Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475409
recorded or is some of it from the real event? RT: Early on, we had some real news reports in there for temp, but eventually everything was replaced with our own recordings. Ron added many snippets of TV and radio reports, to give a slightly more documentary feel, but also to keep reminding the audience that everyone at home is watching on. This was a major story around the globe. What the newscasters are saying is important too—it keeps the thread of the story going, highlighting key details for our audience, like pumps are now being used, or water levels are rising, or the oxygen running out. Plus, we even feathered in some World Cup commentaries, to maintain a sense of the world in a larger context. We make sure that the match we feature is the one that was happening at that exact moment, of course. MA: There are older vehicles and scooters throughout the film that help sell the sound of the streets of Thailand. The scooters in particular have such a distinct sound to them. How did you tackle this? OT: There were plenty of them on the production tracks! Rachael was busy taking them out from under dialogue, whilst Mike Fentum and I were reinstating them where they could exist less intrusively. We had some good takes from production, but we also asked Alex to record markets and street atmospheres, including scooter activity, in Thailand. In conjunction with tracks we'd already recorded we had plenty to create a frenetic outside world, very much in contrast to the cave and underwater scenes. MA: There are a lot of dialogue scenes inside chambers of the cave where there is complicated movement in the water and no opportunity for lavalliere mics. How did you tackle these kinds of scenes? RT: Complex water issues on set meant shooting more ADR than I have ever had on a film before. The current you see in the caves is, in reality, big pumps pushing water through a set. That meant noise across even the cleanest of cave recordings! We had 550 lines in total. Much of that was for correcting language issues with the Thai characters but the water was our biggest adversary. On occasion, between the boom op and the lead actors were torrents of water pouring down. Plus, the actors were often submerged up to their necks, meaning any radio mics would also be submerged or buried under dense, wet fabric. I saved whatever I could from production, but sometimes you just need to accept that ADR is the only way to go. Viggo had the most lines, he flew into London for two full days of recording and like the pro he is, he also went through (Inset) A screen shot of some of the crowd (which wouldn't fit on the screen).