From Spare to Spectacular
Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Blair Jackson
A look at the range of sound techniques used by this year’s Oscar nominees
The track for No Country for Old Men is often as uncluttered as the landscapes where most of the action takes place, and the silences are sometimes as important as the sounds. Photo: Richard Foreman/Courtesy of Miramax Films.
The third nominated film with a Western setting (albeit modern) was Joel and Ethan Coen's dark and violent masterpiece No Country for Old Men. The film marks the first two Oscar nominations for veteran Supervising Sound Editor and Re-recording Mixer Skip Lievsay (who says he was “thrilled beyond words” to be tapped by the Academy). Also nominated for the film were Re-recording Mixers Greg Orloff (Oscar winner for Ray) and Craig Berkey (also credited as sound designer) and Production Sound Mixer Peter Kurland.
Again, here's a case in which the track is often as uncluttered as the landscapes where most of the action takes place, and the silences are sometimes as important as the sounds. “We talked about the idea of not having very much music in the film and having a very stark, super-real track,” says Lievsay, who has worked on the Coens' films spanning their entire career. “The idea was to try to get to all the shock/scare things you might normally do with music and do it with sound instead.”
Indeed, there is a scene where every footstep, every floor creek feels menacingly loud and emotional, despite there being no music to heighten tension. “That's why dynamic range is important to movies,” Lievsay says. “You want to have portions where the audience is forced to lean forward to really listen; then you give them a big blast. That's how the traditional Hollywood shock sound has always worked.”
The sound team also worked on creating subtle sounds that worked as character motifs. “Craig Berkey created a motif for [the killer Anton] Chigurh, which was rumbling train sounds, but it's pretty subliminal most of the time. It's just another element that adds a little to the unsettling feeling of the film.”
The Bourne Ultimatum, which took home the Oscars in both sound categories, relied on precise foley recording to enhance the attitude and confidence of the main character. Photo: Jasin Boland/Universal Pictures
In the taut and frenetic action film The Bourne Ultimatum, directed by Paul Greengrass, there is a mixture of in-your-face realism in the magnificently staged fight and chase sequences and sort of dreamy, hallucinatory vibe in some of the flashbacks. Co-supervising Sound Editors Per Hallberg (Oscar-winner for Braveheart) and Karen Baker Landers (a first-time nominee) had a delicate balancing act to bring out the nuances of both of those sides of the film, ably aided on the mixing side by nominees Scott Millan (a three-time winner, last for Ray) and David Parker (winner for The English Patient) and production mixer and two-time nominee Kirk Francis.
Baker Landers explained that in Bourne, foley recording and editing was critical, because of the chase elements and the well-choreographed fight sequences. “The style of the foley [says] that the Jason Bourne character is very solid and fast and deliberate,” Landers says. “He's not real high-techy; not flashy. He's down and dirty; he gets it done, and he's precise; he's a machine. … Jason Bourne's feet [foley] shows some of his attitude, his confidence. There's nothing messy or sloppy.
“The art of really capturing a character [through foley] is amazing, and when it's good you don't even notice it. But when it's bad it's distracting.” The effort paid off; The Bourne Ultimatum took home both sound Oscars.
To enhance the ambience for Ratatouille, Supervising Sound Editor Michael Silvers made recordings in real restaurants in France and interspersed the French jargon he captured, along with the sounds of pots and pans, in the kitchen scenes. Photo: © Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios. All Rights Reserved.
And finally, there's the charming animated hit Ratatouille, about a rat who wants to be a great French chef. For sound editing, Sound Designer Randy Thom and Supervising Sound Editor Michael Silvers were nominated (both won for The Incredibles in 2004); for sound mixing, it was Thom, Sound Re-recording Mixer Michael Semanick (who last won for King Kong), and Original Dialogue Mixer Doc Kane (a four-time nominee).
My first question to Thom, on a break from mixing Horton Hears a Who! at Skywalker Sound, is “So, did you get to go to Paris for field recording?”
“I didn't,” he says with a laugh, “but Michael Silvers did some real recording in French restaurants there. So we have a sprinkling of French kitchen jargon in there, and then he got some nice recordings of pots and pans and things — and, of course, he got to eat some wonderful food.”
Thom says the most challenging scene in the film was the whitewater sequence where Remy the rat is washed around the sewage system. “Partly because Brad [Bird, director] decided not to put music in it, just to make it feel a little bit more real,” he says. “Whitewater is always a challenge because if you go out and record actual water, it just sounds like pink noise; it sounds like you're standing next to Niagara Falls, So you have to find ways to make the water change as much as possible moment to moment and be articulate and really sound watery, as opposed to just noisy.
“As a sound designer, you dream of having sequences with no dialogue or music, but then when they actually come to you, you get nervous,” he says.
