Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1436283
Irene's discomfort is palpable when she stops into this all-white establishment to get out of the heat and discovers that Clare is there, someone we find out is an important person from her past in a slow reveal through the scene. We wanted to feel a large light cool cavernous room while also capturing a feeling that is sensuous, intimate, and tense. For sound, we have the natural reverberation of dialogue in the space, the hushed tones of sparse white conversation and movement—two lovers whispering, two old ladies sipping tea, a waiter darting in and out. The dialogue went through rounds of noise reduction while preserving all vocal tones. We added unseen water gurgle from a fountain and a distant wind chime, even the barely perceptible ceiling fans. Our two main characters are rekindling a deep connection while passing as white as coolly as possible. Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga with director Rebecca Hall. Photo by Emily V. Aragones/Netflix As we kept working, I found that the old aspect ratio (1.33:1 or 4:3, same as silent movies), and its black, white, and gray images were informing my sound design subliminally, reconnecting me to my own distant past. When I was 11 years old in the 1970s, I met a friend who was collecting silent movies, particularly comedies— Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, on Super 8 and regular 8mm reels of film. We'd grab some ragtime records and play them on a record player while we screened these movies. We ended up doing this at birthday parties, and it was great fun for us. It brought us into an earlier era that was not part of our experience. Also, Passing visually impacted my approach to sound not necessarily as a conscious thought, but I think it was just the sense of paring everything down. So just as the camera focuses on close-ups and the central characters, keeping things very elemental, very simple, that's what we wanted to do with the sound. That was a lot easier said than done because I tend to approach any job with too much sound in the beginning, getting all the ideas out. And then it's a process of stripping that back to just the absolute essential minimum. It seemed like that was an endless process; every time we had a playback of the mix, there were too many birds, there were too many car horns, there were too many things going on and I just kept taking out more and more. You could never have too little. We accentuated Irene's breathing in spots. It's an intimate, subtle, sonic motif driven by Irene's POV. For instance, in a handful of scenes that play out inside the family brownstone, or the early one in the hotel room—she may have just visited with people, talking to Clare or family, and then they leave the room and she shuts the