’s kind of harmonics, there’s things going on in harmonies, there’s also timing. This is all things that I ended up preparing on the day.”
A big part of Robert’s job is to make the sounds, whether it be the effects-heavy vocal magic or the singing, appear to be coming out of the actors’ mouths. For Tally’s unbiddying, the vocal coach gathered the whole cast, including the extras, to get the scene just right. “We got them all up to speed on what their mouth shape would be and what everybody was doing within the song that was created,” he says. “Essentially it’s a composition by our composer of which I prepared the actors to appear as they’re singing it live.”
Motherland: Fort Salem‘s second season introduced viewers to a young new witch by the name of Penelope Silver (Mellany Barros). She becomes the army’s newest recruit, whom Tally takes under her wing. When we first meet her, she’s singing at her church and almost literally sings the house down. Most of the lip syncing done by the cast is to sounds that are not humanly possible or voices that are not even their own. But for Penelope and the actress who brings her to life, that scene was slightly different.
“A lot of my work on the show in terms of the voice, is mainly lip syncing work, except for things that happen this season,” Robert says. “For instance, Penelope in episode 1 singing ‘How Great Thou Art.’ I prepared her vocally for that. I actually went into the studio and we pre-recorded the track, but it is her singing.”
With Mellany Barros lip syncing to her own voice, it brought up the question of how much of what we hear in the show actually comes from the actors themselves. Whether they’re slightly or heavily altered, do any of the other sounds or voices we hear belong to the respective actors? To that, Robert says that this season, viewers are “in for a surprise.”
“There’s quite a bit of stuff interspersed, not that you would necessarily know, was that the actor or not the actor,” Frédérik Robert explains. “There’s more to come that came straight from the actors. That’s an exciting thing this season. As the show’s expanding, so is our understanding of the actors’ capacity and we’re trying to use as much of their real voices as we possibly can. You may not be aware of when those moments are, but they are going to come. There’s going to be much more of that this season.”
Motherland: Fort Salem airs Tuesdays at 10pm on Freeform.
