Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1261193
50 I M PS E . O R G PA: It was, sometimes. We didn't want to cross the line, but the film is from a women's perspective. So we amplified the sound to communicate their hypersensitivity, caused by trauma. BF: For example, when Dr. Amani says she hears the bombs much louder than they are? PA: We amplified the sound of the bombs in that scene, to reflect how loud Dr. Amani hears them. In another scene, we amplified Amani's breathing. The production sound was so bad that we had to clean it first, and then built on that. The sound in the film is overwhelming, but, at the same time, it's truer to reality, because when the bomb goes off on the ground in Syria, the earth shakes, and you feel the shaking all inside your body. You hear the feet pounding, and as the medics push the stretcher, you hear its rattle. We tried to bring all these sounds back in. BF: You also used classical music, not just as it plays on the iPhone in the operating room, but also directly on the soundtrack. PA: We used a piece from Mozart's Requiem, with the surgeon Dr. Salim, and then again as a man runs through the streets with a plate of food— it's such a surreal sequence, like something out of Greek mythology. The man could be killed right there, as he's running, while he is bringing the food. We also built moments of stillness by taking out the sound in places. We wanted to get closer to the key characters and to avoid making another "noisy film," which focuses only on the war's destruction. We wanted to experience how our protagonists listen, and hear what they hear, to understand their environment, and to understand how they survive it. BF: Do you feel that the Dolby Atmos immersive surround sound format has given you more creative space to explore in terms of the soundscape? PA: At our first meeting, Feras Fayyad said that he wanted to do the documentary in Dolby Atmos. He wanted the audience to be immersed in sound. One of the unique things about Dolby Atmos is the speakers placed in the ceiling and these were perfect for The Cave as the war is happening on top of the characters and we could have the sounds of war coming from above the audience. This would put the audience in the cave, in the middle of the chaos. For The Cave, it meant that we could create a truly enveloping sound of war. The amazing clarity of the Dolby Atmos speaker system also meant that we could have so much more subtlety in the soundscape and it allows you to feel all the details of the hospital noises and the sonic environment overall. There are some enormous dynamics in the film going from a quiet breath to full on intense assault and that's something that really gets enormous extra impact in Dolby Atmos. LG: An immersive sound format does liberate us from technical boundaries or restrictions that 5.1 and other formats used to have. That said, I'm sure this won't be the end of technical development. For now this seems like the best we can do in theatres and the results can be really great. BF: Conventionally with stereo, sounds have always been predominantly coming out of the screens. Now with Dolby audio, sounds completely immerses audiences in the environment. This can both immerse, as well as distract people from the screen especially with a documentary. What are your views on this? PA: Sound is telling the story. It is not THE story. You always need to make sure that sound is not overshadowing the story, the characters or the feeling of the film. With The Cave, we really pushed the sound to tell the story in an immersive way that Feras Fayyad had envisioned. He shot it and he cut it so that it worked in a very immersive manner. I always love when a film is a cinematic experience. A wonderful world that I enter for two hours. Therefore, I love immersive sound but of course, it needs to feel natural and homogeneous and should serve the story. That's why the Dolby Atmos mix of Gravity was so brilliant —it was sonic storytelling in 3D. I don't think there are necessarily different rules for sound in a documentary or a fiction film: The sound has to serve the story. That's always the main rule. It does not matter if it is in mono or if it's in Atmos. A lot of modern documentaries are just as cinematic as fiction films so there's no reason documentaries should not be mixed in Dolby Atmos. I hope for many more documentaries in Dolby Atmos. Crossing my fingers for that. LG: For me, there are two basic or fundamental assumptions that need to work. First is an idea of a centre of gravity, which is the middle of the screen. If you try not to have your mix fall out from that centre of gravity, you will always be able to keep long-term focus of the audience. The second is that any degree of displacement from centre of gravity should have a connection with the inner state of the character or whatever that sound or object means for the character. Tim Nielsen and Peter Albrechtsen, Skywalker Sound final mix The Cave director Feras Fayyad. Photo by Stine Heilmann