It’s frightening to think about how fragile the systems that power modern civilization are, and how the failure of those systems (even short term) would be catastrophic. When the systems meant to support and protect society are under attack, who has the power and fortitude to fix it? Netflix’s new series Zero Day explores that anxiety-inducing subject from the perspective of a former President named George Mullen (played by Robert De Niro). Mullen tries to untie the tangled knot of motives to discover the true perpetrators of a cyber attack while dealing with mental breaks that make him question reality.

MPSE Award-winning supervising sound editor Brett Hinton and Emmy Award-winning sound designer Mark Hailstone discuss their approach to creating Mullen’s mental breaks as possible psychological warfare (a weapon called Proteus) or personal trauma (conveyed by the Sex Pistols song “Who Killed Bambi”) and how those two motifs are intentionally blended. They also talk about how they achieved such a realistic sound for news broadcasts with the help of production sound mixer Ken Ishii, how they built believable, dynamic protest crowds by combining production sound, loop group, and sound libraries, how they approached the sound of technology in the show, and much, much more!

ZERO DAY | Now Playing | Netflix

What initial ideas did showrunner Eric Newman have for sound on Zero Day? And what were some of your initial ideas for how sound could help to tell this story?

Brett Hinton (BH): The first thing I did on the show was the sound design for the cold open. I had read the scripts and met with picture editor Ben Lester before I was given any direction on the show. I love creating this way. I got to do this on Altered Carbon as well and I think we need more opportunities like this.

It’s important to find your voice inside the construct of narrative imagery before you go too far down the path of compromises for a consortium of opinions.

It’s important to…