It came to me as an afterthought following the mixing process of the Banquet scene that one has to sometimes compromise between artistic and technical decisions. In an interview with Producer and Engineer, Erik Zobler (George Duke, Stanley Clarke, Dianne Reeves, Al Jarreau, Natalie Cole, Anita Baker) talks about sound mixing and anecdotally mentions his experience working with engineer, Bruce Houdini of which offered Zobler a piece of solid mixing advice of which to always “Fill the Meter, Fill the Speaker”. In regards to the latter of which Houdini attributes to bringing balance not only to channel levels, but also to the entire frequency spectrum to deliver that lush sounding piece of audio. Zobler asserts:

“Make sure you’re putting all the frequencies in there, whatever you do, no matter what you do. Maybe not each instrument, but when you’re done with your mix, make sure your mix has all the frequencies, way down, way high.”

Full Interview can be viewed here.

(Zobler, 2004, Waves)

This piece of advice particularly resonated with me and following implementation into common practice, I started reaping the benefits. However by side-effect, this imposed rule led towards an artistic vs technical battle when considering tracking and mixing scenes for film. For example, the Banquet scene of 5150 takes place inside a living room in the countryside, there is a lit fireplace, it’s a fairytale setting and appears to be a clear day outside. Therefore chosen components making up the soundscape and fulfilling the picture consisted of the following:

• Fire-1
• Fire-2
• Clock
• Blackbird
• Rural birds (assorted)
• Wind
• Horror Drone

Here lies the balancing act of making your scene not only aesthetically pleasing with full use of the frequency spectrum, but to colour it with strokes of realism that compliment the imagery plus further sweeps of non-diegetic elements such as music and SFX. The choosing of the above sounds were as a result of this balancing act. For example, the wind was not something we felt would be aesthetically pleasing to the ear, but was indeed low-passed, pulled down and used to fill out the sub > low end of the spectrum. The fire tracks were initially going to be used to fill the entire void. However, allowing the subs to filter through perceptually gave the impression of proximity to the listener and caused a dissonance or clashing to the perceived realism. This was also the same with the high end of the fire cracks, so frequencies above 8-10k were shelved off via equalisation. I managed to retrieve the airiness and presence by boosting the high end of the intricate foley sounds, the upper harmonics of the dialogue and the composition of music by way of a careful balancing act.

This notion of balancing art and technical very much parallels to that of musical composition. Sounds take on the heir of the instruments of which in order to create a full-sounding orchestration, they need to be collated and organised throughout the entire frequency range. An orchestra of silken-sound, filling the spectrum, filling the meter and therefore, filling the speaker.

Fangorn Forest, Lord of the Rings

We were given instruction from the team to create some eery voices coming from the trees in the forest of which speak the lead character, Susie’s name. Because Danielle was busy doing foley editing we decided that I do make use of time and do some sound design in the forest scenes. The concept reminded me of Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers of which the sinister setting of Fangorn forest was provided life and personality with the employment of sound effects emanating from the trees.

In The Soundscapes of Middle-Earth documentary, the voice of Treebeard, performed by actor John Rhys-Davies, was created using an elaborate string of processes:

“We thought about different processes that we could do to give it this ‘tree-like’ resonance and so we ended up building a wooden box that was about six feet long and three feet square…we put his voice through there, recorded lines through there and recorded it and then put the recording through again and re-recorded it so we could get these layers basically, of wooden resonance (The Soundscapes of Middle-Earth (LOTR2, DVD Extras), 2002).” 

Box built for re-recording the voice of John Rhys-Davies

Creative methods were similarly applied to the creaking of the trunks and branches where film maker, Peter Jackson instructed that the trees growl in animative mystique.

“One of the better vocals is actually a cow, a way pitched down cow (The Soundscapes of Middle-Earth (LOTR2, DVD Extras), 2002).”

In our film 5150, for the sequence where our lead character, Susie enters a mystical forest, we will be experimenting with such methodologies to draw life out of the trees before she encounters the witch. By doing this, we hope to convey that the sorcery of the evil witch holds magical influence over her surroundings, therefore making her encounter more resonant.

Forest on 5150