Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/825852
www.postmagazine.com 31 POST MAY 2017 SOUND DESIGN airy quality and quiet it down," he says. Another key element was a warbly layer that added a feeling of movement to the power sound. Acord recorded ice swirling inside a bowl. He pitched that down and did multiple passes of Denoise processing with iZotope's RX 5. "You're left with pure transients — with all of these little plinks and buzzes that happen in this cacophonous way. It no longer sounds like swirling ice, but it added this nice layer of constant movement," says Acord. One challenge for Teague was creating the voice of baby Groot. Groot only says three words, "I am Groot." Since that's his response in every situation, the inflection really matters. So Gunn created a one- off script for actor Vin Diesel, the voice of Groot, ex- plaining what Groot was really saying in each scene. Baby Groot's voice is higher in Vol. 2 — much higher than Diesel could perform naturally. Because Diesel has a very deep voice, it was easy to get into extreme pitching, like eight or nine semi-tones. Teague experimented with several different scenar- ios, like having Diesel perform it higher, and then pitching that up. "If he performed it the way he did on the first film and we pitched that up to the frequencies we wanted for this film, it was a very dif- ferent result than if Vin performed it in a higher pitch and then we pitched it just a little bit," says Teague. In the end, Teague found the best result came from Diesel performing his lines slower because "there was less artifacting when we pitched it up." Diesel performed 417 takes of "I am Groot." On the ADR stage, they set up live pitch processing so that Gunn could hear an approximation of the final sound. But they didn't record the processing on the take since the realtime processing had a significant amount of artifacts. "But this setup allowed us to know what the end result would be if he performed the line in that register. Vin performed all the lines in a higher register, his normal register, and then slower. We needed him to perform this full range of options because we only had him for one day on the ADR stage," explains Teague. Other sound design highlights for Teague include creating a new jet pack sound. Using a Sanken CO- 100K high-frequency mic, he recorded a culinary torch that he waved around and then pitched those recordings way down. He also recorded a handheld Mattel Electronics football game from the '70s. And got to create fun new '80s video game/arcade sounds to accompany it. Acord's favorite sound in the film is that of Groot walking across the floor while he's soak- ing wet. Acord says, "His squishy, wet little feet are all sound design. We used this stuff called Flarp, which is this squishy, fart-in-a-can toy for kids. Also, there's some wet sponge and a leather creak. That's a great sound." THE CIRCLE Imagine a world in which technology is so inter- twined with a person's daily life that it borders on being invasive. It's not such a far-fetched concep considering Amazon now wants customers to install the Echo Look camera in their bedrooms or bathrooms. Imagine a camera that's connected to the Internet, being part of your personal space and broadcasting your life. That's the premise behind The Circle — director James Ponsoldt's thriller (based on the novel by Dave Eggers), in theaters now. Designing sound for the not-so-future technol- ogy in The Circle ultimately required a light-hand- ed approach. Technicolor sound designer Julian Slater began working with Ponsoldt to build up a vast vocabulary of tech sounds that felt just a few generations ahead. But in the end, using less sound had a more believable result. Supervising sound editor/sound designer Dror Mohar at Technicolor Sound (www.technicolor.com/en/solutions-services/ entertainment-services/sound), who joined the film in January, says, "We wanted to place the sounds so that psychologically we understand their meaning and they tell us a story without standing out as future-tech." The film's advanced technology covers everything Sound designers were challenged with creating a special sound for Ego's power. Vin Diesel performed 417 takes of "I am Groot" on the ADR stage. Technicolor Sound's Mohar