Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1470109
MA: Let's talk about the moments in the fun house while they are searching for the Geek. It's a sequence that really keeps you on the edge of your seat and once again the sound is a huge part of this. How did you end up at the final product? NR: My first pass on that was I actually had the funhouse running. It filled out really nicely, it had rain on every surface. We had all the bells and whistles as well as the sirens. We covered all the mechanics of a fun house going off screen because I wasn't sure what kind of VFX we would receive. And one of the first notes I got back was, "oh, yeah, no, the fun house isn't running." Once we got that stuff out of the way, there was just room for so much delicacy. You could hear rain on a mirror or like I said before, Stanton's feet in that circular tube or rain on his jacket on that little velvet rope post. When we go into the final scene, you can hear each of Guillermo del Toro's film noir Nightmare Alley is available in both color and black-and-white. © Searchlight Pictures those things have its space to sing through and have a life of its own. That, paired with the breathing tent, brought this scene to life. MA: There's this one sound before he goes through the tunnel. It's like sort of a pneumatic release kind of thing, but it sounds like phased or something going. It's such a cool sound. NR: That's an example of where I'm not afraid to over process things. [All laugh] NR: When Fun House Jack flips everything on and the two walls start turning and the barrel starts to roll and then he gets up onto it and it stops. It just made so much sense. Like we needed to have something that startles him and makes him turn around with that flashlight and look where he came from. So, yeah, we just needed to blast it with the pneumatic air release. MA: From the dialogue side of things there was a lot of subtlety from the breaths and reactions as we hear the two characters interacting in there. How did that come together? JP: Bradley did a run of breathing through that scene before he speaks to the Geek. He was a one take wonder. From the time he was running from the dining tent all through that scene. And toward the end, that whole sequence from him running out of the office to the end of the train scene was pretty much one take and he nailed it. The production recordings were once again amazing in the funhouse. I didn't have to do anything with them and the breathing and effort passes by both Bradley and Paul added nuance to the original recordings. NR: Guillermo gave us a note early on that he wanted us to use the same lines because he wanted to draw a parallel that symmetry between the geek chase in the beginning and the rail yard chase at the end. Jill, you can confirm this,