Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1487730
40 I M PS E . O R G flavors and customized sweeteners to cut through the organic crowd. It is challenging to get loop group recordings to sound real on their own. I like to always have an organic foundation of real crowd recordings in their natural environments whatever they might be. EM: What was your sonic approach to the slow motion and speed ramps in the film? SH: You know, it's funny being a sound editor, you just start experimenting and throwing sounds at the screen. A lot of times, you're forced to mirror the image, but with all these different speed ramps and slow motion, you are freed from the literal sense and delve into a more creative space. I remember searching our library for sword and shield hits, flying arrows, metal shings and rings—just doing voluminous searches and we just started playing around with them and slowing them down, pitch shifting and reversing them. We used reverse reverb, or used the return reverb only, and not even any of the direct signals, so it's just sort of this ethereal ring. It was a lot of playing in the sonic sandbox, as I like to call it. For a lot of single vocal yells, we slowed them down and reversed them. For other types of hits and booms, we always try to stray away from something too on the nose. We want to keep audiences on their toes. You never want people to say, "Hey, that sounds like that other movie." EM: In this film, the music was at times very big and operatic. Did you know early on where the music was going to be cued, and what it would sound like to some degree? SH: Tyler Bates did a magnificent job on the score. I'd worked with Tyler on Zack's first film, Dawn of the Dead. We became friends and he's an incredible musician. A lot of the music was very operatic, but there was some rock- and-roll in 300, too. I knew it was going to be big. And they were temporarily using music cues from other scores that were indicative of what was to come. Honestly, I don't get too hung up on trying to figure out what the music's going to be doing. I do like to have conversations with the composer, and try to anticipate it. But at the end of the day, as much as you do that, you're just going to have to deal with the score that gets recorded right before the final mix. Usually with Zack's films, the music is bold, and we know that we've got to provide sounds and certain frequencies that are going to cut through. Even the gore sounds, and there's a lot of gore in 300, we had a great gore library made not only from our library, but we recorded a lot of material on the Foley stage with my brother Gary. The gore by itself sometimes wouldn't cut through the music, so we had to rely mostly on the puncturing sound, as opposed to the blood spurting out. There's a lot of blood spraying in the VFX, and you hear that stuff, but we actually focused more on the puncturing sounds like the arrows hitting or people being speared. We had to get that impact to really cut through the score and then your brain hears the rest of the residual gore. It was a challenge getting a lot of the impacts through, but the good news is it's hard to hide a sword or shield clank. Those were sharp sounds unto themselves so we didn't have too hard of a time getting our action sounds through. The gore stuff was more challenging, but was a lot of fun. EM: You've built this incredibly long relationship with Zack Snyder. What's been your secret to building this creative partnership over so many films? SH: Well, Dawn of the Dead was his first feature back at Universal. It's funny, I'd worked at Universal for 13 years and everyone says, "Man, that must've been nice, you being fed all the Universal films," but Universal was one of the few studios that always let the directors use whoever they wanted. I would never want to be pushed on a director, like "Here's our studio guy, meet Scott Hecker!" It made me stronger at having to go out and find my own work, interviewing with different directors. I think I only did four Universal films in 13 years— that's it. For Dawn of the Dead, I had to interview even though it was a Universal film. They let Zack interview a few other sound designers, and I was lucky to get the gig. I didn't realize initially, but once I hit a groove with Zack on that film, I found he's a very loyal filmmaker. Once he establishes a relationship and a trust with you, he probably figures why try to reinvent that kind of relationship from scratch on every film. He's super, super loyal. He tries to keep his team together for all of his films. Zack encourages you to take a can opener to the top of your head and let it flow and see what we can come up with. To feel free to come up with really cool, captivating, and engaging sounds. When I started on Batman v Superman, I saw that Batmobile and I said to Zack, "Man, there's been some really cool Batman films made, do you want the Batmobile to sound like the Christopher Nolan Batmobile or…?" He didn't even think about it, he just said, "No, those are all really cool. I just want you to come up with something that you think is unique for our film." That's why I'm lucky I get to work with Zack as often as I do. EM: So the pandemic hit here in March 2020, and our entire country was experiencing the worst of the pandemic. You, on the other hand, were working hard on two Zack Snyder films! Zack Snyder's Justice League, and also Army of the Dead. What was that experience like for you while, in the outside world, everyone else is going through an unprecedented time? SH: I almost felt guilty because the pandemic hit the whole world, and put everyone on their heads. Who knew how to deal with that? A lot of people weren't working, things shut down and got slow, and I was almost