Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1490686
I had diagrams of the plane. I knew where each character in our movie was going to be sitting. They let us have the plane for the day. We recorded it all up and down the coast. We recorded every knob, every compartment, and anything we could. I actually asked the pilot, would you mind sputtering the engine? He said, "Well, we can, but we don't like to, but I'll try it." So we had all our mics set up, standing by these big engines. He started it up and then added a little oxygen to the line and we got a beautiful recording as it sputtered out. I knew this authenticity may not mean anything to some people, but the B-24 guys who are still alive and who worked on these types of planes and with the Collings Foundation, who worked to make these planes authentic, would know. In the raft scene, Louis is on a raft for 47 days in shark-infested waters. I listened to the production on my headphones and was like, "What is the sound I'm hearing?" I watched the picture and the camera pulls out and there's the little raft in a tank in the middle of a parking lot next to a freeway, with a theme park right behind them. They're dying on the raft while I can hear people going 'weeeeeeeee' on the roller coaster in the background. I told Angie, "We have to loop all of this." She, being an actress/director, said, "No, no, no, please." It was clear she wanted to save the original performance. I said, "It's going to be okay." In shooting the raft sequence, I had the actors come in. I took all the water off the stage. They weren't allowed to drink any water because they'd been on the raft for 47 days with no water or food. I prepared couches on the ADR stage where the back of the couches would have an area for the actor to lay on the ground, like they would be on the raft, or sitting in it. I turned all the lights off on the ADR stage and ran the scene for them over and over. I just wanted them to get back to the ocean, the raft, the sharks, the danger, and what they were feeling. Early on, we got the Foley in, we got all the sound effects in, and I took it to the stage and asked Angie to come over and listen. I said, "Here's option A with your production dialogue." She heard it, with the Foley, water, and music. I said, "Okay, here's B," which was the ADR. After it was finished, she looked at me and said, "I can't believe you did that. You've taken the veil away." She said, "I could feel the filmmaking in A, but in B, I was on that raft with them." She said, "Please do whatever you did here on everything." MA: This year, you worked on Gina Prince-Bythewood's The Woman King. This film has loads of exciting action scenes, filled with great opportunities for dialogue and sound effects work. What was it like working with Gina and how did you approach this film? BS: The Woman King is a highlight of my career. It's been such a joy for me and a challenge. I got the call about a year ago from Gina Prince-Bythewood and Terilyn Shropshire, the picture editor, to meet them for a Zoom interview. We had a great interview for about an hour, discussing the film. I wasn't allowed to read the script, but I found out who the Agojies were and what the story was about. In talking with them and discussing the film, I was able to discuss the location they were shooting, what the warriors would wear, where the mics would be placed, weapons, and Gina's vision for the film. I told her I loved her movie, The Old Guard, which is one of my favorite films from the year before. And I would love to have the chance to work with them. A year later, I got a call that they wanted me to do The Woman King. We had 15 weeks and five previews to complete that movie, which was a daunting task. However, it ended up being a highlight of my career because I think we completely nailed it. We were all always on the same page. It was one of the best collaborative experiences I've ever had. They trusted me to do what I needed to do to get the film done. We just needed to capture the brutality of war and the emotional landscape. We wanted to convey the bravery, loneliness, and brutality of what these women went through. This isn't a superhero movie. We had to get the palace sounds right, where the wives and children of the king were held. We also had the Agojie courtyard, where the warriors spoke with South African accents. When we went to Ouidah, which is where the slave traders were located, they were mostly Dutch, French, and Portuguese. So, when we shot a loop group for Ouidah, I had Portuguese, French, and Dutch actors speaking those languages. And I had no English playing. I didn't want the ears to be drawn to the English language when we were doing the slave trading. I wanted it to be used almost as a sound effect, like the rhythm of an auction. The actors worked hard to get their accents right, because we had American, South African, and British actors playing the warriors. But there was a lot of dialogue and ADR work, and we had a lot of challenges with technology on set. Fans and buzzes in the bathing cavern, which is a beautiful sight, but they had something keeping the water warm and fans going on in there that had to be cleaned out. So we could have the intimate sound we needed. The battles had to be brutal. The actors weren't using real machetes, so we had to take all that out and put in our own sounds. I really went through my collection of metal-on- metal sounds, picking through and listening to sound after sound of those machetes to get the right thickness. It's almost a darker sound, a thick Oscar nominee Becky Sullivan, February 2015. Photo: Jessie Doyle