Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/910366
DEPARTMENT www.postmagazine.com 33 POST XXX 20XX Green's glitch design for the holographic Elvis performance was molded by Villeneuve and Walker. They all worked very closely to evolve that scene. "It started off as this big musical extrava- ganza that got pared down to these frightening bursts of sound," says Green. Part of that design included little tinkling sounds for the hologram projectors' broken light bulbs. Green consulted director Ridley Scott, who was overseeing aspects of the production in Budapest. "I had a list of geek questions that I've always been burning to ask about Blade Runner sound and he was very obliging with the story of how they came up with certain sounds, like how they made the light sounds both in Blade Runner and in the original Alien movie. They used little bits of tinfoil inside a glass jar," says Green. That sparked an idea for Green on how to create his broken light bulb sounds. He record- ed sounds of small objects tinking inside a glass jar and fed those recordings into Spectrasonics Omnisphere 2's granular synthesis module. "In the granular synthesis window, you can spin the sound around and fragment it into sound piec- es. In this case, I used the granular synthesis to multiply the sound, so it sounded like there were thousands of little points of that sound going around you and above your head. There was a little bit of fluorescent light bulb sounds mixed in too. The result was a skittering, insecty light sound that translated really well in Ron Bartlett's and Doug Hemphill's final mix. They were able to mix them in Dolby Atmos and put them into the overhead speakers so it really felt like something was projecting these images," says Green. Omnisphere 2's granular synthesis module was used to create the sounds of K's virtual com- panion Joi [Ana de Armas] as she changes her clothes, and as she interacts with the rain on the balcony. It was also used in the memory-lab scene where Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri), the memory maker, is working in a forest that is revealed to be just a projection. "It has that same kind of mul- tiple, 'little projectors turning off' sound that was made using the granular synthesis trick but with a slightly different sound source so that it wasn't the same exact sound as the broken Elvis holo- gram," says Green. In addition to ambiences, Green provided hard sound effects for Walker as he cut the picture, such as sounds for the spinner vehicles and the blaster gun. "I did some initial iterations of these. What made it into the final soundtrack, in some cases, was a layer cake of different people's work," says Green. For example, supervising sound editor Mark Mangini at Formosa Group (www.formos- agroup.com) in Los Angeles, also worked on the blaster gun. His recordings of different large cali- ber guns were blended with a low-end punch that Green created. "The resulting sound for the gun isn't too real. It sounds more like a sci-fi gun." In Los Angeles, Green collaborated with Mangini at Formosa Group for nearly eight months. "I'm a huge fan of the work Mark did on Mad Max: Fury Road. That's not entirely dissimilar to Blade Runner 2049, as they're both rusty, dystopian future worlds. The melding together of our different approaches and styles is what made our collaboration so good," says Green, who handled the atmospheric, ambient and tex- tural sounds, while Mangini and his sound team tackled the concrete effects. "We needed Mark to bring this certain blockbuster aesthetic because we were working with a more European aesthetic in Budapest. We came from slightly different an- gles and often when working on the same sound, our work would sandwich together and make a final result that was really interesting." A good example of their collaboration is the lab scene in the LAPD building. K discovered a box buried beneath a tree at the home of a rouge replicant. In the lab, they used x-ray equipment to scan the box and its contents. Green created the lab's atmosphere, including the background sound of robotic arms examining corpses and Mangini and sound effects editor Lee Gilmore worked on the x-ray scanning sounds. Together they created a computerized voice that an- nounces the chemical make-up of what's being scanned. "For many of the scenes, we used all of the resources that we could get, and I think that's a really good example of my collaboration with Mark," says Green. Green's ambiences in Blade Runner 2049 are striking. From the heavy atmosphere of the junkyard to the electric-twinged tones of the LAPD offices, each space had a uniquely-defined ambience. At the Tyrell Corporation, in Niander Wallace's room, Green says they tried several dif- ferent approaches — swinging the pendulum from airy Japanese flutes to heavy sub-bass tones, before finding the right blend of elements. "At one point, we went a little too Zen and Denis said it was starting to sound like a massage parlor," jokes Green. "We ended up making quite a lighter atmosphere for that space than what we started out with and I think that works so much better. We were playing off the look of the environment as opposed to being clever by telegraphing what kind of character Wallace is." Between Dennis Gassner's production design and the lighting plan of director of photography Roger Deakins, Green says there were a lot of real visual cues helping to inform the sound. "On a lot of big, futuristic sci-fi movies you have to sound design something based on how you imagine it will look because they haven't built it in the VFX yet," concludes Green. "For Blade Runner 2049, so much of it was shot in-camera with practical effects and real sets — so much of the picture was already together in those first images, and that really sparked our imaginations." Composer/sound designer Green The film's world is grim, dusty and lived-in. Formosa Group collaborated on the sound design.