Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1487730
SH: At the beginning, the son's looking out at the lake and the waves are coming up, and it's his memory of the six weeks on the road with his father. What would that sound like? Is it rhythmic and peaceful? If you think about his memory, it was pretty horrific watching this father kill people. So maybe this is his self-defense system. I'm just surmising, thinking psychologically, it's sort of a calming thing to quell some of the disturbing parts of his experiences. We had this wave idea established, and it wasn't perfectly rhythmic at first, so I suggested that the space between each wave lap be exactly the same. It was literally like a relaxation tape, like the rhythm of breathing. The waves were like exhales. As a matter of fact, at first, we were just working with reverberated waves, and I thought to add actual breaths to the waves. We topped these wave laps with the breaths, but we didn't want it to be too obvious or hokey. It's very subtle, but the end of each of those wave laps has an exhale tailing off, which felt spiritual and internalized as the son's memory. The whole film is so poetic, and I just thought it was a really elegant entrance to the film. When we were final mixing, at the last minute, we got a new version of the main title credits. We hear these rhythmic breathy waves and all of a sudden, the credits were fading in and out, and I suggested to Sam, "Why don't we send the optical house our track, the rhythm of our waves and have the credits come up in sync with the waves?" So, we did that and now the film opens up with this poetic sound moment that sets the tone for what's to come. And that's how, at the end of the film, Sullivan is standing there at the window, and here come those waves again! When you hear them, it does something to you because of your memory from the beginning of the film, this calming rhythm creates a false sense of where this is going to lead us. Those breaths work like a relaxation tape you might play at night trying to go to sleep … hey, that's a good idea! We could market something like that, the "Road to Perdition: Breathy Waves" relaxation tape (laughing). Like you said, it sets the audience up for a moment where that final gunshot will make you drop your popcorn, because it comes out of nowhere and it was loud. That was the beauty of it. It's another example of dynamics with extreme quiet, peaceful, calm … and then there's the horror of that amazingly loud gunshot. EM: In that end scene with Sullivan Sr. looking out through the window, was there ever a discussion about cutting to a perspective where he would only hear things from the inside of that cabin, instead of it sounding like he's outside next to the lake? SH: Not really, because at the beginning of the film and the end of the film, those waves aren't in sync with any visuals, they are only a rhythmic sound design motif that we established. So those waves have no foundation or relationship to anything in the real world. It's just a sound idea to create an emotional headspace. I think we pretty much knew that we wanted to just make the whole real world go away, and we were going to get into these rhythmic wave sounds. The sound of those wave laps fill the theater … and out of the quiet … Bam! EM: Road to Perdition was based on a comic book, but at the other end of the spectrum of comic book films, this year is also the 15th anniversary of the revolutionary movie 300! The film came out a couple years after Sin City and Sky Captain, green screen films that were highly innovative and stylized. What were your initial conversations like with Zack Snyder prior to starting on this film? SH: There wasn't a lot of discussion sound-wise prior to starting on it, to be honest with you. I just knew it was going to be a faithful recreation of the graphic novel, so I studied up on that. We went to spot the film with Zack, and we started laughing because most of the stuff was still green screen, so it's hard to talk about much of anything. I did read the graphic novel, but he began to describe the scenes and backgrounds he would be using, such as the cliffs with waves crashing on the rocks below and a battle scene with a background of troops on elephants. He was just trying to guide me through what was going to come with the developing VFX. Slowly but surely, we got versions of the VFX that we could start applying sounds to, but it was such a fluid process, constantly changing, and we had to imagine it all being animated. That was pretty challenging. One of the great aspects of working with Zack is he doesn't belabor me with a million instructions when we start. We talk in general about the film, but he doesn't say, "I want this to sound like this or that." That's just one area where Zack is super smart as a filmmaker. It invigorates the creative part of my job, because he is smart enough to want to see what your ideas are before he interjects his own sensibilities. Michael Sr. thinks he's finally found peace near the end of Road to Perdition. Photo courtesy of DreamWorks Pictures.