Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1316380
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 69 visceral; an absolutely bone-chilling emotional outpouring. We took that and manipulated versions of that throughout the nightmare (we also used it as part of the Hiroshima bomb, the Doomtown explosion, and the core meltdown at Chernobyl). We see these big radium droplets fall onto the cobbles and we use the atomic bomb sound from earlier in the film there. There are some of the horse sounds from Pierre's accident in there, too, but again, used in a more abstract, treated manner. It felt like whatever Marie was experiencing here had to be heightened, had to be about as bad as it could be in her imagination and the sound treatments we used had to be visceral enough to reflect that. We also went down the rabbit hole with more designed sounds, a lot of these elements were created using an 808 drum machine and some synthesizers. Early in the process, we talked about whether we should try to express radiation as a sound, even though it doesn't literally have a sound. We thought it might be interesting to explore this in subtle ways during the scientific discovery scenes. Here we had the opportunity to explore the extreme of that. It was great to take a drum machine and some modular synthesizer sounds and push them in odd, unrecognisable directions. I didn't want percussive or melodic sounds from them; I wanted glitchy, distorted sounds, as well as some more building tonal and drone elements that I could cut up and piece together to work with that very rhythmic picture cutting and express the grief and pain on screen. We always knew that it would end with this peak that Marjane had performed on a 'Santouri' (It's like an open piano with multiple strings that you hit with hammers that you hold rather than by playing keys). She performed this piece that was really intense and really beautiful and we knew that it would always build to that. We knew we wanted to create a montage of all of these elements into something that could build and peak a weave of music, sync sound and design working together to create this experiential subjective experience of Madame Curie's grief for the audience. This sequence really evolved over our entire time on the film, both in terms of picture and sound, and the sound design for it was a huge collaborative effort. Stéphane and I would regularly spend time together in my cutting room experimenting with it and refining it. Again, it was a really ideal way to work to fully explore the potential of the sequence. "THE RIPPLES YOU CAN'T CONTROL" One of the unique storytelling devices used in the film is the flash-forwards in time. These reflect major world events that were in some way influenced by the legacy of Marie Curie and her discoveries. They posed some really unique sound design opportunities: the sound of the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima and the sound of life on the city's streets moments before; the sound inside the core at Chernobyl during its meltdown; the sound of a nuclear test explosion in the Nevada desert shown from inside one of the purposely constructed houses it destroyed. We got to go very violent and subjective in these sequences; sound is expressed from the point of view of the experience, rather than the literal sound of these events. It is coloured by the emotion and the impact of these things as we reflect on them as a consequence of humanity's misuse of Marie Curie's discoveries. The writing, filming, and editing of these sequences allowed us to explore this with sound and offered us a great opportunity to shape the transitions between these different moments in history. We touch on a number of historical moments of war and human destruction in the course of the film, from the battlefields of World War I, to Hiroshima in World War II, and the Chernobyl disaster and the Doomtown explosion. There was an interesting note from Marjane early on in the process; it was in one of our first meetings. She said, 'You know I've lived through war, right?' Because she had lived in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war. She said, 'There would be days when our windows would blow out because an explosion would happen somewhere near where we lived. So I know what war sounds like. I need you to make this sound like war I know.' So it was another brilliant challenge. We had to create something that would sound and feel authentic. This was just one of many brilliant conversations that we had with her during the process. It was one of those really insightful takes that she had. I knew that I needed to figure out something that would not only work in the film but would also satisfy that genuine experience that she had. And what an amazing challenge to have to try to figure out. CAPTURING AND ENHANCING PERFORMANCE Dialogue-wise, clarity and performance were paramount as you'd expect. We were conscious that the film would have an international audience. The dialogue is authentically English, with a broad range of accents from across Britain and beyond. There was a decision made in shooting to have all of the French characters speak English with British accents and to have all other nationalities speak English with a localised accent. We didn't want to smooth the edges of these accents but we did have to be conscious of intelligibility. From the production recording to dialogue and ADR editing, and the final mix,