Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1401019
66 I m ps e . o rg bit off-mic, then the Foley is a little off-mic. And it blended in perfectly. MA: I'd like to jump back to one of the more intense moments in this film when David is in his car charging after Derek, his wife's current lover. Our inner turmoil theme is back and it's weaving wonderfully between sounds in the world he is in and his internal emotional state. This whole scene builds to an intense moment where, just before David looks to take a shot at Derek, an oncoming car forces David to swerve away. All of this is achieved with sound as we are locked onto a close- up of David the entire time. It's beautifully done. Can you take us through this sequence? RM: We had a limited amount of time to shoot, so we ended up only with about 12 days to shoot. And as a director, you have kind of this obligation to finish the film if you say yes to making one. So, the choices were made twofold, and one was to make sure that we were able to have a film at the end. But then as a result of that, in an effort to maximize that choice once it was made. I knew, because Peter and I had worked on When She Runs, and we had explored the beginnings of this sound design that we would be able to do things via sound design that would enhance something that we wouldn't be able to do, maybe, physically. In the example of the scene right after the coffee shop, the building of that, I knew we really did want to stay on David. And one was practical again, not having the resources to be able to do maybe what would have traditionally been done. But I also thought it was really critical to establish the narrative so that later, for example, when he's driving away toward the end of the film, we've already established this camera in the side window, and that horror can kind of occur as we learned in the very opening when he's going after Derek and then all of a sudden to keep that frame continuing. What Peter and I talked a lot about in that sequence specifically is we did the opposite of what we did in the beginning. In the beginning, we established this very aggressive sound design as he's kind of following in pursuit of Derek and then cut to the end of the movie, which is mirroring. What we've done is remove the sound and just allow the visuals to sit, and all of a sudden, it amplifies the kind of terror in a very similar way that it did in the beginning yet in a much more layered way. So, for me, that was very exciting to discuss via how the sound design and how establishing the language of the film very early on. I have found audiences rarely critique the way in which you choose to make a movie DB: Yeah, that was all production sound. That scene was like watching a tennis match as the argument unfolded. One character walks off to the left, yells at the other on the right, they yell back, they come together in the center… We saw audience members actually orienting their heads to the speaker as opposed to just staring at a screen. That was cool. PA: That separation really helped with the Foley. I worked with this Finnish Foley artist, Heikki Kossi, who's just amazing. He had done Foley for these characters so that we could have the Foley move around also so that you kind of flesh out the character. So, it's not just the voice but you actually hear footsteps, movement, and all these things move around. Heikki is incredibly good at performing Foley so that it really feels like this is the actor's body speaking in a way. That's much harder than you would think. He's got this incredible sensibility. That's definitely also a part of creating this mix of the way that things are panned around that you have the foley to kind of back that up. DB: Heikki's Foley is incredibly natural sounding and not just natural sounding in general, but scene-specific and also production sound-specific. If a scene was a little