Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1383665
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S I 25 The main thing about this movie was that it was so beautifully written, but Ericson kept saying, "You can write that the dog looks back at Seppala [Willem Dafoe] with happiness or joy or sadness or that he's contemplative, but you can't shoot a dog doing that!" [laughs] "You can write it, but you can't shoot it!" So, it was up to us to be able to give that personality to the dog. We literally had to cut Togo and the dogs as if they were like character dialogue. So, the sound effects were like a dialogue track. We went through a lot of iterations. Chris Bonis, a sound editor on the picture, did a first pass, and Martyn Zub, our sound designer, did another pass. For me, the hardest sequence was this scene where the dog sled team almost falls off Mount McKinley. That's the mountain where the snow comes up from the canyon. In that scene, Seppala is able to dig his pike into the ground to stop the sled from going over the cliff. Even that pike was another sound where we kept going 'round and 'round, trying to get a different sound to match what Ericson was hearing in his head. One of the biggest things was that the whole team was in chaos, being on the edge of this cliff. It was Togo who had to get all of the dogs back in order. "Stop being scared, listen to me, we've got this, we're gonna turn this thing around, and you're gonna follow me." That's basically what it said Togo was saying to the other dogs in the script. And Ericson said, "How am I gonna shoot this?" He did a fantastic job shooting it, and he wanted us to augment that to really drive that point home. That was one of his chief focuses in the beginning. We had all worked hard on it, and then finally I had to go, "I'm just really going to do a deep-dive in this thing … roll up my sleeves and cut it." I remember he finally accepted that on the third temp dub. He said, "Okay, this is great." TT: I think the content was right, it had just gone through so many iterations. You know when you start mixing on top of mixing, and your volume graphs are coalesced? At a certain point, you couldn't even get enough gain out of it. On the very final pass, Warren Shaw stepped in and said, "No, no, let me unwind it. I can get there." And when Ericson heard it, he was beaming, "There it is." The content was there, it just needed to be uncovered. OB: I remember struggling with finding the right bark for Togo. It couldn't be a vicious bark, and it couldn't be an excited bark—it had to be like this "take charge" bark. So, finding the right series of barks for him was difficult. Once that was done, then it got into a shot of some of the other dogs who were whining, and eventually, Togo led the pack up. That was one we all struggled with for a really long time. Ericson is amazing because when he reviews it, he'll watch the whole movie, and then he'll give you notes from his head. TT: He doesn't write it down. OB: He just goes from point, to point, to point, to point. And it's just like, how can he…? This guy's a genius! I mean, I'm taking like six pages of notes, and he's just got it all in his head. [laughs] TT: It's amazing. The hardest task for me, and it seems really simple, but it was the sick breathing for Togo, puppy and then old dog. I had to preview a lot of different versions before Ericson was finally satisfied. Before playing the final version I thought to myself, "Oh boy, I hope Ericson likes this because I don't have anything else up my sleeve." [laughs] Looking back at the story, those were two very critical moments. Little Togo fighting for his life – the runt of the litter. And then he's basically on his deathbed at the end. EM: I hadn't thought about it in terms of creating a performance out of each of these dog vocals. OB: Yeah, I don't know how Todd cut the sick puppy scene. It was a miracle when he came up with that stuff. I was like, "Oh, thank God!" 'Cause it was really, really tough finding the right sounds. EM: For the crossing of the sound scene, could you talk about how you created those deep ice cracking sounds? OB: Years ago, I found some documentary footage of scientists who were recording the sounds of ice—what it sounds like when it cracks underwater, this resonance that it would create. It sounds amazing. It sounds like Star Wars or like Krypton being destroyed. Back when I was working on Frozen, we went out to Convict Lake in Mammoth, we took some pickaxes and opened up a hole in the frozen lake. You can actually hear those sounds from the surface, too. We put three hydrophones about 100 yards apart. And we went out and recorded with a Diva and some other rigs, and as the sun hit the ice, it would crack the ice. It's very similar physics to when you hit a hammer on a cable, like how Ben Burtt did it with his contact mics. It's the same principle in that the ice sheet will break and that snap will reverberate throughout the lake. It creates this incredible sound. I was always keen on trying to get those elements into Togo because here was a perfect use case. That was a great set of recordings.